Читать книгу The Great Galveston Disaster - Paul Lester - Страница 85

Table of Contents

The people were undergoing a period of the sharpest deprivation, sickness prevailed, and intense suffering was in store for them. The plight of the city and its inhabitants was such that it would be impossible to exaggerate the picture, and demanded from the prosperous and humane everywhere the promptest and most abundant outpouring of gifts.

Food, clothing, household goods, provisions of every kind, household utensils, medicines and money were needed by the stricken city and its impoverished men, women and children. There has been no case in our history which appealed more strongly for sympathy and aid.

Former State Senator Wortham, who went to Galveston as the special aid to Adjutant-General Scurry to investigate the conditions there, returned to Austin and made his report. He said:

“I am convinced that the city is practically wrecked for all time to come. Fully seventy-five per cent. of the business portion of the town is irreparably wrecked, and the same per cent. of damage is to be found in the residence district.

“Along the wharf front great ocean steamships have bodily bumped themselves on to the big piers and lie there, great masses of iron and wood that even fire cannot totally destroy.

“The great warehouses along the water front are smashed in on one side, unroofed and shattered throughout their length, the contents either piled in heaps on the wharves or on the streets. Small tugs and sailboats have jammed themselves half into buildings, where they were landed by the incoming waves and left by the receding waters. Houses are packed and jammed in great confusing masses in all of the streets.