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Show HUNDREDS PERISH IN OHIO FLOODS DAYTON A SEETHING RIVER, THE WATER IN MAIN STREET BEING BE-ING TWENTY FEET DEEP. Schoolhouse Containing Four Hun dred Children and Hospital With Six Hundred Patients Reported to Have Been Washed Away. Dayton, Ohio Hundreds, and it i; believed thousands, are dead as tht result of a flood which swept through this city when the Miami river levee burst Tuesday. That the derth list will be an ap palling one i? apparent, although nc one is prepared to state the numbei at present. Some estimates place th list of dead as high as 5,000. At least 40,000 are homeless. Bodies may be seen floating down Main street, where for hours the water was from ten to thirty feel deep. A school building that was known to have held about 400 children short ly before the flood rushed in that di rection, is entirely under water, anc it is believed that all of the little ones have been drowned. St. Elizabeth's hospital is reported to have been washed from its foundations founda-tions and the 600 inmates are said to have perished in the flood waters The electric light plant was completely com-pletely disabled early in the day, and the city was in total darkness, except ex-cept for the lurid lights of the conflagrations con-flagrations i'i various parts of the flooded district. All groceries and bakeries in the city are in the submerged district, and it is thoueht that a severe famine will result, owing to the impossibility of getting fr'd to many who are marooned in and on buildings surrounded sur-rounded by swirling, angry waters. The washing down of bridges and subsequent collection of debris acted as a dam in the river, later causing the levee to break and sending the water through the main streets of the city and into the southern part 01 town. Governor Cox, with tne sanction ol the state legislature, has sent an appeal ap-peal to the world for help. The state legislature will appropriate $250,000 for the immediate relief of flood suf- ferers. The wood-working department of the National Cash Register company has been turned into a boat manufactory. manufac-tory. Ten boats an hour are being made. Any attempt to estimate the loss of life is hopeless. It is sure to run into the hundreds and very likely into the thousands. The property loss will total millions of dollars. The flooded district comprises a practical circle with a radius of a mi j and a half and in no place is the water less than six feet deep. In Main street, in the downtown section, the water is twenty feet deep. The horror was heightened by more than a dozen fires, which could be seen in the flooded district, but out of reach of fire fighters. Most of the business houses have occupants. Down town the offices are filled with men unable to get home, and on the upper floors and on some of tha roofs of the residences are helpless women and children. Hundreds Hun-dreds of houses, substantial buildings in the residence district, many ol them with helpless occupants, have been washed away or have collapsed. The breaking of the Earlton reservoir, reser-voir, which supplies the drinking water, left the city without water, and physicians declared ' there is great danger of typhoid in the use of the flood water. There are no boats in Dayton which can resist the current and those 011 the outside gave up attempts to reach the business section. How many houses have been swept away and how many occupants were carried to their deaths cannot be learned Until the waters recede. At Wyoming street on the South side, where the National Cash Register Regis-ter company centered its efforts at rescue, many saved their lives by crawling on a telephone cable, a hundred hun-dred feet above the flood. At first linemen crept along the cables carrying tow ropes to which the flat bottomed boats were attached. at-tached. When the flood became sc fierce that the boats no longer were able to make way against it, men and women crept along the cables to safety. Others, less daring, saw-darkness saw-darkness fall and gave up hope o; rescue. Those willing to risk their iives in the attempt to rescue, found them selves helpless in face of the water Seventy thousand of Dayton's population, pop-ulation, it is reported, are homeless. |