DISASTER AT LYONS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 424, 15 November 1930, Page 7

DISASTER AT LYONS

PORTION OF CITY COLLAPSES

EXTENSIVE UNDERGROUND WORKINGS CAVE IN CHASMS ENGULF HOUSES AND THEIR OCCUPANTS

RESCUERS KILLED WHEN FURTHER MOVEMENTS OCCUIt

[By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.] Received Nov. 14, 9.20 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 14.

As the result of great falls of earth, clue to the collapse of underground workings early yesterday morning, 70 people are believed to have been killed in the densely populated St. Jean district of Lyons. Two streets were engulfed and many houses wrecked. Many were killed in their sleep.

One fall of earth caused probably 16 deaths, chiefly among firemen and police, who rushed to aid the sufferers. Three motor ambulances conveying injured people were overwhelmed with their drivers when the final avalanche occurred at 4.55 a.m., and reduced a street to utter ruin. Hope has been abandoned of saving the earlier victims. The wreckage cannot be entirely cleared away for months.

The hill had been honeycombed by the Romans, and the underground passages were filled by the recent rains, which formed a lake and sapped the entire hill. The collapse of the first portion swept away the recently erected retaining wall, the demolition of which made the whole hill unstable. The third convulsion buried the emergency equipment of the fire brigade, while the fourth destroyed a second street. During the course of the rescue work Cardinal Maurin, Archbishop of Lyons, led a tireless band of priests carrying the aged and injured from the danger zone. One priest remained in a perilous position to absolve the dying. When a landslide wrecked the convent, a nun, Sister Bladin, sleeping on the floor, was thrown with her bed 50 feet to the ground floor and buried under 20 feet of earth, rubble and timbers. She made cries which were heard at 5 a.m. Four workmen, who had tunnelled for five hours, reached her and found a mattress above her, which had prevented fatal injuries, though she was only able to move her head. To-night the Cathedral of St. Jean was filled with weeping men and women praying for loved ones, while in the red rays of a watch lamp glimmering in a dim knave, Cardinal Maurin passed silently from group to group, raising his hand, blessing, and mingling his prayers with those of the bereaved .

WORK OF RESCUERS

FURTHER COLLAPSES FEARED LONDON, Nov 13. A message from Lyons states that the extent of the havoc precludes a computation of the deaths, which will possibly number 100. Two hundred yards of street slid fifty yards downhill towards the River Saone near the junction of the Rhone. There were five convulsion between 1 and 4 o’clock. The Basilica Fourviere Cathedral, which is founded on a rock, towers on the edge of a newly-formed precipice, below which the Antiqualle Hospital, now evacuated, holds back tons of debris. At the foot is a vast chasm.

The first warning came when the high wall of St. Pathin Hospital, situated over the quarry, crashed down on a house occupied by nuns and demolished it like a pack of cards. A survivor narrates that he was awakened by a noise like an explosion, followed by the motor horns of the fire brigades, but he returned to bed, escaping an hour later with his brother and aged mother after the collapse of a house opposite, whose inmates had also returned to bed, but were mostly laved by firemen equipped with ropes ind ladders. Others stampeded. After the first collapse the street was packed with bewildered men, women, and children, in their night clothes until, amid the increasing panic, accommodation was provided in the Cathedral and elsewhere. Rescuers Entombed. The public square resembles a rummage market owing to the presence of retrieved household goods thrown down higgledy piggledy. The rescuers had rushed up in the dark and had barely installed arc lights when a block of houses fell on them, entombing 23 firemen and police and cutting the ambulance in two sections. Then followed the subsidence until a long row qf geyenitoried tenements was a heap of ruins. Nevertheless volunteers, defying death tnd danger, gallantly strove with the rescue work. All of the taxi cabs in the town were mobilised, as ambulances.

Despite illness, the ex-Premier (M. Herriott), who is Mayor, hastened to ;he scene. He heard the firemen explain ;hat twenty-three bodies were under his feet. The fire brigade captain (M.

Rochat), the assistant-captain (M. Netal), and Police-Captain Monsanin were struck down instantly while directing operations. A parish priest was badly gashed by falling masonry, but continued his ministrations to the injured. The work is being pushed on desperately amid subterranean cries and moans. Corpses were being extricated while the hillside was still edging itself towards the river.

Oxygen was administered to a semiconscious woman who could not be extracted. A doctor, after wriggling to her side at the utmost risk, injected morphia. A Press seaplane from Paris fell into the River .Saone near its destination and sank. The pilot reported that the photographer reached the bank.

The authorities, owing to the possibility of further collapses, sought rein forcements from Grenoble.

A SURVIVOR’S STORY The disaster occurred in the old portion of the town, which was soaked by the recent exceptional rains. Thousands of tons of earth fell with a thunderous noise, rousing the entire district. Scores of injured were taken to the Cathedral and attended by nuns. The police immediately began evacuation of the houses of the surrounding districts. Whole families were roused and led to places of safety.

“A noise like thunder awoke me,” said a survivor. “When I opened my eyes I saw the ruins of my house about me. I lay in the debris until I wag rescued by firemen. Half an hour later came another rumbling sound and another collapse which buried the rescuers and myself. It was a terrible sight. Houses crumpled like a pack of cards'. • The ground trembled as though there was an earthquake. The-second collapse sent a huge mass of earth and stone like a? avalanche upon the already engulfed houses . A detachment of sappers, equipped with searchlights, were quickly on the spot, but piled up dust and rubbish prevented anything being seen clearly. Firemen and sappers surrounded the ruins searching for nineteen buried comrades, but they were unable to hear anything. Anxiety was increased when another collapse occurred at 4 o’clock.