OCR Text |
Show FLOOD DESTROYS MILLIONS. Austin, Texas, Swept by a Disastrous Flood, Many I.Ives Helng Lost. Austin, Texas, on the night of April 8 was in pitch darkness, with a raging river, one mile wide and swollen far beyond its natural banks, roaring and surging through all the lower portion of the town, having spread destruction and death in its wake. In addition to the vast loss to property interests, it is calculated that between thirty and forty lives have been sacrificed. The flood was not unlike the dis-trous dis-trous Johnstown flood some years ago, in that a raging river, already swollen far beyond its capacity, bore too heavily upon an immense dam spanning the river at Austin, breaking it and letting loose a reservoir of water thirty miles long, half a mile wide and sixty feet deep, to aid in carrying destruction down the valleys of the Colorado river. Within an hour six inches of rain fell all over the vast watersheds of the Colorado river, raising the stream forty feet in a few hours, which swept the valley and piled houses, trees and debris against the dam until it gave way. The loosened flood outran men and horses sent to warn people below the dam. Warning was wired down the'valley and many lives saved. The property loss reaches millions. |