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Show Denver & Rio Grande Tracks Washed Out for a Distance of 15 to 30 Miles, While Stations Sta-tions and Other Houses Are Hurled Into the Torrent. CREST OF FLOOD REACHES 20 FEET Workmen Unable to Save Dam Near Fair-view, Fair-view, Which Gives Way to Enormous Pressure, Sending Tremendous Tre-mendous Volume Into the Canyon. Property damage to railroad trackage., depots and crops, estimated to bo more than $1,500,000, was the result of the break in the Price river irrigation dam In Gooseberry creek, a tributary to tho Price river, twelve miles northeast of Falrvlew, which began Sunday afternoon and finally resulted in a raging torrent after carrying away the sixty -foot wait which impounded more than 11,000 aero feet of water. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional damage in loss of traffic will be suffered by the Denver & Rio Grande i railroad because of the complete tieup of the immense coal mines In Carboy county, coun-ty, which depend upon the rallroitd for an outlet. Thousands of miners will' be thrown out of employment until the railroad rail-road is able to rebuild from fifteen to thirty miles of track which has been washed away. Three large steel bridges have been washed out, scores of highway bridges have gone and all concrete culberts in the Price river valley between the dam and Price, a distance of forty-five 'miles, have been destroyed. Residents Flee Frorp Peril. Hundreds of residents of Castlegate, Scofield, Helper and other smaller point u spent last night on the sides of the tstei'p canyon through which the raging torrent poured. As yet no loss of life has been reported, but from all sides come Inquiries In-quiries for missing persons. Communication between Halt Dako and the flooded suction was ended shortly after af-ter 8 o'clock last night, and it was not until 2 o'clock this morning that meager deta lis of the serious situation was received re-ceived over a single telegraph line operated oper-ated by the railroad into Halt Lake by way of Denver. Depot Washed Into River. j ne ( asnegatfe depot was washed into tho I 'rice river soon aft r 7 o'clock last night. The first intimation of this was given when the operator a t Castlega l e wuh reporting to tlie rhi'-f dispatcher "f the Denver & Rio Jranfi- railroad in Sait Lake. The 'astlega te operator had Just reported that the depot wn s comply tviv surrounded by water and that he feared it would soon be carried away, when he stopped in Hie middle of a sentence. This wan th last word received frnm Castle-gate Castle-gate until 2 o'clock this morning. The opera tor at Helper was HFked for a report un the conditions at CaMicnate, and he succintly replied ; Five houpes and the depot pnr-.sjd j here a little wnile ago. No los of , life- h;iH been riorted, un people had ! pien y of warning. K very body from Helper has gone to the hills. So lar the damage in H'lpT Is from backwater, back-water, whi- h has flooded a nurnbrr of houses. Expect railroad bridge here to go any minute. When it does J will too. V. K. "larity, assistant general man -a ger of the Denver &. Rio Grande, .'Mid a party of railroad offMnis and the Tribune's Trib-une's special correspondent left Col ton shortly a fter noon yesterday on a gasoline-driven inspection car. Th' y n re reported re-ported to have pHs-id through Kyime and were la t er seen by a track walker nea r Nolan, having abandoned the motor car Soon after they had left Kyune the bridg-. at thaL jKint was carried away. Vain ef- , (Continued on Fajie Severn.. EHMDUS TOLL IS TAKEN BY FLOOD (Continued from Page One.) forts were made by railroad official's last night to get in touch with Mr. Clarity. It is presumed that he and his party were forced to take to the hills to escape the torrent of water rushing down the canyon. Tracks Are Washed Out. The Denver & Rio Grande main line tracks between Kyune and Helper are completely gone. Just west of Heiper a freight train of loaded coal cars has been abandoned and is momentarily expected to topple into the raging stream. Beyond , Helper two more coal trains had also been left to their fate. Officials are completely com-pletely in the dark regarding the damage from Helper to Price, but entertain little hope that any part of the right of way will be saved. It is estimated that two weeks to a month will be required to install o temporary tem-porary track for the main line traffic. All trains on the road were cancelled last night. The local passenger trains will he temporarily operated only to Col ton until the road is repaired. Transcontinental Transconti-nental passengers whose tickets read over the Denver & Rio Grande will be sent east over the Union Pacific system. Prepare for Repair Work. Every available engine and flat car in the local yard of the Denver & Rio Grande was last night loaded with equipment equip-ment and material and started for Colton. As soon as the water recedes sufficiently to allow work the repairs to the line will be started. Colton last night reported the water , to be receding1 at that point. 1 George Austin, president of the irriga- tlon company, who on Sunday night : started In an automobile from Salt Lake j with J. M. Wheelon, the engineer of the ! company, reached Springville at 2 o'clock this morning en route home. Mr. Austin I and Mr. Wheelon, after having been driv-i driv-i ingr for twenty-six hours, were completely complete-ly exhausted. Telephoning to The Tribune, Trib-une, Mr. Austin described the destruction destruc-tion of the dam as follows: We arrivod at Falrview early yesterday yester-day morning, and drove to the dam. We reached there at 11 o'clock in the morning. At that time the water was rushing out of the break in the dam at the rate of 4000 acre feet an hour. It was coming In almost as fast from melting snow in the mountains. moun-tains. The workmen at the darn were helpless help-less to stop the break. All that could be done was to stand and watch the thousands of tons of concrete melting melt-ing away. It was heart-breaking. At 7 o'clock last night the main section sec-tion of the dam gave way with a tremendous tre-mendous roar and the water rushed down the canyon. The crest was fifteen or twenty feet high and carried car-ried everything with it. Dam Almost Wrecked. We stayed until all the water had left the reservoir and then started for Colton. The water got there first and the river was receding when we arrived. Fully 75 per cent of the dam is destroyed de-stroyed and it Is doubtful if the rest can be used. Mr. Wheelon estimated that upwards of $100,000 will be needed need-ed to replace the dam itself. In the meantime we have arranged for additional water rights to protect pro-tect the farms which will need Irrigation Irri-gation water and we feel that ample am-ple provision will he made. We are utterly in the dark as to tu.ij.To ui me uicttiv. i mc watt ri- man inspected the dam at noon on Sunday and reports that he found everything satisfactory. At that time the dam was not overflowing. He went to the boarding house, about BOO yards away for his lunch. When he returned about an hour later the first break bad started and tiie water wa-ter was rushing out of the dam onto the earth fill. He telephoned at once to the operator at Fairview and she warned the people. There was some talk that the dam might have been blown up, but the watchman says he did not hear the roar of an explosion. The sheriff of Sanpete county is investigating and lias found nothing to substantiate the report. Helper Reported Flooded. Helper was reported to be flooded early In the day and, judging from the Castle-gate Castle-gate reports, it Is thought that Helper, or at least Its entire business section, has been swept away. Helper lies immediatelv beside the railroad trucks, which skirt the river. Between Colton and Helper five steel bridges span the Price river, and all of these have been swept away, according to the last reports received by the Denver Den-ver & Rio Grande. At 10 o'clock last night reports from Colton were that the water was beginning to recede, and it is expected that a tour over the devastated section can begin this morning, when some estimate of the daniiiKe ran be made. Miners from the Carbon countv mines have joined with the railroad companv in preparing to repair the roadbed and relay the track and erect temporary bridges, t'ntil this work Is completed the mines cannot operate, because of lack of cars for shipments. The state rond commission received reports re-ports last night that three wooden bridges east of Colton had been washed away. The state convict camp is located at Colton, 100 prisoners having been employed em-ployed there, with thirty teams, at work on the state highways. Dumber and other necessary materials were started for that point last night fn order , that these men may begin at once putting, the hicrhwav into shone for travel. George K. McGonagle, state engineer, will visit the scene of the diaster todav to make an investigation. He says that plans for the dam, competed, called for a structure ion reet high. The complied part is but sixty feet in height, Mr. Mc- Gonagle says. The state engineer thinks that had the structure been completed the break would not have occurred, especially espe-cially if the additional portion had been an substantially constructed as was tiie completed part. The heavy thaw coming com-ing on so rapidly, with an enormous snow deposit in the mountains, overtaxed the temporary spillway and resulted in the accident. The state board of land commissioners originally loaned $100,000 to the Irrigated Lands company for the purpose of building build-ing the dam and making other improvements. improve-ments. This loan was secured by a first mortgage on the property. Later, the Irrigated Lands company was taken over by tiie Price River Irrigation company. On January 16 last the Price River Irrigation Ir-rigation company was notified by the board that by reason of Its own transactions, transac-tions, coupled with indebtedness inherited in-herited from tiie original concern, it was $60,000 in arrears in its payments on the principal. Twenty thousand dollars of ' the loan has been paid back to the state board of land commissioners, so that the sum now due the state is. $SO,000. Damage Confined. Word was received by F. V. Fitz Gerald, Ger-ald, secretary to Governor Simon Bamberger, Bam-berger, that the damage would be confined con-fined chiefly to the dam itself and the resultant loss of water for irrigation. There would not be a total crop loss, the information said, because one crop of alfalfa had already been harvested. The cultivated land being all on high ground, there is little further danger of washouts wash-outs of crops. Mr. Fitz Gerald says that the diversion diver-sion dam is reported secure and that the danger now is that a jam may occur somewhere in the river, causing an overflow. over-flow. He said, however, that men were patrolling the stream, armed with dynamite, dyna-mite, ready to promptly blow out any possible jam. The diversion dam being safe and the river being very high, Mr. Fitz Gerald says some irrigation water can be had from the stream for some time to come, thus partly saving the crops. Information received at the governor's office was to the effect that there was danger of a washout on the Denver & Rio Grande railway, thus stopping through traffic and cutting off the coal supply regularlv received from that region. The run off of excess water from the reservoir reser-voir has been sufficiently gradual to reduce re-duce the stored body to below the danger dan-ger point now. Empowered to Act. Ira R. Browning, state road engineer, is now in Price River canyon, having gone down on other business Sunday msiiL. ne win laite emergency measures, mea-sures, as they seem to him to be necessary, neces-sary, pending the arrival today of State Engineer George F. McGonagle. James R. Hooper, assistant secretary and treasurer of the irrigation company, yesterday issued a formal statement on the break, detailing the damage which the company understands has been done to the structure, declaring that the farmers farm-ers would have ample writer for their crops, and that the dam would be repaired re-paired at once. At the time, however, officials were unaware that the dam had gone out. The statement in full follows: fol-lows: The break in the Price river dam at its Mammoth reservoir, located about forty-five miles south and west of . Price, which occurred has only removed re-moved about one -quarter of the structure, leaving the tower and channel, with 75 per cent of tiie core wall and the balance of the struc-t struc-t tire fn good order. Therefore, the repairing of the same will not be verv extensive nor expensive, which will be taken up -it once. Crops Not Affected. The loss of the water, however, from tiie reservoir will not affect the raising of alfalfa and grain, in view of the fa rt that the company has "ample appropriation in the Price river of its natural flow to furnish sufficient water for the raising of two crops of alfalfa and grain. The reservoir was constructed to furnish late water for late crops, such as potatoes, beets, etc. The company lias one of the very test canal systems constructed in the state, with one of the vei'y best diversion di-version dams in the state, built of concrete, all of whicii is in first-class condition and is serving the farmers under 1 he system with water. This v lil not be affected at all by the breaking of tiie reservoir. It will go right along as though j nothing had happened, because the diversion dam for the canal is over forty miles down t lie river from the reservoir, and as the water from the reservoir has spread out In transit it will do no damage to structures on the river, as the diversion dam has stood the pressure of flood waters for years fn r in excess of the amount discharged from the reservoir, so the balance of the company's property |
