FIRE HORRORS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7853, 15 July 1911, Page 1

FIRE HORRORS

CANADIAN CONFLAGRATIONS TOWNS ABANDONED TO THE . FLAMES HUNDFEDS OF DEATHS EX Telojraph—Press Association—Copyrisht. OTTAWA, July 13. Tko victims of the forest fires in Alberto. are belioveu to include tivo hun dred employees of tlio Dome Mine, who are ,penned in tho shaft. Tho streets of South Forcupino are strewn w*itli dead bodies. Many prospectors’ bodies have been found. Fifteen persons were driven into .a lake in tho efi’ort to escape from tho Jlamcs. All ol thorn perished. Sis hundred inhabitants of Cochrane escaped in a relief train before tho town was destroyed. Part of tho town of Tisdale was destroyed. Four thousand residents in the neighbourhood escaped in a relief train. The flames were checked when a number of houses were dynamited. The town of Kelso was abandoned to the flames. A relief fund has been opened in Toronto. WORST FIRE IN CANADIAN HISTORY. LOSS MANY MILLIONS STERLING TORONTO, July 13. Tine fire in the Porcupine district is the worst in Canadian history. The death list numbers over 300, and tho loss of property will run into many millions of pounds. A great wall of flamo swept the mining camps, closing in with startling suddenness. In Golden City "men refusing to fight the flames were forced to, act at the revolver’s' point. Frenzied foreigners attempting to rush the boats on which women and children were being removed to safety wore held back by armed men, Alberta, the Canadian Province in which the appalling conflagrations above described are raging, is a new province, proclaimed on September Ist. 1906. It was coined out of the north-West Territories, and includes the former district of Alberta, tbe western half of Athabasca, and a strip of Assinibola and Saskatchewan. The area is about 343,C00 square miles, and tho population about 36U.0.0 souls. Tbe capital is Edmonton. Tho Porcupine itonntains, among which the ravages of tho fire appear to havo occurred, are a range of foothills to the Bockv Mountains. The town of Cochrane ia situated above H6O miles westward from Winnipeg.