The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-08-29
WHAT SHOULD Be DONE FOR
PORTO R|CO'S STRICKEN TOWN

I last looked down on Ponce, Por-
to Rico, when it was a pretty town
basking in the rays of a Southern sun,
overhead a blue Italian sky, everything
telling of peacefulness and content
ment. Ponce did not improve upon a
closer acquaintance, but even with it's
narrow streets and the shanty-like
houses of the poorer quarter it retained
its picturesqueness and was an inter
esting town still. But Ponce, after the
deluge had swept down upon it, was an
unmitigated horror. That such a quiet
and peaceful city should have been
chosen for the vengeance of the ele-
ments is inexplicable, for the inhabi-
tants were like overgrown children and
the houses of the majority were certain
ly not worth any wind or rain demons
while to make sport of.
Sitting in the home of an old timer at
Ponce, l listened to the story of for
mer visitation of the island similar to
that which has just swept over Porto
Rico. 1t was very much the same story
as that told of the recent catastrophe.
A sleeping city; a bowling, tearing,
rending whirl that came all unherald-
and swept them along in one great cat
aract of destruction, while King Death,
riding the tempest in his grimmest and
most murderous guise, Knocked at the
efforts of even the most skillful swim
mer to escape in such a mad riot of
wind and water.
The local weather bureau, / can say
from personal observation, was a most
efficient one, and there is no doubt that
all that could be done to forestall the
disaster was done. But the word hurri-
cane had lost its terrors for the island
ers. Familiarity bred contempt The
stories of the families are all about the
tempestuous visitations of former years
and the natives had come to regard the
warnings of coming storms that are so
frequently given very much as do the
people who live on the sides of Mount
Etna and know that some day the vol
cano will again send a fiery serpent
down the mountain side to spit its hot
breath over the green landscape. In
other words, they ignored the danger
altogether, and like the original deluge,
the floods came on sleeping people.
/ know of no way for the survivors
of the disaster at Porto Rico to obtain
food and water to keep them from
starvation but b. the generosity of the
people of the United States. There are
no resources on the island that can be
hurried in an emergency of this kind
to the stricken sufferers. Ponce, of
course, should be the first objective
point for such relief as that which is
being hurriedly sent out by the Amer
lean people. The vessels will find peo-
pie sitting in darkness and in the ruins
wrought by great disaster, and, al
though the presence of the Americans
will make a great difference to this Wis
itation as compared with those of other
years, it is safe to predict that the Por-
to Ricans will make little effort to he p
themselves. They are the people to sit
and starve in their calamity until some
one comes with Anglo-Saxon energy
and grit to clear up the debris and pre-
pare Porto Rico for the next visitation
which sooner or later will sweep over
the island again.
After the needs Of the people of Ponce
have been satisfied the next most ur-
gent case to be looked into is that of
the people of Point Pitre, where many
of the Porto Ricans were saved by
nocking to the stone-built churches. but
found that they had preserved their
lives only perhaps to lose them by a
worse fate, a starvation stared in the
face those who escaped drowning. In
the wrecked towns of Salinas and San
Ysabel, too, whose inha btantS l re-
tmber as a docile and thrifty people,
the walls of. starving women and chill
dren salute the ears of those who go
with food for the sufferers. The cattle
We're killed off in the fields in great
numbers and swept along on the rag
ing torrent so that the people wander
far in what was once a prosperous
country and find nothing to support the
life that many regret having saved.
The most intense suffering prevails at
Humacao on the east side of the Hum
acao river. This attractive town of
5000 or 5000 inhabitants was almost en-
tirely demolished. and its fine church,
hospital and town mouse reduced to
shapless heaps of brick and stone. The
storm whirled over, Piedras, a few
miles from Humacao, and only a
percentage of the twelve hundred
Piedrasites now sit helplessly amid
the ruins of that city crying for
aid. Guayama, which the tempest
wrecked, is about so miles east of
Ponce on the coast. Before the disas-
ter Guyana boosted of 4500 inhabi-
tants and possessed one OF the finest re-
1igious edifices on the island. Now a
remnant of the one remains and the
other is numbered with the things that
were. Coama, which is one of the IA
nous resorts reported ruined, lay on
the San Juan highway, a score of miles
from Ponce. It's population before the
disaster numbered 1900 1t is impossi-
BILE to select one town before another,