There are stories of wonderful rescues and escapes, each of which at another time would be a marvel to the rest of the world, but in a time like this when a storm so intense in its fury, so prolonged in its work of destruction, so wide in its scope, and so infinitely terrible in its consequences has swept an entire city and neighboring towns for miles on either side, the mind can not comprehend all of the horror, can not learn or know all of the dreadful particulars.
One stands speechless and powerless to relate even that which he has felt and knows. Gifted writers have told of storms at sea wrecking of vessels where hundreds were at stake and lost. That task pales to insignificance when compared with the task of telling of a storm which threatened the lives of perhaps sixty thousand people, sent to their death perhaps six thousand people, and left others wounded, homeless, and destitute, and still others to cope with grave responsibility, to relieve the stricken, to grapple with and prevent the anarchist’s reign, to clear the water-sodden land of putrefying bodies and dead carcasses, to perform tasks that try men’s souls and sicken their hearts.
The storm at sea is terrible, but there are no such dreadful consequences as those which have followed the storm on the sea coast and it is men who passed through the terrors of the storm, who faced death for hours, men ruined in property and bereft of families, who took up the herculean and well-nigh impossible task of bringing order out of chaos, of caring for the living and disposing of the dead before they made life impossible here.
The storm came not without warning, but the danger which threatened was not realized, not even when the storm was upon the city. Friday night the sea was angry. Saturday morning it had grown in fury, and the wrecking of the beach resorts began. The waters of the Gulf hurried inland. The wind came at terrific rate from the north. Still men went to their business and about their work while hundreds went to the beach to witness the grand spectacle which the raging sea presented.
WATERS CREPT HIGHER AND HIGHER.
As the hours rolled on the wind gained in velocity and the waters crept higher and higher. The wind changed from the north to the northeast and the water came in from the bay, filling the streets and running like a millrace. Still the great danger was not realized. Men attempted to reach home in carriages, wagons, boats, or any way possible. Others went out in the storm for a lark. As the time wore on the water increased in depth and the wind tore more madly over the island.
Men who had delayed starting for home, hoping for an abatement of the storm, concluded that the storm had grown worse and went out in that howling, raging, furious storm, wading through water almost to their necks, dodging flying missiles swept by a wind blowing 100 miles an hour.
Still the wind increased in velocity, when, after it seemed impossible that it should be more swift, it changed from west to southeast, veering constantly, calming for a second and then coming with awful terrific jerks, so terrible in their power that no building could withstand them and none wholly escaped injury.
Others were picked up at sea. And all during the terrible storm acts of the greatest heroism were performed. Hundreds and hundreds of brave men, as brave as the world ever knew, buffeted with the waves and rescued hundreds of their fellow men. Hundreds of them went to their death, the death that they knew they must inevitably meet in their efforts. Hundreds of them perished after saving others. Men were exemplifying that supreme degree of love of which the Master spoke, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he give his life for his friend.” Many of them who lost their lives in this storm in efforts to save their families, many to save friends, many more to help people of whom they had never heard. They simply knew that human beings were in danger and they counted their own lives.