TERRIFIC EXPLOSION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16374, 23 June 1927, Page 11

TERRIFIC EXPLOSION

HOUSES DEMOLISHED BY" TORRENT. NEW ORLEANS, April 30. The levee of the Mississippi was successfully djnamited this afternoon at Poydras, fifteen miles below New Orleans. The explosion which broke the levee was planned for this morning, but, it was not till nearly four o'clock this afternoon (New York time) that the engineers had completed the task of boring the embankment and arranging the dynamite and fuses; 144 holes with explosives were considered necessary to ensure a complete breach being made. Each holo contained 51b of dynamite. At 4.17 p.m. all the charges were simultaneously ignited by electricity, and a strip of the levee, 1000 ft. long was blasted away.

Great- pieces of mud and rubble were thrown high into the air, and columns of spray rose from the river, so terrific was the, charge ignited. The noise was tremendous, and then, as (he smoke cleared away, the flood waters could be seen pouring over the broken levee into the surrounding country, In a moment the fields were flooded, and what had just before been prosperous farmland was covered with the brown, swirling waters.

River craft blew the pre-arranged signal at 4.2 p.m., warning the countryside that tho levee would be blasted in 17 minutes.

Three blasts within a period of 10 minutes were necessary to create n breach. Houses in the pathway of the released torrent, trembled and then toppled into a scene of desolation. A Yicksburg message states that two more levees have broken, the first ne«r Brunswick and the second at Rollingfork, according to the announcement of Federal engineers.

The river is subsiding inch by inch, as the water pours over the surrounding land, \