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

MYRIAD LIVES LOST IN GREAT DISASTERS.

“If you will refer to the statistical sources of information you will find that in one hundred and fifty years, a mere moment in the life of this world and its races, and add up the round thousands only and leave out the hundreds of lives which are charged to lesser lists the sum will reach 1,563,000 souls in the thirty-seven most important earthquake, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and inundations that have visited the earth. It is, of course, impossible to give any sort of guess as to the accuracy of the estimates of the loss of life.

“Even in Johnstown it is not certainly known to this day within 2,000 persons how many were lost. The identified dead numbered 2,228. The best informed and conservative estimates place the figure at 3,500, and others reach 5,000, while published reports, which ought to be authoritative, calmly name the death list at 9,000. It is the same at Galveston, where the number is so variously stated that no reliance can be placed upon any numerical report beyond the fact that anywhere between 1,000 and 3,000 lives have been lost. If this, then, is the waywardness of figures in cases where not only the population is known, but in communities where the associations of commerce and social life has been such that the survivors can count the missing and recognize such of the dead as may be found, how wild must be the estimate placed upon such cataclysms as that in Southeastern Bengal and the Niegen Islands, where on October 31, 1876, in a cyclone, 215,000 people are said to have perished.