OCR Text |
Show Fire Hits Deserted Paducah; Ohio River Believed At Peak By Associated Press Flames struck ths deserted "ghost town" of Paducah, Ky and a levee burst at Bessls Landing Neck. Tenn, but a great hopeful cry of victory in eight!" swept down the nation's sprawling' flood trail today. to-day. The yellow tidal flow of the Ohio apparently had reached its peak. For 12 consecutive hours, the river gauge at beleaguered Cairo, IIL, focal danger point In the flood's ravaging progress, remained stationary. sta-tionary. The rise seemed ended. Crest b la Sight Tha crest is In sight," said U. S. army engineers, directing the grim struggle to sava Cairo from the giant "nutcracker squeesa" of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. A $75,000 fire capped the cUmax of disaster at food -engulfed Paducah, Pa-ducah, newly evacuated of ail save troops and other authorities. With the Ohio's muddy waters in quiescent mood at least temporarilydread tem-porarilydread "sand boils' burst ( up in ths heart of Cairo, forwarn-ing forwarn-ing of deeply undermined barriers guarding ths flood-sieged city. Emergency squads rushed to the danger spots, dumping hundreds of sandbags on the miniature "geysers" "gey-sers" boiling through the thin strata of protective aurface. over the city's foundation of sand. Major R. D. Burdick, U. 8. army engineer, estimated there were about 50 "boils" scattered throughout through-out the city. The eruptions, he explained, sprang from the terrific pressure of the flooded Ohio river waters, slowly eating their way beneath the man-guarded levees and seeping under un-der the city to make It in time a virtual. "floating Island." In the mounting emergency 40 additional coast guard boats arrived to evacuate the city's army of 6000 defenders If ths river breaks through. In all, 55 vessels and nine bargee were tied up at the river wall. Huge waves, lashed by a freesing north wind, swept against ths city's reinforced defenses. The wsves dashed with rising fury against the three-foot emergency emer-gency bulkhead a mud-boxed barricade bar-ricade IS inchea thick which surmounts sur-mounts the 60-foot concrete seawall. The Ohio Itself, slowly nearing a crest crep within a hand's breadth of 60 feet shifting the battle to the slender upper rim the last line of defense. President Roosevelt at Washington Washing-ton today proclaimed an "emergency" "emer-gency" to permit the importation, duty free, of foreign donations of food, clothing, medical and other supplies for flood sufferers. Officials said several foreign countries, particularly Canada, had sent and were sending relief supplies sup-plies to ths flood zones. Ths president acted under a provision pro-vision of the 1S30 tariff-law. The emergency will continue until the president ends it with another proclamation. proc-lamation. All along- the lower Miasissipp below Cairo the pounding assault of (Coallnaen on Pare Eleven) 1 Column four 4 GEYSERS POINT PERILIH CAIRO (CeatlsiMd trees rase One) waves stirred fresh apprehension among army engineers and the 130,-000 130,-000 pick and shovel workers toiling day and night to save the cotton kingdom from the 1300,000.000 scourge that has already blighted the Ohio river valley In the north. Scans Rollers Anxiously scanning the wind-driven wind-driven rollers. Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Reybold. U. 8. army engineer, en-gineer, commented :- "No particular damage has been reported thus far, but a wave attack at-tack like this is always a menace. It won't help things." . , The fight along the Arkansas side of the Mississippi became hourly more desperste today. The Mell-wood Mell-wood levee, below Helena, Ark., was being bard pressed by the enormous weight of the yellow tide. There was no Immediate threat of a major collapse; but military authorities hurriedly conscripted 1000 able-bodied refugees in the martial law area and prepared to dispatch them to Mellwood. More than 1.000,000 sandbags have already been stacked along I ths bloated river from Helena to . Cairo. Leek Underestimated As the flood waters gradually receded re-ceded In' the north, with the Ohio I sullenly cresting past ths evacuated - -"gliucl ton n" of Padueah, Kyr-en , Its descent Into ths deep south, It became apparent today that the damage toll has been far underestl-1 underestl-1 mated. Available estimates from five out ' of the eleven flood-stricken statee ' revealed a total damage of at 1 least Io27.000.000 including Indiana, In-diana, 1100.000,000; Kentucky, 350,- ' 000,000; Illinois, S8.0O0.0OO; West , Virginia, . 11,000,000, and Ohio . $70,000,000. No figures were available for ' the other six states affected. The death list stood at 368, including in-cluding six victims of ths sinking of a New Madrid floodway barge Saturday Sat-urday night. Army engineers searched for the bodies of 2 missing miss-ing men from the 100 rescue workers work-ers aboard. An army in dungarees fought the savage attack of the Mississippi at ths Hickman, Ky- levee to keep the river from capturing another hundred square miles of western Tennessee. The f loodwa t e r s, whipped by a raw northerly gale, threatened to break through the levee and roll southward across a fertile plain six to eight miles wide and drain back into the Mississippi 1 river by the Obion river, SO miles ' below. Would Be Isolated Tlptonville, 22 miles away, , watched the struggle with appre-hension. appre-hension. Engineers said if the i Hickman levee went It would in-, in-, undate the entire Reelfoot lake section sec-tion and isolate Tlptonville. Mississippi flood waters, churned . up by a cold wind throughout the j night broke through the Bessie I Landing Neck dike for the fourth i time today. A crevasse about two . miles above the Cates Landing mud , box threatened much of .Lake I county.- ' The homeless constituted the larg-I larg-I est army sver created by disinter I in the United States. Dr. Thomas . Parran Jr., chief surgeon of the U. S. public heslth service, said the government had tackled a iong- Urns job. The fight against dis- ease, he said, is in good shape, but had just begun. As ths Mississippi valley's de- tenses were raised higher and higher high-er between Cairo and New Orleans Or-leans In preparation for the crest, residents along ths Mississippi delta were stirred by reports of level dynamiting It developed that i Tallahatchie river barrier neaj Ttppo, Miss., about 30 miles from Clarksdale, had been blasted to release re-lease pent-up waters. ,. Sharp Rise ' ' Melting Ice and snow caused sharp rise slong ths upper reachss of ths Arkansas rives, but the stream was ststlonary at Little Rock and engineers saw little chance for it contributing to a major ma-jor crisis on ths lower Mississippi, into which it empties. Between Memphis and New Orleans Or-leans the river level was little changed and Major General E. M. Markham, chief of -the United Statei engineers, expressed belief the valley's val-ley's defenses a billion dollar levee system would hold. Markham and other members ol the president's flood relief commission commis-sion hesded northward from Memphis Mem-phis today. Science warred on disesse In Kentucky, Ken-tucky, where 360,749 In 62 counties were driven from their homes by the floods. Arthur T. McCormack, state flood relief director, directed the work. Louisville was under partial quarantine and a general quarantine was in effect at Padueah, deserted by its 30.000 population. 26,654 Refugee Families) Indiana planned to concentrate 26,660 refugee families in the southern south-ern part of ths state aa national guard experts predicted damage in the stats would approximate 1100.-000,000. 1100.-000,000. More than 10,000 persons in Evansville, jobless sines martial i law was decreed, returned to fac-, fac-, tory benches. ' Meanwhile at Raleigh, N. C, the I Neuas river was on a rampage, threatening to inundate a negro insane asylum near Goldsboro and ths town of Hspersville. The stream crept out of Its banks at Goldsboro Golds-boro and covered seversl rursl roads snd forced the shutdown of a factory. |