DAM BURST AT AUSTIN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 99, 9 December 1911, Page 3

DAM BURST AT AUSTIN.

The New York correspondent of the “Daily Mail,” referring to the bursting of a dam at Austin, Pennsylvania, said that about 260 persons lost their lives. Telegrams from the stricken valley villages were divided between thrilling tales of heroism and local threats to prosecute the authorities, who knew that the dam was unsafe, but had not insisted on the restoration of the concrete wall, which was 70ft. high and 600 ft. from bank to bank, and held in check 350 million gallons of water. Lina Binekey, a telephone operator, seems to have been the heroine of the disaster. She stuck to her switchboard, sending warning calls to the little town of Costello, two miles below, till a watery grave stared her in the face. She herself had been rung by her sweetheart who had shouted, “The dam is bursting! For God’s sake get to the hills.” She, thinking, he was joking replied. “Your’e kidding,” but then detecting the anxiety in her lover’s voice she proceeded to issue warnings broadcast. Here is her own story:—

“J heard a roar like thunder up the valley. It sounded as though a thousand trees were snapping right at my ears. 1 began to work the switch plugs and to call as many people as I could. 1 also caused the whistles in the town to be blown and the bells to be rung thinking that this would bring the people into the streets to see the peril themselves in time to flee. Finally my board failed to work. “From where I stood the wall of water seemed about 50 feet high. Above it rose a great cloud of spray, in which the houses seemed to toss, bumping against one another, and spinning and turning as they fell to pieces or swept out of my sight. The noise was appalling. “I stayed ringing up parties till I saw the" spire of the Presbyterian Church topple over. Then I fled up the hillside.”

Every clock that has been found in the wreckage had stopped at twentyeight minutes past two. The dam broke five minutes previously. A peice of masonry 30ft high, and weighing 100 tons, was driven forward ‘2OO yards. Then the water caught up ISO.OOO cords of pulp wood, and forc-ing-this timber before it, proceeded on its mission of death and destruction a mile below.

At Costello the flood was dissipated in the meadows where 20 cows and horses were drowned.

Mary 13hi.it/, a mill worker told the surgeons and reporters at the hospital how it feels to have a leg amputated with an axe.

“I was busy at work,” she said, “when suddenly there lurched through the wall one big fall of grinding stones. The millrescilcrs found me later pinned beneath it. They tried to release me but failed. The great stone was too heavy to move. “I felt surely about to die. “Got an axe and cut my leg off,” I told them, but no man would volunteer to cut it off. 1 pleaded “You can stand it if I can.” 1 looked up and saw Joe Vonarge, a friend of mine. “Von do it Joe for me,” 1 , begged I was in awful pain. Nothing could be worse torture. “I—J can’t do that Alary,” lie said..

! i“I asked a big man standing back of'him to do it. He picked up'an axe and by I the lantern’s light J: saw the descending blade glisten. I think he chopped four or live times before, the others would pry me loose.” The stump of the limb has been dressed skilfully, and the plucky girl is likely to recover.