THOUSANDS ON ROOF TOPS

Rescue Parties Converge on Elba, Totally Isolated.

TOPS HOMES UNDER WATER

More than 1,000 Men Trying to Reach Town Cut Off from World by Waters.

The screams and moans of women and children at Elba, Ala., spurred rescue parties on from all directions. A telephone lineman pentrated [sic] to within a half mile of the inundated town and came back white-lipped with a tale of agonizing pleas for aid and a picture of huddled groups of rain-soaked figures on the tops of buildings.

The tops of houses were under water, he said.

National guard companies and volunteers numbering more than a thousand went into the area by boat. Airplanes whirred overhead to ascertain the extent of flood toll.

Commandeered skiffs, fishing boats and motor craft buffeted flood waters Friday as rescue parties numbering more than 1,000 tried to reach the inundated town of Elba, Ala., where 4,000 persons were trapped in upper floors and roofs of houses and buildings.

The first attempt to enter Elba, made by a group of eight volunteers in the darkness of the night, ended disastrously according to first reports. The boats were too flimsy to breast the swift current and one was overturned. It was feared four were drowned.

The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, NE 15 Mar 1929

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The property damage here alone is estimated at $4,000,000 by J. W. Rainey, president of the Elba bank. This business man, one of those trapped in the court house, despairs of the rebuilding of the town.

"Whether we will rebuild on this spot, I don't know," he said.

Not a building in the mud-covered town is undamaged. Hundreds of them were completely destroyed and scores were carried away on the crest of the flood and swept down the Pea river.

The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, NE 19 Mar 1929