"My sister, Miss Nina, together with my step-brother and his wife, whom she was visiting, drifted with the tide on the roof of a house a distance of two blocks, where they were rescued. With a number of others I built a raft and in a short time had pulled eleven persons from the very jaws of death. Continuing, Mr. Speck related how a number of folks from Woodvale had all come down upon their housetops. Mr. Curtis Williams and his family picked their way from house to house, finally being pulled in the Catholic church window by ropes." Three of a Family Drowned. William Hinchman, with his wife and two children, reached the stone bridge in safety. Here one of the babies was swept away through the arches. The others were also swept with the current, and when they came out on the other side the remaining child was missing, while below Mrs. Hinchman disappeared, leaving her husband the sole survivor of a family of four. "Did your folks all escape alive?" I asked of George W. Hamilton, late assistant superintendent of the Cambria Iron Company, whom I met on the road near New Florence. "Oh, no" was his reply. "Out of a family of sixteen seven are lost. My brother, his wife, two children, my sister, her husband and one child, all are gone; that tells the tale. I escaped with my wife by jumping from a second story window onto the moving debris. We landed back of the Morrell Institute safe and sound." Hairbreadth Escapes. The stories of hairbreadth escapes and the annihilation of families continue to be told. Here is one of them. J. Paul Kirchmann, a young man, boarded with George Schroeder's family in the heart of the town, and when the flood came the house toppled over and went rushing away in the swirling current. There were seven in all in the party and Kirchmann found himself wedged in between two houses, with his head under water. He dived down, and when he again came to the surface succeeded in getting on the roof of one of them. The others had preceded him there, and the house floated to the cemetery, over a mile and a half away, where all of them were rescued. Kirchmann, however, had fainted, and for seven or eight hours was supposed to be dead. He recovered, and is now assisting to get at the bodies buried in the ruins. Saloon-keeper Fitzharris and his family of six had the lives crushed out of them when their house collapsed, and early this morning all of them, the father, mother and five children were taken from the wreck, and are now at the morgue. Emil Young, a jeweler, lived with mother, wife, three sons and daughter over his store on Clinton street, near Main. They were all in the house when the wild rush of water surrounded their home, lifted it from its foundation and carried it away. Young and his daughter were drowned and it was then that his mother and wife showed their heroism and saved the life of the other members of the family.