TIFFIN HONORS "SAILOR JACK"
FLOOD IN OHIO CITY REVEALS POWERS OF OBSCURE WORKER—TELEGRAPH AND PHONE WIRES BECOME PATCHES FOR RESCUERS—NAVY MEN’S WORK.
Tiffin, Ohio, became a city of sorrow and desolation, paralyzed and grief-stricken, with a loss of fifty, and a property loss close to $1,000,000. The electric light, water and gas plants were out of commission and the city was in darkness.
The first to die were:
Here is how some of them died:
Axilne patted his wife on the back and kissed her. A moment later the house crashed into the Baltimore & Ohio bridge. It was splintered like a bundle of sticks. With their arms about each other, husband and wife disappeared beneath the raging waters.
When the home of Jacob Kenecht was swept away Mrs. Kenecht and her five children were in the dwelling. Kenecht was outside. When he was picked up by the current he grabbed the limb of a tree. He held on for fifteen minutes. Rescuers attempted to throw him a line. Each time the wildly running water held the rope within a few inches of his outstretched arms.
Finally, exhausted and numbed by the cold, Kenecht gave up the fight against death. "Thanks, good-bye, boys, I’m——" his last words were swallowed by the water that engulfed him.
A terrible blizzard raged over the stricken city.
That the death list was not swollen Wednesday by several score was due to the bold efforts of the Toledo lifesaving crew with its three boats, and the Sandusky crew with its nine boats. These men saved many from death, braved danger in swirling currents and took desperate chances in rescuing families.
Until Monday morning, "Sailor Jack" Willis was an inconspicuous character in Tiffin. He is the city’s hero. He took charge of the rescue work. The lifesaving baskets and cables were made and operated under his orders. By stretching cables to a water-surrounded house, the occupants, one by one, were brought to places of safety.
"Sailor Jack" personally saved ten people. And after sixty hours of work, with no rest, he dropped exhausted. A movement was started to obtain for him a Carnegie medal.
Four women, two of whom were Mrs. A. W. Knott and daughter, were rescued from the roof of a barn on Water street by telephone linemen, who clung to the tops of the poles and swung lines to the women. The four were hauled to safety, hand over hand.
Regina Moltrie, school teacher, climbed a telephone pole when the flood struck her home. On her hands and knees she crawled across heavy cables to linemen, fifty feet above the rushing water.
County Treasurer W. O. Heckert, his wife, and three children were taken out of their home in a huge basket suspended to a cable. A life line was swung for a block and a half to save County Surveyor Charles Peters, his wife and child. The family relayed from building to building. Sixteen people marooned in the Bonette Hotel were taken out in baskets, as were ten girls, employes of a mitten factory.
The bodies of four children, three boys and a girl, were found near the Tiffin Wagon Works. It is believed they were washed down from Upper Sandusky.
Mrs. Josephine Wagner, eighty-four, laughed at warnings of a flood. She refused to move. An hour later firemen carried her down a ladder from the second story of her home.
A relief train that was run to Findlay, Ohio, from Fostoria with a supply of provisions came as a godsend to hundreds of people actually suffering. Many people were at the depot and took what they could get, alleviating their immediate wants.
Where the high waters receded, several bodies were recovered. The persons had died from lack of physicians’ care. Others were in a starving condition.
General Manager McMahon of the Northwestern Ohio Natural Gas Company announced that pressure in the company’s mains was getting lower and Toledo’s gas supply was cut.
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