THE FRENCH FLOODS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 57, 8 March 1930, Page 9

THE FRENCH FLOODS

HARROWING INCIDENT?

RESCUERS LOSE LIVES

PABIS, 6th March.

It. is estimated that five hundred houses were carried off in. Moissac. The countryside is littered with, debris and furniture. At least ten thousand, are homeless in the flood area. Aeroplanes rescued sixteen men immersed at Saint Rafrieo for forty-eight hours. The death roll at Moissac, -which is two hundred, would have been much higher but that most people were at Hagenback's circus, ' otherwise they, would have been, trapped in their beds. Tho market place is now ./an encampment for circus animals. /

A shocking story is told of one villager who clutched two small children, climbed to tho top of a wall, and was obliged to watch helpless while four others of the family, including'-Iris wife, were swept off by tho flood.

r A weeping, mud-stained woman was seen pushing a barrow piled up with furniture and clothes. Asked where she was going, she replied: "Anywhere. I do not care. My husband has been, drowned and my child was in his arms." '

A wealthy youth was drowned after he had helped- over a hundred to escape from their homes. The Minister of Public Works pinned the ribbon of the Legion of Honour to the dead youth's breast at the hospital.

It is impossible to estimate the total death roll until the end of tho week, as bodies are continually being" found in the ruins of houses.