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

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.