ten o'clock in the morning, and the dwellers in the South
Park section of the city had no chance to escape.

Hundreds of homes were soon flooded. Firemen were sent out in boats to
rescue those who desired to leave. Hundreds of workers were marooned in
distant parts of the city, unable to reach their homes.

Within the city limits of Buffalo big manufacturing plants suffered
$150,000 of damage. Many big oil tanks were overturned and crashed
against buildings. Train service throughout the city was practically at
a standstill, and miles of track east and south of the city were washed
away. The main line of the Erie Railroad, between Buffalo and New York
City, was washed out in many places.

THE PLIGHT OF ROCHESTER

Not since 1865, when Rochester, then a city of 50,000, suffered immense
damage by floods, has the city faced such a serious situation as it did
on the night of Friday, March 28th. Half the business section was under
water, which in some sections was five feet deep.

Water commenced to pour into Front, Mill and Andrew Streets early
Thursday evening, and all through the night merchants worked to get
their goods to higher ground. The big warehouse of the Graves Furniture
Company in Mill Street was flooded so quickly that thousands of dollars
damage was done to the goods. The following morning it was impossible to
get through these streets except in boats and rafts, and the work of
salvage was continued in this way.

The newspaper offices of the _Post Express and Democrat_ and the
_Chronicle_ had their basements flooded and the presses put out of
commission. The Pennsylvania line into Rochester, which uses the bed of
the old Genesee Canal, was put out of commission. The Erie and Lehigh
Valley lines to villages to the south were blocked by the floods for
several days.

The only fatality of the flood occurred at six o'clock Sunday evening,
when a boy who was paddling over the flooded meadow of the Genesee
Valley Park was carried out into the river. The canoe was swept over the
dam at Court Street.

VALLEY OF THE GENESEE PARALYZED

The whole valley of the Genesee was more or less paralyzed. As early as
Wednesday the villages of Mount Morris and Dansville, in the Genesee
River Valley, were under several feet of water, and the terrified folk
who lived in the lowlands were hurrying to places of safety, abandoning
their homes.

Commerce was soon at a standstill, and conditions continued to grow more
seriou