The Grit-advocate., 1900-09-14

Houston, Texas, Sept. 1O.-Richard
Spillane, well-known Galveston news
paper man and day correspondent of
the Associated Press in that city, who
reached Houston to-day after Il ter
rible experience, gives the following
account Of the disaster at Galveston:
"One of the most awful tragedies of
modern times has visited Galveston.
The city is in ruins and the dead vii!
number probably 1000.
1.-THE storm began about 2 o'clock
Saturday morning. Previous to that a
great storm had been raging in the
gulf, and the tide was very high. The
wind at first came from the north and
was in direct opposition to the force
from the gulf. While the storm in
the gulf piled the water upon the
beach side of the city, the north wind
piled the water from the bay onto the
bay part of the city.
About noon it became evident that
the city was going to be visited with
disaster. Hundreds of residences
along the beach front We're hurriedly
abandoned, the families fleeing to
dwellings in higher portions of the
city. Every home was opened to the
refugees, black or white. The wind
was rising constantly, and rain fell in
torrents. The wind was so fierce that
the rain cut like knife.
BY 3 o'clock the waters of the gulf
and bay met, and by dark the entire
city was submerged. The flooding of
the electric light plant and the gas
plants left the city in darkness. To go
out on the streets was to court death.
The wind was then at cyclonic veloci-
ty, roofs, cisterns, portions of build
| ings, telegraph poles and walls were
falling, and the noise of the wind and
the crashing of the buildings was ter
rifying in the extreme. The wind and
waters rose steadily from dark until
1:45 o'clock Sunday morning. During
all this time the people of Galveston
We're like rats in traps. The highest
portion Of the city was four or five
feet under water, while in the great
majority of cases the streets were sub
merged to a depth of ten feet. To
leave house was to drown. To re-
main was to court death in the wreck
age.
"Such night of agony has seldom
been equaled. Without apparent rea-
son the waters suddenly began to sub
side at 1:45 a. M. Within two min
utes they had gone down two feet and
before daylight the streets We're prac-
tically freed from the flood waters In
the meantime the wind had veered to
the southeast
THE first hurried glance over the
city showed that the largest structures,
supposed to be the most substantially
built, suffered the most.
VERY few, if any buildings escaped
injury. There is hardly a habitable
dry house in the city. When the peo-
pie who had escaped death went out at
daylight to view the work of the tenn
pest and the floods, they saw the most
horrible sight Imaginable. In the three
blocks from Avenue N to Avenue p, in
fremont street, 1 saw eight bodies.
Four corpses in one yard.
1.-The whole of the business front
for three blocks in from the gulf was
stripped of every vestige of habitation,
the dwellings, the great bathing estab-
lishmcnts, the Olympia, and every
structure having been either carried
out to sea or its ruins piled in a pyra-
mid far into town, according to the
vagaries of the tempest.
"The Orphans Home. Twenty-first
and Avenue NJ, fell like a house of
cards. How many dead children and
refugees are in the ruins could not be
ascertained.
"Of the sick in ST. Marys Infirmary,
together with the attendants, only
eight are understood to have been
saved.
1.-THE Old Women's Home on Rosen-
burg avenue, collapsed. The Rosen-
burg school house is mass of wreck
age. The Ball high school is but an
! ,fr,r oh ~I~1