FATAL FLOODS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 844, 16 June 1910, Page 5

FATAL FLOODS.

OVER THREE HUNDRED LIVES LOST. GERMAN DAMS BURST. : .v Telegraph—Precs Association—Cooyrieht Berlin, June It. Thoro havo been very heavy floods, attended by considerable loss of lite, in many parts cf Germany. It is estimated that 150 persons have been drowned through the bursting of dams in the Ahr Valley. (The Ahr is a small non-navigable tributary of tho Rhine, in the Rhine province, Prussia, between Cologne and Coblenz.) In other districts, also . through the bursting of dams, 175 lives wcro lost, comprising 100 persons in Blankcnstein (Westphalia), 50 in Adenau (province of the Rhine), and 25 in Hoeunigen. The majority of tho , victims were labourers, who were sleeping in huts. The telegraph lines are down, and railway communication interrupted. The River Ahr is now subsiding. AUSTRIAN DELUGE. MUCH DAMAGE. Vienna, June 14. A torrential storm in Vienna caused great damage. Train traffic has had to be suspended. • Fifteen hundred cases of damage have so far been reported. BRIDGE COLLAPSES WITH MANY PEOPLE. OBERAMMERGAU FLOODED. (Rec. June 16, 0.30 a.m.) Berlin, Juno 15. Twenty bridges have been destroyed in the Ahr Valley. Engineers and infantry corps are constructing temporary substitutes. Several villages have been wrecked. At Oberamniergau (of Passion Play fame) the river Ammer rose rapidly, and flooded the roads and railway, isolating the town and threatening the Passion Play theatre. A bridge over the Ahr at Schulda, crowded with people watching the flooded river, collapsed. It is reported that 150 deaths occurred. Already 49 bodies have been washed ashore. Tho Valley of the Meuso has been devastated. The smaller livers rose 15 feet in an hour. Many bridges have been destroyed, and towns and the countryside are flooded. A large number of cattle and sheep have been drowned.