ICE-BOUND EUROPE

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 February 1929, Page 5

ICE-BOUND EUROPE

GALES & STORMS IN BRITAIN CHANNEL STEAMER WRECKED (Australian Press Association.) (By Cable —Press Assn. —Copyright.) LONDON, February 12. Britain is now ice-bound. Yesterday in London was the coldest day experienced for twenty years. The thermometer fell to 21.23 degrees Fahrenheit. In the exposed areas it was down to 18 degrees. A motor coach and five saloon cars are imprisoned in a snowdrift on the Bristol,-Bridgewater- road. The Channel steamer Ville de Liege, from Ostend, is stranded on the rocks off Dover Harbour. The passengers, including twelve women, suffered severely from the biting wind. For two hours they were huddled on the ice-bound deck, till the crew were able to lower boats in the heavy seas. A later message states that the Ville de Liege sank. She carried forty passengers and sixty of a crew. All were saved. The women were put into the first boat, and were landed drenched and half frozen. LATER. Portions of the Thames estuary are ice-covered. Ships are arriving at the Thames with rigging completely coated in ice, sometimes inches thick. Remarkably low temperatures are experienced ranging from fifteen degrees in central London, the lowest since 1909, when it was fourteen. The forecast is that the worst is yet to come in England, which is threatened with the greatest frost in modern times. RAILWAY SMASH. LONDON, February 12. There is no sign of a break in the Arctic weather. Intense cold is accentuated by snowstorms and heavy gales throughout Britain. The Scotch express on the Midland railway ran into a goods train at Alfredton (Derbyshire). The engine was overturned and four parcel vans derailed, killing the driver, a fireman and a passenger. The carriages kept to the lines and fortunately there was no fire.

CONTINENTAL HORRORS. (Recd. February 13, 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, February 12. Messages from all parts of Europe disclose the terrible severity of weather. Trieste had a ninety-mile freezing hurricane as the result of which six hundred persons were injured. An avalanche at Innsbruck buried five smugglers. The temperature in parts of Roumania is forty-five below zero. Whole families have been frozen to death. FIRES IN HOLLAND. AMSTERDAM, February 12. There is an epidemic of fires throughout Holland, owing to cold freezing the water supplies. The fire brigade was called out fifty times yesterday in Amsterdam alone. The well-known theatre, Flora, was burnt to the ground. The famous Town Hall at Lieden was burnt down, priceless archives and numerous treasures being destroyed. The brigades are helpless owing to the freezing of the water. Three other buildings were burnt at Lieden, where the damage is hundreds of thousands sterling.