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

TREMENDOUS FURY OF THE GALE.

The maximum velocity of the wind will never be known. The gauge at the Weather Bureau registered 100 miles an hour and blew away at 5.10 o’clock, but the storm at that hour was as nothing when compared with what followed, and the maximum velocity must have been as great as 120 miles an hour. The most intense and anxious time was between 8.30 and 9 o’clock, with raging seas rolling around them, with a wind so terrific that none could hope to escape its fury, with roofs beginning to roll away and buildings crashing all around them, men, women and children were huddled in buildings, caught like rats, expecting to be crushed to death or drowned in the sea, yet cut off from escape.

Buildings were torn down, burying their hundreds, and were swept inland, piling up great heaps of wreckage. Hundreds of people were thrown into the water in the height of the storm, some to meet instant death, others to struggle for a time in vain, and thousands of others to escape death in most miraculous and marvelous ways.

Hundreds of the dead were washed across the island and the bay many miles inland. Hundreds of bodies were buried in the wreckage. Many who escaped were in the water for hours, clinging to driftwood, and landed bruised and battered and torn on the mainland.

All attempts at burying the dead has been utterly abandoned, and bodies are now being disposed of in the swiftest manner possible. Scores of them were burned the 12th, and hundreds were taken out to sea and thrown overboard. The safety of the living is now the paramount question, and nothing that will tend to prevent the outbreak of an awful pestilence is being neglected.

This morning it was found that large numbers of the bodies which had previously been thrown in the bay were washed back upon the shore and the situation was rendered worse than before they were first laden in the barges and thrown into the water.