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Show HOUR GALE SIEPS COAST FIFTEEN DROWN WHEN STEAMER GOES DOWN IN RAGING COAST STORM Telephone and Telegraph Facilities Are Crippled; Falling Trees And Rocks Block Railway Travel Seattle, Wash. Sixteen persons are believed to have perished as the result re-sult of a twenty-four-hour gale which swept the northwest coast territory Wednesday night and early Thursday causing hundreds of dollars in property prop-erty damage, crippling communication facilities and inundating portions of Hoquiam and Aberdeen Wash., and WarreMon, Ore. Fifteen persons are believed to have been drowned when the steamer T. W. Lake sank in Rosario strait between be-tween Lopez and Fidalgo islands, near Anacortes. Four bodies, three of them unidentified have been recovered re-covered by police authorities of San Juan county. One of the bodies is said to be that of Captain E. E. Mason of Tacoma. The ship was westbound from Friday harbor, in the San Juan island group, to Anacortes when she sank. The other death was that of, Thomas Thom-as E. Phipps, 32, timekeeper at a mill in Bellingham. He was repairing repair-ing the entrance gate to the plant when it suddenly opened and struck him on the head, killing him instantly. instant-ly. With the exception of the one shipwreck, ship-wreck, coastal navigation was unhampered, un-hampered, although the steamship Empress of Canada was forced to abandon her call Thursday at Victoria and dock at Vancouver, B. C, on account ac-count of the rough weather. In many towns and cities along the coast telephone and telegraph facilities facil-ities were put out of commission by the wind and rain, and in some instances in-stances streetcar traffic tied up by the water and lack of power. Falling trees and rocks blocked railroad lines in some instances. Bellingham, Everett, Aberdeen and Hoquiam felt the brunt of the storm apparently although the storm assumed the proportions of a blizzard at Vancouver, Van-couver, B. C, and disrupted telegraph and telephone communication. Three feet of snow was reported to have fallen, in the Cascade mountains moun-tains and a foot of snow fell In the Kachee, Keechelus and Cleelum lakes district. The rain apparently was general along the entire Tacific coast, heavy precipitation having been recorded far south into California. |