FLOOD SCENES IN PARIS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7077, 15 March 1910, Page 4

FLOOD SCENES IN PARIS.

> GAY CITY INUNDATED. TREMENDOUS DAMAGE. VROII OVV. SPECIAL COBBESPONDENT. LONDON, January 28. While England has been in the grip of a frost of quite exceptional severity, Trance has suffered something like X 40,000,000 damage from floods this week. Thousands 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 around Paris is already appaling. For nearly a hundred miles up stream from Paris in the combined basins of the Seine, the Marne, and the Yonne, there are nothing but floods and devastations. Half the people of Paris are in a state bordering on panic. There are fears of a food famine. The electric light has failed. Districts in the suburbs are iso-, latod. 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. Portunately it is bitterly cold, and there is snow and ice throughout Paris, or the choked sewers would create pestilence. Every hour, too, fresh interruptions in the tramway and railway communications are notified, and there seems a danger 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 be seen craft of all sorts, Iram the motor-boat and ordinary skiff to the home-made beat, roughly constructed of boards, and the still simpler raft, all engaged in transferring the goods of flooded-out families to higher ground, where they may be safe for the (time at least. Quarters which were supposed to be [for removed from the river, or on hig and dry ground, are in danger of being flooded, such as the neighbourhood of the Chateaudun Barracks, the Avenue )de VillieTS, and the Place PeTeire. It teems almost incredible that the tide should reach such a level. People on the Avenue Montaigne are in a panic, as iwell 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, 'ianiginge, 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 Bercy, an eye-witness (describes processions of haggard, starv-1 ling-looking men, women, and children,carrying all 6orta of objects, their poor belongings, ' olothes, kitohen utensils, iDuokets, ' and straw-eeated chairs,. to mhich they cling as if they meant a fortune to them. "Even the absurd is tot wanting, for side by sido with a Either with a paralytic child on his arm, fl saw another walking with a gramaIphone as if it were the most precious (thing which he could have saved from (the wreck," says a correspondent. In carious contrast with the devastating flood and the panic of householders i )8' the. presence here and there on the ?uays of an artist transferring to oanvas he umwonted soene, while numerous [anglers impassively watch their bobbing [floats in the swirling dirty-brown cur- ; Sent.