FLOOD IN PARIS.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1924, Page 5

FLOOD IN PARIS.

THE SEINE STILL RISING. MANY HOMES ABANDONED. DOCTORS TRAVEL IN BOATS. PEOPLE FEAR DISASTER. 3y Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Received Jan. 4, 7.20 p.m. Paris, Jan. 3. The Seine has risen another eighteen nches, and if it rises another four and a • lalf feet Paris will experience a flood •quailing the disaster in 1910. The rain which has already fallen will raise the river three feet by Saturday. Thousands of people have abandoned ieir homes near the river, where sections, jnderground railways and many cellars ire full of water, causing the electric light :o fail in many places. Along the quays .he water is only two or three feet below rhe parapet. Hundreds of masons continue ;o erect cement barriers. A large wine depot was flooded, causing he casks to float into the river, whence Parisians rescued them when the police were not looking and bore them home for i carousal. Doctors in the suburbs are making their rounds in boats. As the .amplighters cannot work the gas lamps n the streets are burning day and night. There is a revival of the demand to Miild reservoirs to take the flood waters in the upper reaches of the Seine, and the cutting of a canal to divert the water from the Marne and the Seine. It is estimated the schemes would take a decade to complete. The Seine forms an S through the middle of Paris and is crossed by 32 bridges. Early in 1910 the simultaneous rising of the rivers Yonne and Marpe, which enter the Seine above Paris, caused such floods that a large part of Paris was inundated and the surrounding districts suffered severely. The total loss was estimated at £2,000,000, more than 200,000 people in Paris alone being affected.