LIECHTENSTEIN: Flood | TIME
Along the mighty Alps great, dense, blue-black clouds discharged their heavy burdens of warm rain for many hours. Snow and ice became water as the endless rain from the sky beat down on the glaciers and a hundred snow-capped summits. Little pools formed and overflowed into rivulets and tore down the sides of the ravines into the streams that gurgled and splashed in their headlong course to the mightier rivers they feed.
Overnight Lake Constance in Switzerland rose 15 feet as the upper reaches of the Rhine poured in its roaring torrent of muddy water. Higher and higher rose the Rhine, greater and greater became the pressure of the angry, swollen current and, finally, the huge 5,000-foot dam between Switzerland and the tiny principality of Liechtenstein burst and the water shot down the mountain side like 10,000 enraged tigers pouncing on their prey.
Soon Liechtenstein’s 65 square miles of territory were converted into one gigantic bog, tops of houses and church spires, with an occasional oasis of high ground, lifting above the sea of mud. Frantic peasants drove their cattle as best they could toward the high mounds of land; boatmen plied their oars with aching muscles as they ferried women and children from their submerged houses to those still standing above the flood. Many people were forced to spend two days on their house tops.
The government of Liechtenstein sent appeals to its neighbors, Switzerland and Austria, for help. Both states sent troops and military engineer’s to aid in the rescue work.
The death roll increased hourly, but no details of the loss of life were ascertainable, all telegraph and telephone lines, having been torn down by the deluge. Property damage, it was reported, ran into many millions of dollars.
On the southern side of the Alps matters went little better. Tremendous damage was caused in the Austrian and Italian Tyrol. Practically every railway out of Switzerland was put out of action. In the north every bridge from Steinach to Gschnitz in Austria was washed away. Europe reported the worst Alpine flood since 1866.
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