On Wednesday night several thousand persons were still marooned in the court house, hospital, factory buildings and other structures because the various relief parties sent from South Bend and other cities had not sufficient boats to carry them to the nearest dry land. Snow was falling heavily and the suffering was intense, because of the lack of heating facilities. The city was in darkness, except for a scant supply of lanterns.
FAMINE AND DISEASE
But the height of the flood had been reached. On Thursday the water was receding three inches an hour. It had fallen four feet since the previous morning, but the current was still so swift on Canton Street and in South Peru, that it was impossible to investigate in rowboats the district in which the heaviest loss of life was supposed to have occurred.
There were three inches of snow on the ground and it was still falling. Recovering from the flood, Peru organized to meet greater menaces, famine and disease. At a meeting in the courtroom at the county building, Lieutenant-Governor O'Neill was chosen head of the committee on organization.
Hundreds of persons marooned in the second stories of their homes appealed to passing boats for food, fuel and water. Fishermen seized some of the boats and were taking the curious sightseeing. Persons who appropriated boats and tied them up were arrested.
There were 500 persons at the Bears Hotel in Peru. Their only fire was a grate in the lobby. Two meals a day were served. The water had receded so that a Lake Erie and Western relief train was pulled up to the canning factory in the northeast part of the town and took out 200 persons marooned three days. They were taken to towns along Lake Erie. It was estimated that 2,000 persons had left the city and were being cared for in towns and school houses to the north. The relief committee discouraged the influx of people who came to Peru to see and eat, as there were more mouths to feed than there were provisions.
Lieutenant-Governor O'Neill remained in Peru to insure whatever aid the state could give the sufferers. He ordered the Indiana Board of Health to send experts to make the city sanitary. These specialists had the co-operation of city and county medical societies and a score of physicians who came from other cities.
Copyright by George Grantham Bain. Scores of strongly-built bridges like this throughout the flood districts were carried away by the raging torrents