Читать книгу The Great Galveston Disaster - Paul Lester - Страница 87

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“I believe that with the very best exertions of the men it will require weeks to obtain some semblance of physical order in the city, and it is doubtful if even then all the debris will be disposed of.

“There is hardly a family on the island whose household has not lost a member or more, and in some instances entire families have been washed away or killed.

“Hundreds who escaped from the waves did so only to become the victims of a worse death, being crushed by falling buildings.

“Down in the business section of the city the foundations of great buildings have given way, carrying towering structures to their ruin. These ruins, falling across the streets, formed barricades on which gathered all the floating debris and many human bodies. Many of these bodies were stripped of their clothing.

“Some of the most conservative men on the island place the loss of human beings at not less than 7500 and possibly 10,000. The live stock on the island has been completely annihilated.

“I consider that every interest on the island has suffered. Not one has escaped. From the great dock company to the humblest individual the loss has been felt and in many instances it is irreparable. In cases where houses have been left standing the contents are more or less damaged, but in the large majority of cases the houses themselves did not escape injury.”

At fifteen minutes to four o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday the 13th, for the first time since Saturday afternoon at twenty-six minutes after four o’clock, Galveston was in telegraphic communication with the outside world, although not open for business completely.

The cable left Chicago on Sunday morning and was laid across the bay, and several thousand telegraph poles on the mainland were straightened up by a force of 250 men under the supervision of superintendents of the Western Union.

Concerning the great calamity, the destruction of life and property, the view expressed by a prominent citizen was very generally approved. He said:

“The people and military officers who are dooming Galveston to eternal ruin would have consigned Lisbon to a lasting chaos after her earthquake and decried and abandoned St. Louis with vacant crumbling houses after the great cyclone. If the citizens of Chicago had listened to their despairing notes, blackened fragments of half-fallen walls and shapeless heaps of brick and stone would still be the fitting monuments to proclaim their broken spirit.