Northwest History. Alaska. Science. United States.

• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1932
• Subjects: Alaska; Weather Conditions and Climate; Fairbanks; Yukon; eskimo*; Yukon river
• Online Access: http://content.libraries.wsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/clipping/id/102251

Wave Hurls Ice 20 Miles Inland WAVE HURLS ICE 20 MILES INLAND FAIRBANKS, Alaska, April 27. (AP) —A picture of human misery "so dire as to be almost unbelievable," was drawn Tuesday by Pilot Art Woodley, upon his return here from flying the Very Rev. Francis Menager, superior of Jesuit missions in Alaska, over the country between the mouth of the Yukon river and the Hooper bay This region was struck by a tidal wave last December and several native villages destroyed. Several hundred natives in several villages visited by Woodley and Father Menager, they said, were virtually without food. The ice cakes, which rode on the tidal waves, were carried inland as far as 20 miles, they said, and destroyed the Eskimos' winter supply of fish. Missionaries have given aid, but their resources were said by Father Menager to be" limited, and now no more help could be offered. He said sickness was breaking out among the natives and there was fear of floods as a result of the melting of heavy snows. The natives in the stricken aiea probably are the most primitive people on the North American continent.