DANUBE FLOODS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 29 September 1926, Page 4

DANUBE FLOODS.

100,000 PEOPLE HOMELESS

iMUSK-RATS AND THE DYKES. VIENNA, Juiy 26. ! Reports received here from. Belgrade indicate that the Danube flood is the greatest water catastrophe for centuries. The King is personally directing relief, while Cabinet Ministers and Government employees have surrendered portions of their salaries for the relief of the, homeless, who number almost 100.000. The destroyed crops will be left this winter, but the next greatest danger to be with is the possibility of epidemics spread by mosquitoes from hundreds of miles of rotting vegetation, and dead animals. A graphic story of .the havoc caused by the floods was told to! me to-day by Countess Cbrt van der Linden, whose 1 European home, is in. Holland, and who arrived at Vienna last night after an exciting trip by water from Belgrade to Budapest, during which she traversed a- wide inland sea, which now covers, 500,000 acres of the richest gfanarv of Central Europe: “En route from Belgrade,” she said, “the boat encountered several rudelyconstructed rafts floating down-stream, with peasants and their families, working the sweeps. Children, chickens, and pigs were- perched on piles of trunks, boxes, and household goods, while men and women warded off floating objects, preventing collisions. Several families Uere taken from the Afts which had been held up and hah overturned by protruding tree tops and chhrch steeples, and the refugees were taken on board the river boat, where European and American tourists contributed food 1 and spare clothing to the water-soaked survivors.

“A’s far as the eye could reach on both sides of the channel followed by our steamer, water spread out in all directions to the horizons. In some places the river was reported to lie 50 miles wjdc, and it is not possible to estimate the extent of damage, which is expected to reach a fabulous sum. From the boat deck we located submerged roads by the tops of rows of poplar »trees. Frequently we passed bodies of cows and horses»floating downstream, and once a big dog clawed at the side, of the boat, hut was whirled away by the current before he could be pulled on board “Some fifteen years ago musk-rats were introduced into this region, in the hope of developing the fur industry, hut the Europeanised progeny of the imported musk-vats developed longer biting teeth instead' of fur, and the pea sants blame these water rodents for weakening the dykes by tunnelling through them.”