LYONS LANDSLIDE
HEROIC RESCUE WORK REFUGEES IN CATHEDRAL [BY CABLE —PBEBS ASSN. —COPYBIGHT.] LONDON, November 13. Further news regarding the chasm at Lyons shows that the hill where the collapse occurred had been honeycombed by the Romans in the olden days. It contained numerous underground passages, which the recent rains had filled up, thus forming a lake, which sapped the entire hill. The collapse of the first portion of the hill swept away a recently-erected retaining wall, the demolition of which made the whole hill unstable The third convulsion buried the emergency equipment of the Lyons Fire Brigade. The fourth convulsion destroyed a second street. When the first landslide at 1 a.m. wrecked the convent, one nun, Sister Blandin, who was sleeping on the top floor, was thrown with her bed a distance of fifty feet to the ground floor, and was then buried under twenty feet of earth, rubble and timber. She made her cries heard, however, and at 5 a.m. four workmen, who had tunnelled for five hours, reached her, and they found that the mattress was above her, and that it had prevented her from receiving fatal injuries, though she was then, only able to move her hpad. During the course of the rescue work, Cardinal Maurin, the Archbishop of Lyons, led a tireless band of priests in the carrying of the aged and the injured from the danger zone. One of the clergy remained in a perilous position to absolve the dying.
To-night the Cathedral of St. Jean is filled with weeping men and women, who are praying for their loved ones, while in the red rays of the watch lamp, glimmering in the dim knave, Cardinal Maurin passes silently from group to group, raising his hand and blessing, and mingling his prayers with those of the be reaved.
Three motor ambulances conveying injured people were overwhelmed, with their drivers, when the final avalanche occurred at 4.55 a.m., and reduced the street to utter ruin. Hope has been abandoned of saving any of the earlier victijns. The wreckage cannot be entirely cleared for, months. '
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Greymouth Evening Star, 15 November 1930, Page 7
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348LYONS LANDSLIDE Greymouth Evening Star, 15 November 1930, Page 7
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