BLIZZARD HORROR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 281, 27 November 1930, Page 25

BLIZZARD HORROR.

FIVE MEN FOUND DEAD.

CAR STALLED IN SNOW

TWO SURVIVORS DELIRIOUS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) VANCOUVER, October 29. All Canada has been horrified by one of the most lamentable tragedies in the history of the Dominion, in which five wayfarers met death under frightful circumstances on the Canadian piairie. Stalled in towering snowdrifts on the outskirts of Regina, Saskatchewan, a closed-in motor car was the place where five persons died in a prairie storm of unparalleled virulencc. Two passengers in the stalled car lived to tell of the gruesome night in the screaming blizzard when, one by one, the five men dropped into death slumber in the crowded car. The dead were: G. R. Dowswcll, plumbing contractor, Regina; Walter. ("Scotty") Tyndall, plumber, Regina; Leslie Hallsworth, Regina; Thomas M. Houston, Regina; and H. M. Savage, Regina. Dawn breaking over the snow-crusted wheat fields disclosed the tragedy to Ted Evoy, farmer, whose house was but 100 yards away. Evoy had left a lamp in the window for the aid of wandering passersby, but it had gone unseen in the fury of the blizzard. The farmer saw the car stalled in the drifts, and went to it immediately. He found the driver, George Bell, of the Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Company, Regina, in a delirious condition, and David Whiting, of Regina, The five dead men were huddled head down in their seats, as if seeking to keep warm. Half-scrcaming from his horrifying experience, Bell staggered out of the car, unable to talk. Later he said: 'T would run the heater every half-hour to keep us warm, then shut it off. The other fellows kept going to sleep all the time. I didn't like the way they would drop off in the lpiddlo of a sentence. It scared me. We took turns in punching each other awake. I punched until my arms were tired." He could not remember the farmer freeing him from the car. Bell's story of the battle through the blizzard was a tale of a struggle against I drifts that rose shoulder-high along the Qu'Appelle-Regina highway he was traversing. First he drove alone throug.i the night; he had set out from Qu'Appelle an hour before midnight. It was not until he reached McClean, halfway along the 40-mile route to the city, that the storm broke. Just outside of McLean he encountered a motor car snowbound in mid-road. His automobile struggled past, and he picked up four men who had been passengers in the stalled car. Drift after drift halted the car, but the men stepped out and moved the machine ahead by sheer strength of arm. Farther along on the road was a stalled truck, and later its two passengers were picked up. The two men had abandoned the meagre shelter of a schoolhouse. They had but one match between them, and their efforts to start a fire had been fruitless. They staggered on through the night, hoping to reach a farmhouse along the road. They were grateful as they stepped into the car. On and on Bell drove, stopping, ploughing on, stopping again. Eventually, according to Bell, they stopped exhausted. "Couldn't go any further," lie said. "The car went into the snow and stuck as if it were in cemcnt." The night wore on, witli its fitful conversation, in the crowded sedan, and the blizzard roaring outside. The sleep— and death —followed." "The coroner said we might have had carbon monoxide gas in the car, and it might have killed the others," said Bell afterwards. "My heater was a waterheater, and that theory won't work. It was exhaustion that killed themi'' I never dreamed I should see anything like that in my life. I've read about it in books, but—"