An Awful Calamity

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 25, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 42.

An Awful Calamity

EIGHT hundred have lost their lives in the great forest fires along the Minnesota-Canadian border. Out of the 12,000 inhabitants of the fire-swept region 2,000 are missing, while 5,000 are homeless. A stretch of country eighty-five miles long has been laid waste, nineteen towns have been burned, and the loss of property estimated at $100,000,000. Many cases of typhoid fever are reported, and pestilence is feared. Refugee women are acting as nurses. A terrific prairie fire is burning eight miles east of Winnipeg and traveling westward at a rapid rate. Near Lorette there is a wall of fire extending across the prairie for eight miles.

Pitiful tales of suffering are told by the refugees. One family stood five hours in the Beaudette River up to their necks to escape the heat, ducking their heads occasionally under water as the heat became intolerable. They say the water steamed from the surface. The town of Rainy River burst into flames from the intense heat. Rough lumbermen who had not prayed since they had knelt at their mothers' knee, knelt and prayed in the streets. Cattle and horses set loose plunged together with wild animals into the wide and deep Rainy River and swam across. Fear had suppressed the natural hostility of the wild animals, and when exhausted by their flight, horses and sheep lay down with bears and wildcats. Vandals are about their atrocious work of robbing the dead and injured. Martial law will be proclaimed for the affected region; some of the troops are already out.