DAMAGE THROUGHOUT ENGLAND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 18 December 1936, Page 7

DAMAGE THROUGHOUT ENGLAND

RENEWAL OF STORM AN UNUSUAL TRAGEDY (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, 16th December. A renewal of the recent fierce Atlantic gales, a repetition of which was forecast, swept a trail of damage throughout England and caused ten deaths, including a motorist who crashed through a bridge railing into the river as his passenger leapt clear. A crate full of ducks aboard the car came to the surface with the ducks alive, after half an hour’s submersion.

The swollen Derwent River, in Cumberland, was the scene of an unusual tragedy. The bridge collapsed at Brigham, throwing four men into the torrent. Two scrambled out two hundred yards and two thousand yards respectively down the stream. The third was drowned two miles from the bridge and the fourth was swept down-stream, clinging to a plank, out-distancing intending rescuers on either bank. Messages flashed from signal-box to signal-box along five miles of railway line running parallel to the river resulted in men at Camerton, four miles from Brigham, hastily throwing a network of wires and ropes across the stream, but the current swept the man ans the plank over the barrier. A railwayman farther down stood waiting, roped to the shore, but the plank approached him without its burden.