FLOOD LOSSES

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 May 1927, Page 11

FLOOD LOSSES

THE WORST OVER?

(Australian & N.Z. Cable Assn.)

NEW YORK. May 14

News from New Orleans states that the Mississippi water has surged into the countryside through the honeycombed levee along the Big Bend. Tho water is running through at a rate estimated by engineers at well over seven million cubic feet per second. Some parishes are already under water, and others are rapidly becoming part of the huge lake, which soon will stretch from Louisiana’s northern border to the Gulf of Mexico. As the result of the Bayon Des Glaises Levee breaks, the evacuation of the threatened Sugar Loaf Lands is continuing. The majority of their hundred thousand inhabitants have already left their farms, but stragglings groups are still moving along" the highways towards the refugee camps. The Governor of Louisiana reports that the situation of many marooned families is serious.

The river at New Orleans has shown a surprising rise of four-tenths of a foot in the past eight hours. This rise is attributed by the Weather Bureau to the effect of the wind and the tides. .

The river is now 20. G feet high. With the crest, the prediction is that it will rise to 21 feet. Apparently nothing can divert the flood between the levee breaks and the Gulf of Mexico, but the crest should have passed into the Gulf within a few days, after which, unless unexpected developments occur in the Mississippi Valley, the work of rehabilitation will begin; but before this happens, another million acres of land, comprising between forty thousand and fifty thousand farms, are doomed. This entire territory must be evacuated, bringing the total number of persons forced from home in Louisiana alone to three hundred thousand.

NEGROES’ “NOAH’S ARK.”

NEW YORK, May 14

Exhorted by their parson, a coloured community in the lowlands near Baton Rouge emulated the example of Noah when they heard the flood was approaching. They built an. ark, into which they carried all their worldly belongings—chickens, dogs, cats and mules—and then they waited and prayed for the flood to come. The ark however, refused to float, as the water poured in at a hundred leaks, and when the flood strained, the craft was covered by two feet of water. The occupants‘fled to the safety of the railway embankment.