The Holly chieftain., 1900-09-14
FURTHER DETAILS CONFIRM
HORRORS OF GALVESTON FLOOD

. n IS t a. i "
"By 8 o'clock the waters Of the gulf
and bay met, and by dark the entire
city was submerged. The flooding of
plants left the city In darkness. To go
out ON the streets was to court death.
The wind was then Mt cyclonic yeloci-
ty, roofs, cisterns, portions of build
ings, telegraph poles and walls were
falling, and the noise of the wind and
! the crushing Of the buildings was ter
rifying In the extreme. The wind and
waters rose steadily from dark until
! :46 o'clock Sunday morning. During
all this time the people of Galveston
were like rats in taps. The highest
portion Of the city was four or five
feet under winter, while IL the great
majority of cases the streets were sub
merged to 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 ut 1:45 a. M. Within two min
utes they had gone down two feet, and
before daylight the streets were prac-
tlcally freed from the flood waters. In
the southeast.
1.-THE first hurried glance over the
city showed that the largest structures,
supposed to be the most substantially
built, suffered the most.
VERY few, IL any buildings escaped
injury. There is hardly a habitable
dry house in the city. When the peo-
pie who had escaped death went out mt
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, l saw eight bodies.
Four corpses in one yard.
"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-
lishments, the Olympia, and every
structure having been either carried
out to sea or its ruins piled in n pyra-
mid far into town, according to the
vagaries of the tempest.
1.-THE Orphans Home, Twenty first
and Avenue M, fell like n house of
cards. How many dead children and
refugees are in the ruins could not be
ascertained
"Of the sick in st. Mary's Infirmary.
together with the attendants. only
eight are understood to have been
saved.
"The Old Women's Home on Rosen-
! burg avenue, collapsed. The Rosen-
burg school house Is u mass Of wreck
age. The Ball high school Is but an
empty shell, crushed and broken. Ev-
cry church in the city, with possibly
| one or two exceptions, is in ruins
"At the fort nearly all the soldiers
are reported dead, they having been in
temporary quarters which gave them
no protection against the tempest or
the flood.
1.-THE bay front from end to end Is
In ruins. Nothing but piling and the
| wreck Of the great warehouses remain.
The elevators lost all their superworks,
and their stocks are damaged by water.
"The shore at Texas City contains
enough wreckage to rebuild city.
Eight persons who were swept across
the bay during the storm were picked
up there alive. Five corpses were also
picked up. There We're three fatali-
ties In Texas City. In addition to the
living and the dead which the storm
cast up ut Texas City, caskets and cof-
fms from one of the cemeteries at Gal
weston were being fished out of the
waters there to-day.
Eight ocean steamers were torn
from their moorings and stranded in
the bay. The Kendall Castle was car
rled over the flats from the Thirty
third street wharf to Texas City, and
lies In the wreckage of the Inman pier.
"Some Of the stories of escapes are
miraculous. William Nisbett, cotton
man, was buried in the ruins of the
Cotton Exchange saloon and when dug
out In the morning, had no further in.
jury than few bruised fingers.
"Dr. s. o. Young, secretary of the
Cotton Exchange, was knocked sense
less when his house collapsed, but was
revived by the water and was carried
ten blocks by the hurricane.
IA woman who had Just given birth
to child was carried from her home
to house a block distant. the men
who were carrying her having to hold
her high above their heads. as the
water was five feet deep when she
was moved.
"It will take week to tabulate the
dead and the missing and to get any
thing near an approximate idea of the
money loss. 1t Is safe to assume that
one-half Of the property of the city is
wiped out and that one-half of the resi-
dents have to face absolute poverty"