Manawatu Daily Times [ESTABLISHED 21st MAY, 1875.] THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22. 1921. A NATION OF DISASTERS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2005, 22 December 1921, Page 4

Manawatu Daily Times [ESTABLISHED 21st MAY, 1875.] THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22. 1921. A NATION OF DISASTERS.

One does not think of Britain as a country of natural disasters on a large scale, taut it seems to have a fair share of them. Perhaps it is, as the “Auckland Star” suggests, partly because the population is so much denser there that there are more of these visitations than are experienced in this highly favoured country of ours. Considering the suddenness of the inundation of Hull by a tidal wave which swept up the Humber it is surprising that there was no loss of life, especially as the water rose in some of the streets to a height of eight feet. In this respect the present disaster differs from others which have swept over different parts of Britain from time to time. The most disastrous case of damage by flood, as far as the British Isles are concerned, occurred at Sheffield on March 11, 1864. Up in the hills, nearly fourteen miles distant from the city, there was a huge artificial lake, made by damming back a stream. For years this dam held up 200,000,000 cubic feet of water, weighing 3,250,000 tons, when suddenly the whole of the middle portion of the structure collapsed, forming a gap over three hundred feet wide and nearly one hundred feet deep, through which the entire mass of water poured in ,a gigantic wave of corresponding breadth and height. Nearly all the people in the villages of Hillsborough and Malin Bridge were drowned in their beds, and the same fate overtook numbers of the Neepsend people. The total death roll was 250, and the damage was estimated at several millions. A similar catastrophe near Huddersfield on February 5, 1852, caused the death of more than ninety persons, though the value of property destroyed was only estimated at half a million, A cloudburst in East Anglia in August, 1912, did damage to the extent of about £7,000,000 and in Norwich alone some fifteen thousand people were driven from their homes by the rising waters. The loss of life, however, was small compared with the destruction of property. The most disastrous floods of recent years were those experienced In the basin of the Mississippi in March, 1913, and £27,000,000 have been spent in this region in the endeavour to guard against a similar catastrophe. Had the Hull disaster occurred at night there might have been considerable loss of life, and in this respect the city has been fortunate. But great sympathy will be felt for the inhabitants in the loss of property they have sustained, especially as the city was only just beginning to recover from the damage inflicted during the war' by German air raids, and this sympathy will be all the greater from the fact that the disaster has fallen on the poorer quarters of the town.