The Great Galveston Disaster / Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Including Vivid Descriptions of the Hurricane and Terrible Rush of Waters; Immense Destruction of Dwellings, Business Houses, Churches, and Loss of Thousands of Human Lives; Thrilling Tales of Heroic Deeds; Panic-Stricken Multitudes and Heart-Rending Scenes of Agony; Frantic Efforts to Escape a Horrible Fate; Separation of Loved Ones, etc., etc.; Narrow Escapes from the Jaws of Death; Terrible Sufferings of the Survivors; Vandals Plundering Bodies of the Dead; Wonderful Exhibitions of Popular Sympathy; Millions of Dollars Sent for the Relief of the Stricken Sufferers

by Paul Lester

GREAT WRECK OF ST. MARY’S INFIRMARY.

The next greatest wreck is the St. Mary’s Infirmary on Market and Eighth streets. Practically everything there is gone but the new part, which was completed about two years ago. This is badly damaged, but is being used. It does not cover more than a quarter of the floor space of the entire building when intact. This is used to support injured and is the place of refuge. Sealy Hospital, between Ninth and Tenth streets, escaped serious injury, beyond damage to the roof.

The colored school, on the corner of Broadway and Tenth streets, is a mass of wreckage, piled up with the debris along the mountain chain previously described. This was a large two-story frame building of eight rooms, and stood high in the air. A little Episcopal mission, located on the corner of Fifteenth and Avenue L, was carried northwest along Fifteenth street and broke up a block away. The gentleman who was in charge of the mission, Henry Hirsinger, was lost.

This great line of wreckage forms the division point between a mass of houses unroofed and partly damaged and a great prairie, which up to Saturday was the location of the homes of thousands of Galveston’s people. This was generally known as the colored section of the city, but the colored people as a rule lived close to the beach. As a consequence they got scared early in the day and moved into town.

The result is that the death list is not as great proportionately among the colored people as it is among the whites, although a great many of them are missing. Prominent among the colored people missing are S. C. Cuney, a nephew of Wright Cuney, formerly collector of customs at this port. The rector of the colored Episcopal church, Rev. Thomas Cain, and his wife are lost.

The poles of the East Broadway street railway line are standing erect to Fourteenth street, beyond which there is but one pole. The wires are all down, as a matter of course, and the track is filled with wreckage. The line of wreckage crosses Broadway, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, and in it at that point are several bodies which cannot be reached on account of the high pile of lumber.