in the district mentioned that did not lose one or more members, while the hospitals are crowded with wounded beyond their capacity, and the county court house is being converted into a hospital for their care.
The Catholic hospital down the island, was completely demolished. All the Sisters and ninety inmates were drowned.
The waves dashed over and flooded Fort San Jacinto, demolishing the barracks, officers’ quarters, and drowning fourteen privates, two buglers, and First Sergeant of Company O, First Artillery.
BUILDINGS DESTROYED BY THE FLOOD.
The Opera House, City Hall, Masonic Temple, Moody’s Bank Building, Knapp’s publishing house, and Ritter’s saloon and restaurant, on the strand, are wrecked. From the latter seven dead bodies were removed from beneath the debris.
Parties are engaged in removing the debris of the Knapp Building. Beneath they expect to find the body of Oscar Knapp, senior member of the firm. Richard D. Swann, cashier of John D. Rogers & Co., was drowned during the height of the storm while heroically attempting to rescue two ladies from drowning. It will be days before the full extent of the frightful disaster is known or a correct list of the dead is obtainable. A meeting of citizens was held to-day and a general committee, with the Mayor as chairman, was appointed. Sub-committees on Finance, Relief, Burial of the Dead, and Hospitals were appointed, and are now actively at work to relieve the distress prevailing and give decent burials to the dead.
The terrific cyclone that produced such a distressing disaster in Galveston and all through Texas was predicted by the United States Weather Bureau to strike Galveston Friday night and created much apprehension, but the night passed without the prediction being verified. The conditions, however, were ominous, the danger signal was displayed on the flag staff of the Weather Bureau, shipping was warned, etc. The southeastern sky was sombre, the Gulf beat high on the beach with that dismal thunderous roar that presaged trouble, while the air had a stillness that betokens a storm. From out of the north, in the middle watches of the night, the wind began to come in spiteful puffs, increasing in volume as the day dawned.
By ten o’clock Saturday morning it was almost a gale; at noon it had increased in velocity and was driving the rain, whipping the pools and tearing things up in a lively manner, yet no serious apprehension was felt by residents remote from the encroachments of the Gulf. Residents near the beach were aroused to the danger that threatened their homes. Stupendous waves began to send their waters far inland and the people began a hasty exit to secure places in the city.
TWO GIGANTIC FORCES AT WORK.
Two gigantic forces were at work. The Gulf force drove the waves with irresistible force high upon the beach, and the gale from the northeast pitched the waters against and over the wharves, choking the sewers and flooding the city from that quarter. The streets rapidly began to fill with water, communication became difficult and the helpless people were caught between two powerful elements, while the winds howled and rapidly increased in velocity.
Railroad communication was cut off shortly afternoon, the track being washed out; wire facilities completely failed at 3 o’clock, and Galveston was isolated from the world. The wind momentarily increased in velocity, while the waters rapidly rose and the night drew on with dreaded apprehension depicted in the face of every one.
Already hundreds and thousands were bravely struggling with their families against the mad waves and fierce wind for places of refuge. The public school buildings, court house, hotels, in fact any place that offered apparently a safe refuge from the elements, became crowded to their utmost. Two minutes of 6.30 P. M., just before the anemometer blew away the wind had reached the frightful velocity of 100 miles an hour. Buildings that had hitherto stood tumbled and crashed, carrying death and destruction to hundreds of people. Roofs whistled through the air, windows were driven in with a crash or shattered by flying slate, telegraph, telephone and electric light poles, with their masses of wires, were snapped off like pipe stems, and water communications were broken.
What velocity the wind attained after the anemometer blew off is purely a matter of speculation. The lowest point touched by the barometer in the press correspondents’ office, which was filled by frightened men and women, was 28.04½; this was about 7.30 P. M. It then began to rise very slowly, and by 10 P. M. had reached 28.09, the wind gradually subsiding, and by midnight the storm had passed. The water, which had reached a depth of eight feet on the strand at 10 P. M, began to ebb and ran out very rapidly, and by 5 P. M. the crown of the street was free of water. Thus passed out one of the most frightful and destructive storms which has ever devastated the coast of Texas.
ADDITIONAL DETAILS.
The city is filled with destitute, bereft and homeless people, while in the improvised morgues are the rigid forms of hundreds. Whole families are side by side.
The city beach in the southwestern part of the city was under ten feet of water, and the barracks there are destroyed, the soldiers having a marvelous escape from drowning. Many substantial residences in the western and southwestern part of the city were destroyed, and the death list from there will be large.
A heavy mortality list is expected among the residents down the island and adjacent to the coast on the mainland, as both were deeply flooded, and the houses were to a great extent insecure. The heaviest losers by the storm will be the Galveston Wharf Company, the Southern Pacific Railway Company, and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway Company, and the Texas Lone Star Flouring Company.
Additional details by tug from Galveston show that west of Thirty-third street the storm swept the ground perfectly clear of the residences that once stood upon it and piled them up in a conglomerated mass five blocks back on the beach, strewing the piling with the debris and the bodies of its many victims. Many of these were lying out in the afternoon sun and were frightful to look upon. The fearful work of the storm was not confined to the district along the beach, but took in all the district in the city and the Denver resurvey, but it was near to the beach that most destruction to human life occurred.
The waves washed away the Home for the Homeless, and it is thought that the inmates, consisting of thirteen orphans and three matrons, were drowned. Out in the Denver resurvey the destruction was terrible, and victims of the storm were many. The government works were greatly damaged, the buildings on the beach were washed out into the Gulf and their occupants are thought to have perished.
COMMUNICATIONS ALL CUT.
In the north part of the west end the damage was great also, almost every building being damaged to some extent, and many completely wrecked. The cotton and lumber yards in that section of the city were completely razed, and much valuable machinery is ruined. However, the loss of life was not nearly so great in that district as it was out towards the beach.
A special to the “News” from Galveston brought to Houston by the tug “Brunswick” gave the following additional particulars of the storm:
“The
