the city, and thousands of acres were
inundated.

BUSINESS SECTION FLOODED

At Third and Ludlow Streets, where were located the great Algonquin
Hotel, a magnificent church, the great Y. M. C. A. building and the
Hotel Atlas, were many feet of water. The central portion of the city
was flooded, and the beautiful residence district, lying east of the
exclusive boulevard district, was a Venice.

Hundreds of homes were filled with floating furniture. The citizens,
used to the slow-creeping floods of other years, were entirely mystified
and distracted by this sudden, hurtling, seething flood that seemed to
spring by night from the clouds that hovered low over the city and
plunged their seas of water into the rivers that converge in the very
heart of Dayton.

Railroad and wagon bridges over the Miami River were swept away. The
telephone operator at Phoneton said that from his window in the station
he had seen a bridge one mile north of Dayton collapse and another
bridge crossing the river at Tadmor, eleven miles north of Dayton, was
expected to give way at any moment.

Communication between Phoneton and Dayton, the operator said, was only
intermittent, as the only available wire was being used by the linemen
in their efforts to restore service.

Troy and Tippecanoe City, north of Dayton, were both flooded and many
people took refuge on the roofs of their homes.

Below Dayton vast acreages were seas of yellow. Farms were lakes, roads
were raceways through which raced the swollen streams. Telegraph service
was maimed, and all sorts of communication was well-nigh impossible.

THOUSANDS MAROONED

Crowded in the upper stories of tall office buildings and residences,
two miles each way from the center of the town, were thousands of
persons whom it was impossible to approach. At Wyoming Street, three
miles beyond what has heretofore been considered the danger line, water
was running eight feet deep.

The Western Union operator at Dodson, Ohio, said the office was filled
with foreigners who had fled from Dayton. Looters were shooting people
down in the streets, according to these refugees. They also reported
that the Fifth Street bridge at Dayton had washed down against the
railroad bridge and arrangements were being made to dynamite both
structures. This bridge was dynamited in the afternoon, but the effect
was not felt to any marked degree.

The foreigners who sought refuge in the Dodson telegraph office were
pan