FLOODS IN ENGLAND.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14131, 1 June 1920, Page 6

FLOODS IN ENGLAND.

HARROWING DETAILS. Press Association—Electric Telegraph Copyright (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association., LONDON, Monday. The Hood wafers at Louth swept away bridges, houses and walls in a few minutes. The estimated death roll is fifty. Parties are now searching the debris. Only one survivor was found among the occupants of a terrace of tuehe houses destroyed. The fatalities included four firemen, who wore swept away with their engine. A moving mountain is threatening the -destruction of forty houses at Maerdy, a coal mining village in Glamorganshire, Wales, on a branch of the Taft - Yale Railway. The pressure is bulging the walls and lifting the ilnors. Louth is a pleasant Lincolnshire town, lying at the foot of the hills on the edge of a- fiat, marshy plain. A cloudburst occurred on the hills a few miles distant. .Most of the townspeople were driven indoors by the rain, and many were at tea. There was no warning of the disaster as the rainfall .locally was not excessive. The Hood waters burst in the doors and windows of the houses, and many victims were trapped on the ground lloors. One woman■ escaped by climbing the chimney. Three, children were having tea with their Mother. They mounted higher and higher to avoid the rising water, until they were compelled to eling to the curtain pole. Then they either dropped from exhaustion or the pole collapsed, and all the children were drowned. The chief police ollieer attended the telephone continuously for three hours, standing in four feet of water.