GREAT GALE IN BRITAIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19549, 31 January 1927, Page 9

GREAT GALE IN BRITAIN.

MUCH HAVOC WROUGHT. TWENTY PERSONS KILLED. » ') ! THREE HUNDRED INJURED. DESTRUCTION IN GLASGOW. VEHICLES BLOWN OVER. By TBiearrap.fi—Press Association—Copyright. (Received Jan. 30, 4.30 j>js.) A. and N.Z.—Sim. LONDON, -/an. 29. Twenty deaths are directly or indirectly attributed to a great gate which raged j throughout Britain yesterday. i The reached a of 102 1 ■jiiles-'as h r »a? ai R.nirew. Thi? 'is u/3cially s*atsd tc be rior.i rare. At Glasgow alone eleven people w-'er-t killed and 100 others were taken to hospital as a result of the gals. Lb raged all day and attained a velocity of 90 miles an hour. The top of a tenement building fell and demolished the lower floors successively. The furniture of the occupants and broken timber were piled up at the bottom floor. Four people were taken cut dead. The col'apart of a warehouse killed three other persons. Some brickwork fell on the head of a girl in the street and killed her. Ambulance Mea Kepi. Busy. The gales increased in fury until the afternoon, when largo areas seemed to have been stricken as if by a bombardment. Debris littered the streets and only those people who were compelled to do so ventured out of doors. Two tramcars and many vehicles were overturned. The members of the ambulance brigade worked like trojans all the morning in answering calls, but they found it impossible to keep pace with the work. When the gale reached its height they obtained assistance from outside ambulance. One large building in the centre of Glasgow is considered to be dangerous, and protective barricades have been erected around, it. The gale continued unabated all day in Scotland, north of Edinburgh, and Ireland. The Scilly Islands are telegraphically isolated. In Glasgow a boy was blown beneath a motor-car and instantly killed. Reports from all over the country show that 1 houses were unroofed, chimneys v. ere razed, pedestrians were injured and traffic was blocked by fallen trees. Wildest Night on Record. Overflowing rivers swamped houses and in North Wales flooded the pastures. A chimney crashed from- a threestoreyed factory in Dundee and buried a woman. The telegraph wires in the same city collapsed under the weight of windidriven straw. A freight train was overturned at Wexford. Two hundred empty railway coaches inadvertently started at a siding at Rippenden and crashed into an embankment while they were travelling at a rate of 40 miles an hour. Twelve carriages were wrecked. Casualties are feared among the Scottish fishing fleets. The gale subsided this morning after the wildest night known throughout the country. The telephone and telegraph lines are cut off in many parts and trains are delayed.