correspondents to get in touch with natural gas companies supplying
Dayton with gas and ask them to shut off the supply of gas in Dayton, as
the gas was feeding the conflagration there.

Pleading that troops be sent to Dayton to relieve the flood sufferers,
saying that their need was imperative, and that the town was at the
mercy of looters and fires, George B. Smith, president of the chamber of
commerce of Dayton, who escaped from the flooded city, wired Governor
Cox from Arcanum.

Governor Cox, following the information that Dayton was on fire and that
those who had sought refuge in the upper stories of buildings were in
danger, determined at six o'clock to reach Dayton with troops and
assistance.

THE CITY THREATENED

It was impossible to get within two miles of the fire, and from that
distance it appeared that explosions, probably of drugs, made the fire
seem of larger proportions than it was. It appeared to have about burned
itself out, and it was not believed it would spread to other blocks.

It was impossible to ascertain, even approximately, the number of
persons who might have been marooned in this section and who died after
being trapped by flood and fire.

The flames at night cast a red weird glow over the flood-stricken city
that added to the fears of thousands of refugees and marooned persons,
and led to apprehension that there might have been many of the water's
prisoners in the burned buildings.

Fire started anew at nine o'clock at night and burned fiercely.

The men, women and children marooned in the Beckel Hotel were terror
stricken when fire threatened the building for the second time at night.
Since Tuesday morning two hundred and fifty persons had been in the
place.

Crowded in the upper stories of tall office buildings and residences in
Dayton, two miles each way from the center of the town, were hundreds of
persons whom it was impossible to approach. Hundreds of fires which it
was impossible to fight were burning. The rescue boats were unable to
get farther from the shore than the throw line would permit. They could
not live in the current.

At midnight residents of Dayton watching the course of the flames from
across the wide stretch of flood waters believed the fire got its new
start in the afternoon in the store of the Patterson Tool and Supply
Company, on Third Street, just east of Jefferson, whence it ate its way
west, apparently aided by escaping gas and exploding chemicals in