BLIZZARD AND SNOWSTORMS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 75, 21 December 1929, Page 11

BLIZZARD AND SNOWSTORMS

MANY DEATHS IN AMERICA

HUNDREDS OF MOTOR-CARS

LOST IN DRIFTS

(Rec. December 20, 7.40 p.m.)

New York, December 19.

Thirty-six persons are known to be dead as the result of lashing snowstorms and bitter cold in the Middle Western States. Transportation and communication has been disrupted over a wide area. Seven died in Chicago City, Where business was disrupted. Hotels are packed with people who are unable to reach their homes. Under cover of an impenetrable curtain of snow, six prisoners manhandled their guard and escaped from Cook County Gaol, in the heart of the city. Three of the escapees are recorded as “desperate.” The Great Lakes traffic is seriously retarded. Vancouver, December 19.

The.worst blizzard for fifteen years is sweeping the Middle West States and the Canadian prairies. Sleet has now tied up lake, road, and rail traffic, and is causing great misery in the poor quarters of the cities. The- blizzard dislocated traffic in Ontario yesterday, and then moved southward through the Mississippi Valley. The death list runs from thirty to forty. A feature of the snowfall of fifteen inches is that thousands of motor-cars were left stranded or abandoned on the roadsides, the drivers being utterly unable to proceed as huge snowdrifts piled up in a howling gale. Springfield, Illinois, reports that six hundred automobiles were lost in the snowdrifts, some of which were ten feet high. Some small town newspapers depended only on radio for their news, all the wires being down. Several places in the Canadian West reported the mercury forty below zero.