NEW YORK VISITED BY A BLIZZARD.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 100, 28 April 1888, Page 3

NEW YORK VISITED BY A BLIZZARD.

Travel Suspended on Many

•Railways

SUSPENSION'OF BUSINESS

AND LOSS OF LIFE.

VESSELS DRIVEN ASHORE.

Accidents on Railroad Lines.

A SNOW-STORM -which promises to be historic, commenced in the Middle and New England States on March 11th, and lasted for three days, doing inculcable damage. In the meteorological history of that part of the country, it is without parallel. AH the great cities were completely isolated, and travel was generally stopped about New York city, both inside and out. Not a car-wheel turned either in New York or Brooklyn for two days, and ferriage between the metropolis and Jersey City and Brooklyn was also suspended. The storm was, in fact, a "howling blizzard," the same in character as those that have desolated Dakota and other western territory the past winter. Pedestrians were prohibited crossiug the Brooklyn suspension bridge for fear of their being blown off into the river below. The East River was frozen so that persons crossed from Brooklyn to New York on the firm ice. Telegraphic communication between Boston and New York had to be made via London, as not only the telegraph lines, but also the telephone and electric light wires were everywhere prostrated, and the fury of the storm prevented their being replaced. Many persons were frozen to*death in the streets of New York, and several bodies were found buried in the snow drifts. All sorts of supplies failed during the prevalence of the storm, and to get fuel for their steam engines, foremen in fighting the fires that occurred, had to chop down signs, shutters, and all available woodwork in the vicinity. It is estimated the loss to New York business men, the railroads, shopkeepers, and wage-earners, by the storm, is fully 10,000,000 dole. There were numerous disastrous railroad collisions on the principal roads, and the los 3of life by shipwreck between Sandy Hook and Cape Charles in twenty-four hours of the storm's greatest violence, will never be fully told. New York's experience is the same as that of every large city within the influence of the blizzard. Famine prices were asked for all kinds of food, and hotel-keepers were compelled to' pay the most exorbitant demands. The snow commenced to disappear on the 16th. One of the incidents of the time was the death of Richard Reilly, a young reporter of the New York " Sun." He had an assignment which sent him to Coney Island, and in endeavouring to fill it was frozen to death one mile from Flatbush, L.I. The list of victims -in New York amounted to thirty. On Sunday, March 18, unparalleled scenes owing to the raising of the blockade caused by the " blizzard," occurred at the cemeteries about New York. At Calvary, there were 243 interments, the largest ever known in a single day. At Cyprus Hill 125 bodies were received. At the cemetery of the Evergreens seventy funerals entered ; at Greenwood two hundred. The Holy Cross remained inaccessible.