13 dead after worst blizzard in a decade

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33740, 13 January 1975, Page 1

13 dead after worst blizzard in a decade

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

CHICAGO, January 12.

At least 13 people are dead after the worst blizzard in a decade in the United States and Canada.

The Associated Press reported that the blizzard, with savage Arctic winds gusting up to 90 miles an hour, battered the mid-west and north central states of the United States and central Canada.

N.Z.P.A. - Reuter said that vast stretches of the mid-west were paralysed, and thousands of travellers had been stranded.

Officials feared more bodies would be found today as

clean-up operations continued amid towering drifts left by yesterday’s storm. Just before the blizzard hit the north of the continent, tornadoes twisted across the United States South, leaving eight dead in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

The high winds left parts of Sioux City, lowa, looking as if a hurricane had whipped through it.

In the neighbouring state of South Dakota, a television tower 1986 ft high in Sioux Falls was blown down, and roofs were ripped off buildings.

Thousands of stranded travellers spent the night in motels, restaurants, department stores, and cinemas. A 19-year-old exchange student from Hong Kong, Miss Sissy Lem, chose to spend the night in the police station at Des Moines, lowa. In Canada, two deaths were attributed to the weather in Winnipeg, and in Brandon, Western Manitoba, officials declared an emergency. In Dryden, Ontario, two people were reported missing The Associated Press reported that in Michigan alone, officials estimated the storm caused more than one million dollars worth of damage and left 100.000 people without electricity. Six blizzard-related deaths were reported in Nebraska. Five of the deaths were in Omaha and were attributed to heart attacks from such things as shovelling snow. The sixth occurred when a motorist ran off an ice-slicked bridge near Norfolk. A Michigan woman was killed and her husband was injured early yesterday when a tree was toppled by high winds and fell on their car north of Detroit. A teen-aged cyclist died after his cycle was blown into the path of a car.

A woman was found dead near her abandoned car outside James town, North Dakota, and another victim was found on a footpath in downtown Moorhead, Minnesota.