"BLIZZARD
STRIKES CARROLL.
---
ROADS BLOCKED BY DRIFTS-NO MAIL DELIVERY--TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH WIRES BROKEN
DOWN--TRAINS DELAYED BY WRECKED FREIGHT TRAIN THAT WAS DERAILED BY DRIFT. ---
The worst Spring blizzard since
March 4, 1909, visited Maryland Tuesday and isolated our city and county from the outside
world until Wednesday. The snow started to fall Monday evening about 7:30 o'clock and was
accompanied by high wind that piled the snow in huge drifts, blocking roads, interrupting
railroad traffic and demoralizing telegraph and telephone service. In Baltimore two
persons were killed. One by suffocating under a collapsed chicken house roof and another
fatally injured by a street car from the blinding snow. It is estimated by the C. & P.
Telephone Company that 15,000 telephones in the state were out of commission, 5,000 poles
down and that the total damage would represent a loss of about $500,000. It will require
10 days to restore service again. Some of the effects from the snow storm were: The
Westminster and Reisterstown Bus and the Union Bridge Bus abandoned all of its schedules
on Tuesday, as the roads were drifted to an impassable state. On Wednesday morning the
running of the busses were resumed on schedule time. The Gwynn Oak Bus did not attempt to
fill its schedule until yesterday morning, as the Washington road was not opened until
Wednesday afternoon. The State Roads Commission snow plows were sent out at midnight
Monday to open the State roads. One succeeded in reaching Bridgeport by the way of
Taneytown going up, but experienced difficulty on the return. The one that started down to
Reisterstown made it as far as Sandyville where it found trouble in bucking the drifts and
turned and came back to this city. On the Manchester road Thomas, Bennett & Hunter
rigged up a truck with a plow in front and sent it out. The road was drifted badly and at
Brummel the driver of the machine was blinded by the heavy fall of snow and went up a bank
and stuck. After releasing the machine it was brought back to this city. In the evening
the plows were again sent out and cleaned the snow from the roads with some little
difficulty, except where drifts were too large to buck a gang of men were used to shovel a
path wide enough to allow traffic to proceed. The county roads were drifted shut and were
shoveled open by men. The mail carriers on the rural mail routes made an attempt to
despatch, but only one succeeded, and that was on Route 12, but he was ten hours longer
than usual. The rest only serving a part of their patrons and then only returning after a
hard try to move through the deep snow. A number of automobilists were caught out in the
snow Monday night and abandoned their cars and walked to their destination after they
became wedged in a snow bank. The next day they returned and dug their cars out. Some of
the cars were covered completely over. The loss of the C. & P. Telephone Company will
be very heavy as hundreds of telephone poles and numerous wires leveled to the ground
which will require some time to repair. Gangs of men are busily engaged in restoring the
service throughout the county and in this city. Westminster was cut off from the rural
districts for a few days and no word of the extent of damage could be estimated. Large
tree limbs were smashed off by the heavy weight of the snow clinging to them. The W. M.
Railroad trains run late for three days on account of the telegraphic interruption. Poles
and wires were down at various places from Hagerstown to Baltimore, which disarranged the
block system at different points along the line. Operators, Frank Butler and Harry Ryland,
at this station directed the running of the trains between this city and Emory Grove and
Union Bridge. A freight train was wrecked in a snow bank on the Western Maryland Railway,
west of Glyndon, Tuesday morning. Passenger and mail trains were delayed several hours.
Our city was a sea of slush and water for two days but the snow is disappearing rapidly.
Our public schools were closed all day Tuesday and some of the rural ones were not opened
until yesterday."
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