The Jeffersonian

FEARFUL EARTH SLIDES

THREE TERRIBLE ACCIDENTS WITHIN

FIFTEEN MINUTES.

The Pittsburg Dispatch says: There was a "moving" scene in Monongahela borough yesterday, which not only carried with it at the time of its occurrence terror to the hearts of those who witnessed it, but through its consequences as still visible, might well create a similar feeling. The latter part of the night had been stormy, and after daybreak the rain fell in torrents, while shifting winds blew with great force, at places making playthings of loose signs, awnings and everything of such character that presented itself. On the top of the almost perpendicular hill looking down upon the borough named, and having the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis railroad running along its base, the storm was particularly felt. Such was the effect of the rain that it gradually loosened overhanging ledges of rock—huge projections, weighing many tons, and these, unsupported, fell with tremendous force from their places, striking the hardened railroad bed 100 feet below, and bounding thence, some of them almost unbroken, others in an hundred splinters, through the air for fifteen or twenty yards, until they encountered and literally tore away a portion of a row of frame houses owned by Graff, Bennett & Co., situated below their mill and tenanted by their employees.

The first crash and murmur of the approaching greater peril came at some twenty minutes past seven o'clock. At this time in one of the shanties, occupied by the families of John Holleran and Bernard McCafferty, preparations for breakfast and early attendance at Easter church services were in progress. Holleran lived in the half of the house nearest the railroad and McCafferty in the other half fronting on the street. The first named had been up stairs with his wife and a man named Joyce, and all three were now descending to the lower story, Joyce leading the way. When about half a dozen steps from the bottom a piece of rock, weighing at least half a ton, came whizzing through the side of the house, bearing with it walls and doors, and tearing away the stairs just from below the step on which Joyce was standing. Its course then lay through the floor into the cellar, bringing Joyce along, but apart from injuries to his legs and some slight bruises, not injuring him severely. Holleran and his wife, strange to say, were left standing on the upper and unsupported portion of the steps frightened out of their wits, but otherwise unharmed. Two minutes after this another rock came into the building swept the clock off the mantle piece, dashing it into many fragments, and tearing through the room occupied by Mr. McCafferty and his family.

The crash of the falling rocks woke up the entire row very quickly, and in a moment the situation was so far understood that preparations were made for safety. A widow named Mrs. Jones had, with her daughter, only a little while left a house occupied by them, a few doors removed from that of which Holleran and McCafferty were tenants, when another immense weight of stone whirled through the Jones building, gutting it completely, tearing away the stairs, breaking the furniture, and eventually lodging in the cellar. The wreck was not quite so bad as that made in the first instance, yet a glance at it suffices to show with what terrible power the projectile invaded the premises, and suggests it to have been an exceedingly fortunate circumstance that no human being stood in its way.

The worst accident occurred in less than fifteen minutes, on the premises of a man named John Golden. Golden, his wife and their little child, a baby of some nine months old, occupied a one-story shanty, where a single apartment was made to answer all the purposes of sleeping room, and parlor. Mr. and Mrs. Golden, on learning what had occurred farther up, left their place and went to a family next door, allowing, however, their baby to remain in bed in their own house. They had been away some time when a little girl of seven years thought of the slumbering child, returned to see how it fared and brought it out of the house. She had no more than left with her charge when the largest piece of rock that had yet fallen came with a terrific crash through the house, leaving it simply a mass of splintered timbers and landing ten feet beyond. The circumstance, as reported by the eye witness, would show that there was never a closer escape from what would have been terrible and instantaneous death. All through yesterday the greatest alarm prevailed among residents on the row, and a constant watch was kept upon the frowning hill above, which at that place seemed on the point of dissolution. It is only a matter of time for further falls, and the fact is so well known that the Italians never looked with greater anxiety and suspense for their native avalanches than do the Monongahela borough folks at present anticipate the dreaded land slides from Mount Washington.