STREAMS ARE FULL.
WESTERN WASHINGTON FACES SERIOUS FLOOD MENACE -- DEATHS TOTAL 13.
 Seattle, Feb. 27. -- (AP) -- On the heels of warm chinook winds and heavy rains, western Washington was in the grip today of the greatest menace from floods and earth and snow slides in years, a
menace which has already taken 13 lives.
In the mountains of the western Cascades, a death dealing torrent of water and mud swept away part of the little community of Edgewick yesterday
afternoon, and four women, two children and one man were lost. The debris was still searched today for two of the bodies.
The melting snow fields in the mountains, however, in addition to threatening slides and devastation to whatever might be in their path, also
filled rivers. In western Washington, the Stillaguamish, Snoqualmie, Green, Puyallup, Raging and Stuck rivers were bank full or overrunning their banks today.
From the Canadian line south to the Columbia River, highways and railroad lines were blocked by washouts, wire service was handicapped, and many
families were marooned or fleeing from river valleys to higher ground.
Those lost at Edgewick, when a wall of water 150 yards wide and 15 feet deep broke loose from a natural basin, were: IRA MOORE, 60;
MRS. ERMADIE MOORE, his wife; MRS. ELWOOD CLAGETT, 29; MRS. WILLIAM BLADE and her two children, ROSEMARY, 3, and MARGARET [sic; name should be JOSEPHINE], eight
months; MRS. GUST BALDER.
The others who lost their lives in the past two days were two victims of a flood at High Point, three miles east of Issaquah, GEORGE JOHNSON
and his son GUSTA, 10, and four men entombed by an avalanche of snow in the Skagit river canyon.
Added to the accounts of lives being lost was a report from a railroad work crew east of Cedar Falls that six more persons, passengers in an
automobile, were carried to death by flood waters. The report, however, could not be verified.
Out of Edgewick came descriptions of how the wall of water burst on the town, plunging on into Boxley Canyon creek and a short distance farther
on into the south fork of the Snoqualmie river.
MOORE, one of the victims, had been sick and his wife was attending him in their small home. The waters wrecked it and his body was found a
quarter of a mile below.
MRS. BLADE and her two children were in their home. Far down the creek, the two children were found dead among the debris.
Meanwhile, to the north, in the Skagit River canyon, workmen still tunneled and burrowed into the fast melting snow bed left by the avalanche for
the bodies of the four workmen.
Centralia Daily Chronicle Washington
Feb. 27, 1932
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