SWEPT BY FLAMES.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 147, 24 June 1887, Page 2

SWEPT BY FLAMES.

A MICHIGAN VILLAGE IN ASHES.

millions lost by the Forest Fires.

The forest fires have attacked Lake Linden, a village five miles from Houghton (Mich.), and the whole town has been destroyed. At 5.50 p.m. the fire was under control. The flames were first noticed issuing from the second story of a general merchandise store. Everything was dry as tinder, and, despite the heroic efforts of the firemen and citizens, the spread of the flames was very rapid. Less than two hours after the first alarm, the entire business portion of the town, from the starting point to f the public school building, was in ashes. The loss is a terrible one to Lake Linden, and conservative judgos place the pecuniary damages at 1,500, OOOdols. The insurance is probably not less than 750,000d015. The report gives great loss of household goods and surplus clothing, the flames reaching out with such rapidity that a panic seized every one. The Fire Department was fifteen minutes in reaching the fire after it broke out and then was helpless, the flamea having made such headway that no agency of men could be of any avail. Had the firq broken out, at night hundreds of lives would have been lost. Words fail to picture the awful speed with which the flamea swept through the doomed town, families rushing from their homes to the street, saving only the clothes on their backs. Hundreds of families are roofless tonight, without bedding or clothing, except what they have on. No stores are left to furnish supplies. Everything was as dry as tinder from long drought, and even the solid brick blocks melted away before the flames like snow. The flames swept clean to the shores of the lake from the school-house, a half-mile, three or four blocks wide. A rough estimate of the losses only is possible •at this hour, the excitement making it, hard to get at the real facts. Marqoette (Mich.), May 20.—The fires are still burning in .all directions. No fatalities are reported. Higher winds are prevailing to-day and the fires arc breaking out in new localities. It is estimated that the upper peninsula is 3,000,000 dols. poorer than it was two weeks ago, on account of the wind and these fires. The forest fires all over the peninsula have burned fiercely all day, and towns and settlements near the woods have been in great danger. A Graphic Description. The Marquette, Mich, correspondent of the "Times," in a despatch announcing the cessation of forest fires, tells a graphic story of the devastation which has been wrought this month. The damage began with a terrible windstorm, almost a hurricane, on May 2nd, which reached such a pitch that buildings, trees, fences, and in some instances live stock, were piled in indiscriminate heaps,of ruins.. s A«.the telegraph and telephone wires, were destroyed, and it was three days before the particulars of the storm were made known. In , extent it covered all the upper peninsula, and the aggregate damage by that day's work alone cannot fall short of $2,000,000. Hardly had the wind-swept forest raised its broken tops before tho fire began its work. " Only those who live in the land of pines," says the correspondenti " can tell the suspense and fear of the people. For three whole weeks clouds of smoke have covered us like a pall, and never for an hour has there been a cessation of the fire in some parts of the forest. With the except tion of three slight showers, which were merely local, no rain fell until Monday; since the April showers, and forest and field were ripe for the carnival of ruin, which -has held full sway. There is hardly a forestenvironed village oh the peninsula from the Gecbie range to Sault Ste Marie which has not been menaced with total destruction. " Hundreds of homes in the interior, remote from villages, have been destroyed, lumbering camps and camps of labourers on variou.s railroad extensions have been licked up by the devouring flames ; woodsmen have been forced to fly from the forests and seek safety in tho villages. In many instances families living in forests contiguous to railway tracks have been forced to abandon their homes and encamp for whole days on the right of way, which promised the only open space where there was no food for the flames. The loss to these people is very great, many of them being left homeless, friendless and penniless amidst the blackened forests. • " Immense quantities of ties and cordwood have been destroyed, while in some places.the.railroad companies have suffered the loss of buildings ani bridges, but all the losses,, financially speaking, are as naught compared to the millions of feet of A'aluable pine and hardwood which have fallen a ready ; prey. Conservative iudges place the loss of the upper peninsula for the month of May at 4,500,000 dol., not including the terrible disaster at Lake Linden, which was totally wiped out in one afternoon by the flames. Add this loss to the general ruin, and it will foot up over 7,000,000, dollars.

"Lake Linden is a prosperous town of 4,500 inhabitants. Fully 280 buildings were destroyed, besides scores of valuable stocks of merchandise. The pitiable condition of those homeless people excites the sympathy of people everywhere, In , all the hundreds of various escapes and startling experiences of people in their, desperate fight with the wind and fire, but eight fatalities are reported as having occurred in - the entire upper peninsula, although hundreds of people are-prostrated by excitement and over exertion." :