PILE OF DEBRIS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20465, 9 July 1936, Page 13

PILE OF DEBRIS

BUILDINGS AT HOMER TUNNEL FIRST HAND ACCOUNT OF DISASTER By Telegraph— Press Association INVERCARGILL, July 8. The first of the party at the Homer Saddle to come down country were Mr and Mrs M. Tangney and their five-year-old daughter, who arrived at Cascade Creek on Tuesday evening after a gruelling seven-hour trip on foot and by lorry. A “Southland Times” reporter found them after trudging through a foot of snow and heard the first hand account of the tragedy. “None of us can tell you anything of the avalanche before it engulfed the buildings at the mouth of the tunnel," Mr Tangney said. He was working inside the tunnel and nothing was known there of the avalanche until three or four men came running to safety smothered from head to foot in snow spray. That there were other men outside was the thought of the men under cover as soon as they had realised what had happened, and the whole party rushed headlong into the murky swirling snow. It was impossible to see anything, and it was not until the overseer, Mr T. W. Smith, who was himself caught by the edge of the fall, had discovered that Overton was missing that a search could be started. But where were they to look? There was 20 feet of ice and snow everywhere. The crib house, the recently repaired winch house, the cement house and gantry were all swept away and buried or scattered in hundreds of shreds. Mr Smith was unable to do more than set the men to search, but although the attempt at rescue was necessarily disjojinted, there was no wasted effort. A man was posted to watch for another fall, but even if he had seen one the man would have had little chance of scrambling back into the tunnel because of the piled up mass of smashed wood and machinery and twisted and torn wires.

“Mr W. Troon, of Dunedin, was probably the luckiest man at the time. He was in the winch house with J. McLauchlan and was blown through the back of it. He was only dazed, and when he saw two boots sticking up out of the snow he rescued McLauchlan. If he had lost consciousness both would have been suffocated.