Republican on Rampage

Southwestern Nebraska is a country full of weather. In the winter it freezes, in the summer, fries. Its gulch-pocked plateaus are the scene of alternate blizzards, droughts, tornadoes, dust storms, cloudbursts. Every once in a while a Nebraskan loses his patience, goes outside to shake his fist at God. Last week there was cause aplenty for fist-shaking.

Torrents poured in the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Down went the flood waters of Cherry Creek to Denver. Down went swollen Fountain Creek at Colorado Springs, rolling eight feet deep in the residential section, drowning a man and woman on the roof of their sedan. The floods spread to Colorado's Sugar Bowl, rushed into Nebraska by way of the South Platte and Republican Rivers. The hamlets of Max and Parks vanished entirely. At McCook, home of Senator Norris, the Pastime Amusement Park slipped into the Republican River, grown two miles wide. The power station was demolished. In the dark, townsfolk watched whole houses and barns float by on the boiling flood waters. The water stood five feet deep in the Burlington station at Red Cloud, and two Chicago-Denver trains were stalled by washouts.

Results of Nebraska's worst floods: $12,000,000 property damage, 86 known dead.

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