The Press., 1910-03-30
\ BLOW IN JAMAICA
Things That Happen When a Big
 Storm Breaks Loose There.
A WEST INDIAN HURRICANE.
1t will Leap Out of Clear Sky and Level Almost Everything In lts Path Then Comes a TorrentiaI pownpour That Ends in q Flood.

N VIII Leap Out of Clear SNy ana
 Level Almost Everything In It's
 Path Then Comes a TorrentiaI
 Downpour That Ends in Flood.
 'Have you ever been through West Indian hurricane?" said man who has lived in the tropics on and off for a number of years. .Do you want to know what the experience is like?
 "A hurricane will leap out of clear sky, swoop down on city, blow ev- erything in it's path flat and pass on. Then follows the tail of the hurricane, a steady breeze blowing in the same direction, but at much lower veioci- ty. This is likely to continue for many hours, sometimes for many days, and is always accompanied by a tor rental downpour of rain.
 'I was in Kingston. Jamaica, at the time of the hurricane of 1903. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon I was in my office on the top floor of rickety wooden building. As suddenly as clap of thunder the room went dark.
 'T had q pretty good idea of what was about to happen and, going to the window, looked out across the roofs. A black cloud had whirled up out of the southwest. obscuring the sun, but the mountains back of the city were still golden with light.
 ''In less than a quarter of an hour the wind reached us. The first struc- ture that went was a wooden watch tower about 200 feet high that had been used in the old days to locate ships approaching the harbor. It had weathered all previous hurricanes, but this time it went down like house of cards. Spars of lumber from that tower were carried as far as twenty blocks before they came to the ground.
 "Then the spire of the church went, the roofs of good many residences in the public gardens snapped of about halfway from the ground. Buildings in Kingston, however. are calculated to stand a pretty severe blow. They are built only a few stories high, and the roofs present broad and cOmpaFa- lively flat surface to the wind. COpsid- ering the velocity at which that huFFt- cane was travelling. the damage was not great. Even my crazy office build ing withstood it. But the tail of the thing followed. with a heavier rain than I have ever seen before or since. To say that 1t came down in bucket fuls would be mild. It was as If the clerk of the weather had taken the plug out of some huge vat suspended above our heads and allowed the wa ter to plump straight down on us.
 ''In three hours the macadam on the streets had been washed into the har- bor. The street outside my window was a rushing river as much as four feet deep in places. l saw cart try to cross it, but with the water above the axle of the wheel and the horses legs being washed away from under 1t it was an impossible task. and the driver turned back. Big casks and packing cases were dancing on the sur face like corks.
 ''AS you can imagine, l did not get home to supper that evening. It was 8 o'clock before the rain stopped and the water in the streets had drained into the harbor. Even then traffic had not begun to reorganize itself.
 ''The trolley car tracks had been washed out, and no cars were rum ming. Cabs, however. were doing a roaring business. and eventually l got a cabman to drive me home for three times his customary charge.
 'The damage to property in King ston mounted up to hundreds of thou sands of dollars, but the real destruc ton was wrought in the country dis tricts. Floods wiped out many R negro village and sent the fimsy houses floating down the rivers, The railroads were tied up for nearly a week. Every, banana tree in the path of the hurFl- cane was uprooted. Oh. yes. West Indian hurricane can do a lot of dam age when it gets busy.
 LOSS of life, did you say? Of course there was. Nearly 200 people were killed throughout the island on that Oc- casion. but we grow accustomed to that in the West Indies. We expect . hurricane every once in awhile, and we know that it will take it's toll of human life when 1t comes. If you had been telling the story you would prob ably have mentioned that first of all, but sudden death is so common below the tropic of Cancer that we get cal Ions. I silDDOSe "-New York Sun,