Heroic Incidents—Arrival of Relief Trains—Hospitals for the Injured—Loud
Call for Skilled Labor.
A lady correspondent who went from Houston to view the wreck of
Galveston reported as follows:
“We are only just beginning to find out what this awful calamity has
been to the people in this vicinity. The first shock is wearing off, the
long lists of dead and missing are getting to be an old story now, and
the sick and suffering are crawling into our places of refuge. Some of
them have been sleeping on the open prairies ever since the storm, most
of them, in fact, men with broken arms and legs, sick women and ailing
children.
“They crawl out of the wreck of their homes and lie down on the bare
ground to die. Our relief corps are finding them and bringing them in as
fast as they can. Dr. Johnson and his party came in from the Galveston
district and reported that they found over 5,000 people and attended
medically about 200 patients.
“While we were standing at the door of the hospital talking things over
a man rode up on horseback. He threw his arms up to attract our
attention.
“‘Is this the relief hospital?’ he said.
“Dr. Johnson told him that it was.”
“‘I’ve come in from the Brazos bottoms,’ he said. ‘The folks there are
starving. There is not a pound of flour left and the children are crying
for milk. There are so many sick people there that we don’t know what to
do. Can you send some one down?’
“Dr. Johnson had not slept for twenty-four hours. He had not had time to
get a full meal for thirty-six hours. He was worn out and travel
stained, but he heard what the man told him.
“‘All right,’ he said. He picked up his coat, put on his hat and turned
to his assistants. ‘Come on, boys,’ he said. ‘Let us go down and get the
cars into shape. We’ll get down to your place, my man, just as fast as
the Lord will let us.’
“The man on horseback leaned over his saddle and tried to speak.
Something in his face frightened me, I called to two doctors. They ran
out and caught him. He was in a dead faint. When we had brought him to
he laughed sheepishly. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ he
said. ‘Ain’t never been taken this way before.’ The doctors looked at
each other and smiled, but the nurses’ eyes were full of tears. The man
had not tasted food for thirty-six hours, and he had ridden fifty miles
in the broiling sun of Texas. Dr. Crossway and his men are down the
island relieving the sick and burying the dead.
HOSPITAL OVERCROWDED.
“‘Alkali Ike,’ they call Dr. Crossway, that is because he is tall and
rawboned and comes from Texas himself. If a man gets a nickname in this
part of the world you know that he is loved. The women and children who
came from the district where ‘Alkali Ike’ is working know his name and
their eyes fill with grateful tears at the mention of it. The hospital
at Galveston is well named. The corps is effectively organized and we
hear from there that they are doing splendid work. Our own hospital here
in Houston is in ship-shape condition.
“We have built a partition or two, put up temporary quarters for a
dressing room for the nurses and doctors. The great ice boxes are filled
and the range, which burned wood, has been replaced with a gas range to
keep the heat down as much as possible.
“There is a little railing just back of the great wide door of the
hospital where the entrance to the theater used to be and there the
relieving nurse sits with her assistants. The bookkeeper has her desk
there and the man who answers inquirers is standing there.
“This is no ordinary hospital work. People come crowding to the doors,
and nearly all night they come. Some of them are hungry, some of them
are sick, some of them are hunting for missing friends, and some are
merely curious. Some are neighbors who come to offer help, some are
women bringing delicacies to offer to the sick. It takes the entire time
of three persons to attend to this crowd of visitors intelligently.
“We are keeping records of every case entered at the hospital. The name
and age and final disposition of the case. These names and the facts
concerning them are kept on the books for reference, so that people are
easily identified, and so that any one who has contributed to the fund
can investigate and find out just exactly what became of the money he
gave. It is hard to pick out a case in the hospital which does not
deserve special attention. A man was brought in with three broken ribs.
They were broken the night of the storm, he having been working ever
since burying the dead.
“A young man was carried to the hospital on a stretcher late last night
who was wandering up and down the island for the past three days trying
to find the body of his young wife. He found and buried over forty
bodies which had been overlooked by the burying committee, but he did
not find his wife. He is lying out at the hospital now in a stupor.
SUFFERING UNTOLD AGONY.
“A boy of twelve was brought in who has been suffering untold agony from
an injury to his eye for four days. He has not had a soul to help or to
speak to him, and all he has had to eat in that time was a handful of
crackers. A woman came in at 11 o’clock last night. She had a baby in
her arms and three children hanging to her skirts. None of them had
tasted food for nearly three days.
“A young girl was brought in by one of the outside corps at 9 o’clock
last night. The relief corps found her huddled up in an empty freight
car, laughing and singing to amuse herself. The doctors say food and
care is all she needs to restore her to reason. Three-fourths of the
people who come in are mentally dull. The physicians say with proper
care that most of them can be cured.”
One of the many touching incidents of the storm occurred at Houston on
the 18th. Mrs. R. Qualtrough and Mrs. Will Glass were at the
International and Great Northern depot Monday intent on the relief of
any who needed, when they saw a little woman with a baby of about eight
months in her arms. The mother was weeping bitterly, so the two
kind-hearted friends went up to see what was the matter. The stranger
said she had just arrived from New Orleans to find Galveston shut off
from the world, and her husband, mother and sister were there, and she
feared they were all lost. Mrs. Glass finally prevailed over the little
woman to go home with her, where she could care for her.
Tuesday Mrs. Qualtrough was busy at the market house helping to
distribute the clothing and food to the sufferers, when her son came to
her and told her there was a man from Galveston in the room, and he
wished she would go to him. The man, who was bruised and beaten in his
fight with waves, was in great distress. He wanted to get to New
Orleans, but had no money, his wife and child were there, and he had to
tell her that her mother and sisters were drowned.
WOMAN DRIFTED NEARLY THREE DAYS.
An instinct told Mrs. Qualtrough the truth. She asked what was the size
and complexion of his wife, and how old was the baby. Looking at her
strangely, the man described exactly the woman and child found at the
International and Great Northern station. “I believe your wife is here,”
was the extraordinary comment on his story. Calling to Mrs. Ward, the
fish merchant, Mrs. Qualtrough asked her to take the man to Mrs. Glass’
home, and the husband and wife met. It was a pitiful scene, for while
she had got her husband back, the poor woman learned of the loss of
mother and sisters.
A woman was brought into Houston who was two days and a night drifting
about in Galveston bay, bringing with her a parrot which she had held
above the waters all that time. The parrot and a bag of money was all
she had left.
Mr. A. C. Fonda, a patient at the Houston infirmary, was a clerk in the
Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe freight office at Galveston, and lived on
Broadway. He tells a tale of his experience which is miraculous. He
remained in his house until it was blown down, and then, in some
miraculous manner, he was blown into a large cypress cistern which was
about half full of water. After being in the cistern for about an hour a
kind of twister struck it and blew all the water out, but left him. When
the cistern was relieved of the water it rose and was finally washed out
on the Gulf, where it remained until Monday morning, when the wind and
tide brought it back to Galveston and its occupant was rescued in a
thoroughly exhausted condition.
Beaumont, Texas, September 14.—Mr. A. Zwirn, one of the Beaumonters who
left for Galveston on a freight train Monday afternoon, returned
yesterday after having spent fourteen hours in the stricken city. Mr.
Zwirn reached Galveston Tuesday evening, having succeeded in getting
across the bay on a small sailboat. He went to the Island City to search
for friends and found a greater portion of them alive.
FIRST CITY TO GIVE ASSISTANCE.
Mr. Zwirn says Beaumont was the first city to get assistance into
Galveston. He was present at a meeting of Galveston citizens when it was
announced that a boat with ice and water from Beaumont had arrived, and
he says the fervent thanks which went up from the gathering and the
tribute one of the men paid to the Queen of the Neches made him feel
proud of his residence here.
“It was, however, not the fault of Houston,” said Mr. Zwirn, “that the
Bayou City did not get supplies to the Island City quicker. The train on
which I came to the end of the railroad track had several cars of
provisions, ice, etc., and many more were standing on the tracks when we
arrived. The trouble was the absence of transportation across the bay to
Galveston. There were many boats, but the owners found it more
profitable to carry passengers from $1 per head up than to transport
supplies. I can not describe the joy with which the boat from Beaumont
was received. It not only contained that which the sufferers needed
badly, but it was evidence that there was communication with the outside
world, and revived the spirits of many who bad become despondent.”
Under the rules and regulations prescribed by the military laws
governing the city, the work of clearing the streets, disposing of the
dead and cleaning the city in general have progressed very favorably.
The plans mapped out by the military department brought the operations
down to a system. Where there is order and system much can be
accomplished, and this was most clearly demonstrated by the reports of
one day’s labors in this field. Nearly three thousand men were organized
in gangs and squads of from ten to twenty-five, working under the
direction of foremen, supervised by ward superintendents, started out
early in the morning and worked faithfully until dark. The detailed
results of their labors were not to be had, but enough was shown by the
reports to demonstrate the value of organization.
THE ARMY OF WORKERS.
All foremen were ordered to report daily at military headquarters, where
a large force of clerks were kept busy chronicling the amount of debris
removed, the number of dead bodies disposed of, etc. Another force under
command of Adjutant-General McCaleb was kept busy printing orders issued
for the guidance of the work, laws governing the protection of property
and the lives of citizens, etc.
The militia was placed on guard duty in all parts of the city and the
city police and sheriff’s department are co-operating with the military
authorities, which is supreme in control of the city.
While the power is invested in the military authorities,
Brigadier-General Scurry, commanding, Adjutant-General Hunt McCaleb
directs that men may be impressed into service in cleaning the streets
and performing other labors incumbent upon the department, it is
gratifying to know that very few men had to be impressed into service.
Some few held back under one pretense and another, but when given to
understand that they would be compelled to work they invariably joined
the army of laborers.
The beach and the western part of the city presented the picture of
about one hundred or more pyres where human bodies and the carcasses of
dead animals were disposed of by fire. Separate pyres were designated
for human bodies and animal carcasses and the work progressed rapidly.
The gruesome task was heartrending and many able-bodied men succumbed to
the terrible ordeal. The bodies recovered yesterday and those still
buried beneath the debris are in an advanced state of decomposition and
utterly beyond recognition or identification unless by the clothing or
some ornament worn by the dead. Ninety-five per cent. of the bodies
recovered are naked.
The hurricane, aided materially by the action of the raging torrents,
invariably stripped the victims of all vestige of clothing or other
articles that might lead to identification. Another remarkable fact,
which shows the force of the storm in packing the wreckage and debris in
high mounds, is seen in the amount of water held by the wreckage.
MILES OF WRECKAGE.
Six days of sunshine and seven nights of cool Gulf breezes have failed
to draw the water held by the wreckage which, jammed into water-tight
ridges, formed tanks to hold the salt water which inundated the city.
While the ground all around these ridges is dry and hard, the removal of
the top ridge disclosed several feet of water. At least 20 per cent. of
the bodies recovered yesterday from the wreckage were taken out of
water.
A reporter who attempted to make a circuit of the rescuing parties
working on the beach and throughout the western part of the city, noted
the finding of 123 and the discovery of at least twenty more bodies,
which were so hemmed in by wreckage that it was impossible to get them
out. It is impossible to estimate the number of dead buried beneath the
miles of wreckage.
When the forces started out yesterday morning it was thought by many
that the greater number of dead had been removed from the prisons built
by the storm. The work had not progressed far before the workmen began
to dig into ruins where bodies were found. During the hasty tour of the
reporter he witnessed the finding of ten bodies between Tremont and
Thirty-first streets along the ridge of wreckage which marks the path of
the storm from the east to the west on the beach and extending inland
from three to seven blocks.
The most important journal in Texas, the “Galveston News,” commented as
follows:
“The ‘News’ desires to repeat what it has already said to its now
unhappy people on Galveston Island. The sorrows of the past few days are
overwhelming, and we all feel them and will continue to feel them so
long as we live. It could not be expected that our friends and relatives
and loved ones should be so suddenly torn from us without leaving scars
from which those in the ranks of maturity can never recover.
FORTITUDE OF SURVIVORS.
“But it is all in the past now. We cannot recall our dead thousands.
Wherever they sleep, beneath the tireless waves or under the arching
skies, we will love their memories and recall as long as we live the
unspeakable and mysterious tragedy which destroyed them. But it must be
remembered that we have more than 30,000 living, and many of these are
children too young to have their lives and energies paralyzed by the
disaster which has overtaken us.
“Our homes must be rebuilt, our schools repaired, and the natural
advantages of the port must sooner or later receive our earnest
attention. We have loved Galveston too long and too well to desert her
in the hour of misfortune. Our distress and destitution are going to be
relieved, for a sympathizing country is already providing for temporary
needs. This people are too proud and self-reliant, however, to lose
spirit and fail of duty. In the very darkness of the moment there is
light ahead, and we must look to the light ahead. Even in the midst of
our dead and our ruins light appears.
“The railroads are bending every effort to repair the bridges and place
us once more in commercial communication with the mainland; the
telegraph companies, putting their heavy losses behind them, are
restoring their wires as fast as men can do it; the telephone company is
doing likewise, and the wharf companies are similarly engaged. As the
‘News’ understands it, the Southern Pacific Company proposes to double
its force to complete the improvement which was so damaged by the storm.
“The waterworks will soon be restored, the street railway repaired, and
all the other elements of a metropolitan life placed in working order.
The ships will come into the harbor for traffic and get it, and that
traffic will afford employment to thousands. If the people will take
heart, they will soon find that all has not been lost, and, moreover,
much is to be saved. If we lost 5000 people, there are more than 30,000
to be provided for; if we have lost $15,000,000 in property, we still
have that much to save and restore.
REBUILDING GALVESTON.
“There is much to hope for and to strive for, and we must hope and
strive to save ourselves and meet the expectations of the world. The
‘News’ received a telegram last night from a great New York paper
inquiring if Galveston would rebuild. The answer was sent back that
Galveston did not intend to succumb to her crushing misfortune, but
would again resume her place as the great port of the Gulf. This is the
duty of the people here, and the ‘News’ expects in good time to see all
the energies of the people concentrated upon the great work of
recuperation and restoration. Will this expectation meet disappointment?
Knowing this people for nearly sixty years, the ‘News’ answers, No.”
Colonel John D. Rogers was at Toronto, Ont., when the big storm swept
Galveston. He and Colonel D. C. Giddings, of Brenham, have gone North
together for a vacation every summer for several years past, and this
year they picked Toronto as the place of recreation. As soon as the news
of the storm reached them they started for Texas, and Colonel Rogers
arrived on Friday, the 14th.
To a gentleman who called on him and asked for an expression of his
views as to the future, and his intentions as to the various properties
he is interested in, Colonel Rogers talked most hopefully and
confidently:
“So far as property losses are concerned,” said he, “I suspect I have
lost about as heavily as any men in Galveston in proportion to the
property I own here. But this constitutes no reason why I should be
discouraged. I felt that way even before I reached Galveston. Colonel
Giddings, from the newspaper accounts of the storm, doubted somewhat
that Galveston would come again. But I told him Galveston was bound to
be restored. I told him I didn’t believe the wharves were gone; no man
who knows anything of the construction of wharves could have believed
that story. I told him that the maintenance of Galveston as a port for
the west was imperatively necessary, and that if the people of Galveston
laid down and got off the island, other people would come here and build
up a city.
RESUMING BUSINESS.
“A week in Galveston has made me still more confident that I was right
in my conclusion. The work done during the past week has been wonderful,
and within another week, I believe, every kind of business will be going
on as before. We are again ready to receive cotton, and I have
instructed our shippers to send it in. Before this business season is
over we will be doing as much business as ever before, and before twelve
months have passed our buildings will be restored.
“I know that croakers will say that this cannot be done, but the croaker
will never rise in any country. I don’t believe in croakers. I believe
with ‘The News,’ that this storm has indisputably proven that the island
will not wash away. If that storm, the severest in the history of the
world, did not wash the island away, nothing ever will eliminate it from
the map. And it is not conceivable that another storm of that severity
will ever strike again in this spot. The flood of the Brazos river, in
last July, was unprecedented.
“There had never been such a flood before, and there had never been an
overflow of that river in the month of July in all the history of the
State. Again, the previous rises of the river had been gradual, but in
July, 1899, the river rose two and a half feet in one night. All of that
was very unusual, and it is improbable that it will ever be repeated.
The storm at Galveston was likewise very unusual. The waters came from
the bay and Gulf simultaneously, and met on the island. They did not go
up Buffalo bayou, as they did in 1875, when lives were lost at
Lynchburg.
“A great deal of the loss of life has been due to flimsiness of many
houses put up here in recent years for rent. The lesson which Galveston
has received is a terrible one, but it will lead to safer and better
buildings. It is true that some good buildings were wrecked by the
jamming of wreckage from flimsy buildings, but the fact that we have
many buildings standing unharmed, proves that we can build enduring
structures.
GREAT DETERMINATION.
“I have given my attention since coming home to the restoration of the
Gulf City compress and other property in which I am interested. We are
going right ahead, with greater determination, to increase our business
and to build up the city.”
“I am glad to see you alive” is the greeting with which a Galvestonian
now meets his fellow-citizen on the rubbish blocked streets of the once
proud city by the Texas coast. Those who have not been here can not
realize what it is to a man to meet a friend alive, or to find a
relative who since Saturday has been missing from the huddled few
remaining who are gathered in some desolated, wrecked and wind torn
building, which but a week ago was a happy home of happy people.
When a drama has finished, the curtain falls, and as the orchestra plays
some popular air the audience makes its way to the street, talking for a
few moments of the characters and the scenes, but shutting out from
mind, with the falling of the curtain, the happiness and the pain which
was depicted by moving characters who but represented a story of man’s
imaginative mind. Not so with this.
No curtain can be drawn and the stage remains ever before them. They
have it now as a desolate picture to gaze upon, and they will have it
forever, wander where they will upon this earth’s surface. No curtain
can force it from the mind, and no effort can efface it from the tablets
of memory. Many of the actors in this great drama are not here. Some of
them yet remain, and their stories are stranger than fiction which Jules
Verne or Dumas have written.
Amid the smoke of battle, when men meet men in armed conflict, and
thousands fall beneath the leaden hail, there is time taken to make a
trench and consign to a resting place the bodies of the fallen
thousands, and the chaplain has his moment to ask a merciful God to
receive His own. Not so with this. No trench can be made for those
people who have been found where the angry waters threw them up, where
the falling timbers caught them, or where they are floating on the
waters of a waved lashed shore.
QUICK WORK NEEDED.
They are disposed of, not as humanity would direct, or as sentiment
dictates, but as necessity demands, and it is not with the accompaniment
of a clergyman’s prayer, or the simple words of the man of the cloth,
that “God has given and God has taken away, blessed be the name of the
Lord; earth to earth, dust to dust and ashes to ashes.” Bodies have been
consigned to that element which destroyed the vitality of the
material—the water and the waves which came from the storm tossed Gulf
of Mexico to invade the portion of land which nature set aside for the
habitation of man.
This could not be continued for long. The conception of man’s mind,
which first suggested this disposition, proved to be wise judgment in
the first emergency, but nature’s laws prevented a continuance of the
plan, and it became necessary to turn to a quicker and more convenient
method, as the decomposition which fast began a destruction of the
mortal, rendered handling impossible. Cremation was then resorted to,
and without the facilities of science to assist, the destruction of the
remains was affected by using burning debris, upon the places where the
corpses were found.
Humanity may think this is terrible and sentiment may revolt at this
story, but that humanity and that sentiment is not to be found in
Galveston. Here the people have thrown aside custom and formalities, all
men are equal and that equality extends throughout the whole city. No
custom of dress, no formality of appearance and no false modesty enters
into one’s mind. Men and women cover their nakedness with what they can
procure from neighbors, from friends or from the relief committee or
what perchance was saved from the wreckage of their own homes, and they
proceed with the work of looking after their own, their friends and
their neighbors, as necessity demands. All people are neighbors here and
all have a common interest.
NEW CHART OF BAY NEEDED.
A phenomenal thing has occurred in the bay. There are now bars there
which have never before been seen. They are across from the Twenty-fifth
street wharf and from the Twentieth street wharf. There may be others,
but these two long ridges of sand have been noticed by the observing men
who know the bay front as well as they know anything, and it is possible
that when the water is sounded quite a number of these will be found in
various places. It may require a new chart of the bay to determine the
damage, and until this is done the greatest care must be exercised in
moving about the harbor.
Those who live away from here will have an idea of the wreckage when it
is stated that within an area bounded by Thirteenth street on the west,
the end of the island on the east, the Gulf on the south and Broadway on
the north, there is not a standing house. Between Broadway and
Postoffice street and between Thirteenth street and the end of the
island there is not a house standing. In the territory south of avenue K
and east Tremont street all the way to the Denver resurvey there is not
a house standing. There are other portions of the city which are in a
similar condition, but it is impossible to tell them now.
The Sealy hospital was first reported as having been blown away, but it
survived the storm in a most remarkable manner, notwithstanding the fact
that it is situated where the raging waters were the highest. With the
exception of broken window panes, a damaged ceiling and a good drenching
of a number of the rooms, with their contents, it is virtually unharmed.
The nurses’ home, which stood opposite the infirmary and was used in
conjunction with it, was completely demolished, but with no loss of
life.
There was no loss of life among the regular inmates of the hospitals. A
number died during the storm, but they had been brought in in a dying
condition.
CLOTHED ONE THOUSAND.
One thing developed by the storm that has not been commented upon is the
manner in which the so-called “society men” have taken hold of things.
They have worked like Trojans, every one of them, and have proven that
the wearing of good and fashionably cut garments is no evidence of lack
of manhood. Some of the first to go out in charge of gangs of men
clearing away the debris and burying the bodies were the young fellows
one meets at cotillions and fashionable functions. To-day their fair
skins are cracked and burned with sun and wind, their hands blistered
and burned, and their clothes covered with mud and slime. They glory in
their young manhood, and are not one bit ashamed to go about with their
collarless negligee shirt open at the neck, or their sleeves rolled up.
Some of them have not shaved since the storm, and look more like
subjects for charity than many who apply for relief.
One young man, who probably clothed one thousand people in two days, is
going around in a very much soiled, borrowed shirt. His home was
destroyed, and all the clothes he saved he had on his back at the time.
He has not had time to buy new clothing, although he has probably
clothed one thousand people. He would as soon have stolen as to have
taken one of the nice clean shirts he was giving away. Besides, it never
occurred to him.
Mr. J. Martin, one of the refugees at Houston, who passed through the
storm at Galveston all right, save a gash in the head, a black eye, a
mashed nose, and a sprained arm and leg, says that on the night of the
storm he sought shelter in six different houses. As the last of these
houses in turn succumbed to the force of the hurricane, Mr. Martin was
plunged into the dark and angry waters, amid its splintering ruins.
Numerous times, he said, falling timbers would knock him unconscious for
a few moments, and after regaining his senses he would be so full of
water, so exhausted and weak from his desperate exertions and loss of
blood, that he felt like giving up all hope and allowing the water to
draw him under and relieve him of his sufferings.
FOR A MOTHER’S LOVE.
He says he saw other men who were physically stronger than he do that
very thing. Still he would not give up and he struggled on. He had no
wife or child to live for—there was just one person in the world whom he
fondly loved, and that was his mother. Every time, he says, that he
decided to let himself go down beneath the water and drown his mother’s
face would appear before his vision. Clearly and distinctly he could see
the look of reproach in her eyes at his threatened weakness, and each
time this vision would spur him to greater effort, and he would battle
on until he reached another place of safety.
Finally, when the storm had spent its fury and he crawled into a place
of safety, he drifted into unconsciousness and remained in that
condition until late Sunday evening. Mr. Martin says that his mother
lives in New York and he knew she was safe, but says had it not been for
the image of her face which constantly appeared before him he certainly
would never have lived to tell his experience.
There are no better hearted people in the world than the Americans. Not
a case of genuine suffering or honest and unavoidable misfortune need
ever go long without generous assistance in any part of the United
States, if only the people know that it is a proper case for their
sympathy. And this is true whether the misfortune be an individual and
private or a public calamity.
The papers in all parts of the country, without exception, called the
attention of their readers to the destructiveness of the hurricane in
Texas, expressed their profound sympathy with the sufferers and urged
instant relief measures. There never was a more general manifestation of
popular solicitude, or a readier or more widespread response to an
appeal for assistance.
And yet this is the American rule in such cases. The humblest and the
highest give and give quickly. Nothing is too good for the unfortunate
when it is known that their misfortune could not be warded off and that
they are left utterly helpless.
It makes us love our country better when we find it has such a people
within its borders. We regain the confidence in mankind which may have
been shattered in sordid every day business. We feel that down in the
heart, the good impulses remain, and that only something a little out of
the ordinary is necessary to reveal (to slightly paraphrase Goldsmith)
that
To relieve the wretched is our pride,
And e’en our failings lead to virtue’s side.