DAM BREAK CLAIMS NINE LIVES, MANY MISSING.

Alkali Plant Dam Lets Flood Loose On Towns.

More Than Score Are Missing After Water Check in Virginia Plant Gives Way; Hospitals Crowded.

HOMES OCCUPIED BY WORKMEN WASHED OUT.

Refugees Move Into Town Near Site of Disaster and Are Taken Into Homes of Private Citizens.

SALTVILLE, Va., Dec. 25 – Nine known dead, six or seven missing, and 21 persons injured stood as the toll tonight of the muck dam disaster at the Mathieson Alkali Works on the Holston river.

The injured law[sic] in an improvised hospital here. Four or five of them are not expected to live. Many have contracted pneumonia from their immersion in the icy waters and virtually all of them were severely burned by the alkali in the muck.

Many others who escaped injury when the torrent of water and mud came down the north fork of the river, together with members of rescue parties who toiled all of last night and today in the lime muck, sustained burns and were treated at emergency hospitals.

A revised list of dead issued tonight give the following names:
MRS. LUTHER CLEAR, her son, CHARLES CLEAR.
OPAL PAULEY.
MR. AND MRS. BARRY PRATER.
LESLIE PRATER, their son.
MR. AND MRS. JAMES PRATER.
Major JAMES SCOTT.

Several of the bodies were recovered in Tumbling creek, six miles below the dam. It was feared that some of those missing were buried deep under tons of the white muck that spread throughout the valley.

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ATLANTA, Ga., Dec. 25 – Five persons are known to have been killed, six or seven are missing and 85 are injured or suffering from exposure as a result of the breaking of a “muck dam” across the Holston river of Parmar Town, Va., last night. Manager SANDLAND of the Mathieson Alkali Works of Saltville, Va., said over the telephone today.

He said the names of those dead or injured are not available and that a definite account of the accident will not be obtained before tomorrow.

ROANOKE, Va., Dec. 25 – Six dead, 28 injured and seven unaccounted for is the toll of the breaking of the muck dam of the Mathieson Alkali Works at Saltville last night, so far as determined by a check shortly after noon today, according to information gained by the Roanoke Times over long distance telephone. A call had been sent for nurses and physicians to surrounding cities to treat eye and nose cases it was said.

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