FLOOD SCENES IN PARIS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 9165, Issue 9164, 14 March 1910, Page 3

FLOOD SCENES IN PARIS.

FORTY MILLIONS DAMAGE. 40.000 PEOPLE* HOMELESS. LONDON, February 4. While England has beenln the grip of a frost of quite exceptional severity France has suffered something like £40.000,000 damage from the floods this week. .Some 40,000 people have been rendered homeless, and in Paris the rising of the Seine to a height unknown before threatens to paralyse the capital. The extent of the disaster in and airfound Paris is already appalling.

For nearly a hundred miles up stream from Paris, in the combined basins of the Seine, the Marne, and the Yonnc, there are nothing but floods and devastations. Half the people of Paris nre in a state bordering oil panic. There are fears of a iood famine. The electric light has failed. Districts in the suburbs. are isolated. The leading hotels in the centre of Paris have no water supply, and the gas mains are broken, causing the gas to escape in nearly every street. Fortunately it is bitterly cold, and there is enow and ice throughout Paris, or

the choked sewers would create pestilence.

Every hour, too, fresh interruptions in the tramway and railway communi-

cations are notified, and there seems a clanger that Paris will soon be able to communicate with the outside

world by boat alone. Pavements have disappeared, and roadways become lakes. In the streets can lie seen

craft of all sorts, from the motor-boat and ordinary skiff to the home-made boat, roughly constructed of boards, and the still simpler raft, all engaged in transferring the goods of floodedout families to higher ground, where they may be safe for the time, at least. Quarters which were supposed to be far removed from the river, or on High and dry ground, aro in danger of being flooded, such as the neighbourhood of the Chateaudun Barracks, the Avenue de Villiers, and the Place Pereire. It seems almost incredible that the tide should reach such a level. People on the Avenue Montaigne are in a panic, as well as in the neighbouring streets. _ Ladies may be seen on the balconies with terrified looks or actually sobbing, while the servants are taking down curtains, hangings, and pictures, and hurriedly removing the furniture to higher storeys, while men are engaged in pumping water out of the basements. But this is nothing to the scenes of distress witnessed in the poorer

quarters. Coming up from the inundated districts'at Austerlitz and Ber-

cy, an eyo-witnoss describes _ processions of haggard, starving-looking men ■women and children, carrying all sorts of objects, their poor belongings, clothes, kitchen utensils, buckets, and straw-seated chairs, to which they

cling as if they meant a fortune to them. "Even the absurd is not wanting. for side by side with a father with a paralytic child on his arm 1 s;iw another "walking with a gramaphone, as if it were the most precious thing which he could have saved from the wreck," says a correspondent. In curious contrast with the devastating flood and the panic of householders is the presence here and there on the quays of an artist transferring to canvas the unwonted scene, while numerous anglers impassively watch their bobbing floats in the swirling dirtv-brown current. PITIFUL SCENES. Here is the story of an unfortunate living at Alfortville. He says:—"My wife woke me in the middle of the

night, and told mo water was coming through the seams of the kitchen floors. I constructed an emergency gangway to the window by means of planks and the back of the bod. An hour later I was wakeli'ed by a dog, which had jumped 011 our bed, and was howling piteously. The water had reached the mattress. Jumping into icy clothing, and with cold water to the knees, I ran over the house, collecting boxes, stools, chairs, anything, to construct a way of escape to the window on the street, whence my wife was rescued by the aid of neighbours. Then I handed after her ' a mattress, blankets, sheets, and a couple of pillows. Then I waded through the submerged streets 111 the darkness looking for a handcart. AVhen I returned the water was above the- tablo in the dining-room, and the planks I had laid down in the middle of the night were floating round the house. To-day we are homeless, without furniture, without .linen, without work, for the extinction of o-as and electricity had caused a stoppage of the works where I was employed. X had just two and a-haif

francs." . T There were horrors in plenty, in mid-stream there passed through Paris the carcase of a bullock with a rope round its neck. At the end of the rope was the man who had been leading the beast, the halter still wound round his wrist. At Colombes passengers in a passing train a coffin being borne on the flood to the sea. A wreath of flowers still lay upon it. In Paris a haggard man stumbled into the police office in the Rue St. Dominique and begged the eendarme to follow him home. tLe had watched by tho body of his wife for three days, the water still rising. When he left the corpse was awash on the bed. During one of the flood nights the watchman at a police station was assailed in bed by a host of hunger-stricken rats; They had been driven from the cellars of Conceirgerie Prison by the rising flood. The man fought desperately with a revolver and stick, and was literallj' being eaten alive when his cries aroused gendarmes in the neighbouring building. Some of the saddest si "lits ..were connected with tho scenes of resfcue to tho west of Paris. I he Seine formed a vast lake, covering Gennevilliers district, between bt Denis and Malmaison. Sevres and St. Cloud were in an equally parlous plight. On the other side of Paris Ivry and Chareton were under water. From all these places refugees flocked into the capital. Hundreds of haggard men, women, and children, who had lost everything, tramped along the high roads, making for the nearest public shelter. They were stupefied Some were carrying small babies, ana begged for a little milk from the houses on the roadside. Others pushed small handcarts, upon which were loaded all their belongings winch could be rescued from the waters. A paralytic couple had been lifted out of bed into an ambulance cart Asylums, schoolhouses, and religious houses were thrown open for the reception of the miserable outcasts. Even in times of flood there are Parisians ready for revel. During the last week there have been those who have left the theatre, the opera, or tho supper-table at Montmartre. and paid a visit to the flooded suburbs in search of fresh experience. Thev hired some roomy flat-bottom-ed boat, and were rowed out with torches to witness tne distress, ine majority of people m the suburbs

earn their living by growing garden produce for Paris markets. Their glass-houses are destroyed, their stock is wept away. How complete their ruin is can be imagined. At least 500,000 are homeless. The number is probably much larger. Losses by individual Parisians are equally startling. One merchant lost 20,000 gallons of wine. A furniture dealer in the Fauberg St. Antonio lost £32,000 of stock in a few minutes. The total loss* in Paris and its environs along the Seine is estimated at over £30.000.000. The marauders, who sought to plunder the deserted houses, met with a rough reception at the hands of the soldiery and public. One or two were hanged to a telegraph post without even the ceremony of a trial. Another scoundrel was tied to the stern of a boat and towed through* the slimy waters three-quarters of a mile. Five men and three women were captured holding high revel in a furnished hotel, where they had established their headquarters. They had turned one room into a poultry yard, containing ducks, fowls, pigeons; anothed into a_ cellar filled with bottles of champagne and spirits stolen from the neighbourhood. The crowd was with difficulty prevented from lynching the band when the boat reached the shore, and the police themselves were roughly handled protecting their captors. Directly the refugees had been attended to and the waters subsided, the authorities set squads of engineers to work. They watered the ,roads with crcsoline, covering the yellow slime left by the river with quicklime, and disinfected the cellars and basement with lime. The cost of disinfecting Paris is borne by the State.