FLOODS IN FRANCE

Feilding Star, Volume 8, Issue 2497, 10 March 1930, Page 7

FLOODS IN FRANCE

TRAGEDY AND .SACRIFICE DEATH ROLL GROWING MUCH DEVASTATION, (Aust and N.Z. Cable) Paris, March; 6. It is estimated that 500 houses were carried'off aud the countryside is littered! with debris and furniture as a resu..l of tlie floods and at least 10,000 people are homeless. In the flood area aeroplanes rescued 16 men immersed at St. Rafrico for 48 hours.

The death roll at Moissae, which 1 is 200 would have been much higher but for not fact that most of the people wore at Hagenbaek’s eurcus otherwise they would have been • rapped in their beds. The market place is now- an encampment for circus animals

A shocking story is told of one villager who clutched' tw o small child ren and climbed to the top of a wall, but was obliged to watch helpless v gil,, four others of his family, including his wife, were swept elf by the flood. A weeping mud-stained woman a: seen pushing a barrow piled up wdli furniture and clothes. Asked ..here she was going, she rep’lied: ' Any where. I do not care. My husband has been drowned and my clfild was in his arms.” A -wealthy youth was drctw-ned after having helped over 100 o >pla to escapo from their homes. Tlie Alinister of Public Works pinned tlie ribbon of tho Legion of Honour on the dead youth's breast at tlie l-< spital. It is impossible t° estimate the total death ro'l until the end of i' e week as bodies are being continually