Читать книгу The Great Galveston Disaster - Paul Lester - Страница 89

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“The further the ruins are dug into the greater becomes the increase in the list of those who perished as their houses tumbled about their heads. On the lower beach a searching party found a score of corpses within a small area, going to show that the bulwark of debris that lies straight across the island conceals more bodies than have been accounted for.

“Volunteer gangs continue their work of hurried burial of the corpses they find on the shores of Galveston Island, at the many neighboring points where fatalities attended the storm. It will probably be many days, yet, however, before all the floating bodies have found nameless graves.

“Along the beach they are constantly being washed up. Whether these are those who were swept out into the Gulf and drowned or are simply the return ashore of some of those cast into the sea to guard against terrible pestilence, there is no means of knowing. In a trip across the bay yesterday I counted seven bodies tossing in the waves, with a score of horses and cattle, the stench from which was unbearable. In various parts of the city the smell of decomposed flesh is still apparent. Wherever such instances are found the authorities are freely disinfecting. Only to-day, a babe, lashed to a mattress, was picked up under a residence in the very heart of the city and was burned.

“The city still presents the appearance of widespread wreck and ruin. Little has been done to clear the streets of the terrible tangle of wires and the masses of wreck, mortar, slate, stone and glass that bestrew them. Many of the sidewalks are impassable. Some of them are littered with debris. Others are so thickly covered with slime that walking on them is out of the question. As a general rule substantial frame buildings withstood better the blasts of the gale than those of brick. In other instances, however, small wooden structures, cisterns and whole sides of houses have been plumped down in streets or back yards squares away from where they originally stood.