FRANCE: Moving Mountain

Above Lyons, city of silk and the finest cooking in the world, rises the whaleback of Fourviere Hill crowned by the flamboyant Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourviere. Citizens of Lyons who know call Fourviere “the moving mountain.” It moved last week.

Weeks of constant rain, constant seepings from the flooded river Saone had turned the interior of Fourviere to a quaking pudding. Earl)’ in the week engineers reported danger of landslides to city authorities. At 1:15 in the morning people living on the flank of Fourviere heard a noise ”like the crack of doom” felt the world slip out beneath them.

Houses crumpled like paper. Police and firemen rushed to the scene; 25 were snuffed out when a second landslide crashed down on them. By morning 60 deaths were recorded, near the bottom of the moving mountain was a hole goo ft. deep, 180 ft. wide, big enough to swallow a skyscraper.

No matter what the political fortunes of former Prime Minister Edouard Herriot, he is always Mayor of Lyons, has been so for 25 years. He rose from a sickbed to do what he could at the scene of the disaster. By nightfall only three bodies had been recovered from the river of mud. Said Commandant Pegout of the Fire Department:

“We must dig for several days unless there is another landslide. If there is, God help us all.”