was averted by the
arrival of food late Thursday night, but building of fires was not
permitted. The authorities feared an outbreak of flames similar to the
Dayton conflagration. Ten thousand of the eighteen thousand population
were homeless.

HAMILTON HARD HIT

Of all the cities in the Miami Valley with the exception of Dayton,
Hamilton was hardest hit. Many persons killed, a thousand houses wrecked
by the rushing torrent and 15,000 homeless was the toll of the flood in
this city and environs, and the harrowing scenes attending flood
disasters in the past decade faded into insignificance when compared
with the havoc wrought by the latest deluge.

Before darkness blotted out the scene on March 25th, house after house,
with the occupants clinging to the roofs and screaming for help, floated
on the breast of the flood, but the cries for help had to go unanswered
because of the lack of boats. What little rescue work there was
accomplished was done before night came on, as the rescuers were
powerless after darkness.

The city was then without light of any kind, the electric light and gas
plants being ten feet under water. Soldiers rushed to this city from
Columbus were in charge of the situation, the town being under martial
law.

The victims of the raging waters were caught like rats in a trap, so
fast did the flood pour in on them, and few had even a fighting chance
for their lives. Ghastly in the extreme was the situation. The cries of
the women and children as they faced inevitable death, and the frantic
but unsuccessful efforts of husbands and fathers to rescue loved ones,
presented a scene that will go down in the history of world's
catastrophes as one of the worst on record.

Fire added to the horror of the situation when shortly after midnight
the plant of the Champion Coated Paper Company, which is six blocks long
by one block wide, broke into flames. In less than a quarter of an hour
the entire factory was a mass of fire and there was no chance of
checking its progress in the least as the water service needed by the
fire department was put out of commission early in the day.

The Beckett Company's paper mill, valued at $500,000 for buildings and
equipment, collapsed into the flood the following morning.

SUFFERING AMONG THE REFUGEES

On Wednesday, March 26th, the river began to fall at the rate of nine
inches an hour. After the season of awful horror the change brought
hope. The work of rescue and