ROBBERS DRIVEN FROM THEIR WORK.
Since Adjutant-General Scurry has assumed police direction of affairs, looting and plundering have ceased. No one has been shot, and order prevails throughout the city. The lawless know that they will be shot down on the spot when caught depredating, and this has had a very wholesome effect. The large force of men employed in burying and cremating the exposed dead scattered throughout the city have completed that portion of their work and are now engaged in searching for the bodies of unfortunates lying crushed and bruised beneath the immense mass of debris and wrecked buildings scattered throughout the city. Where the debris lies in detached masses it is fired and the bodies therein are consumed.
When adjacent property is endangered by fire the mass of debris is removed, the bodies taken out, removed to a safe distance and around them is piled the removed debris, the whole saturated with oil and fired. Identification is impossible. The bodies being in all stages of putrefaction and giving a horrible stench, it is a most sad and gruesome task. Perhaps some of the men engaged in this work are unknowingly aiding in destroying all that is mortal of some loved one.
In gathering remains for interment a nephew of Alderman John Wagner, a youth 18 years old, was found lodged in the forks of a tall cedar tree, two miles from his wrecked home, and tightly clenched with a death grip in his right hand $200, which his father gave him, with two $20 gold pieces, to hold while the father attempted to close a blown open door, when the house went down and the whole family perished in the raging storm and flood.
THE LOSSES OUTSIDE OF GALVESTON.
While the loss of life in this city will not fall below 5000 and may be many more, every little town within a radius of seventy-five miles of Galveston was wrecked and people killed and wounded, while the damage to property will aggregate over $2,000,000. The damage to property in and around Alvin, a thriving town of 2000 people, where eleven people were killed and quite a number wounded, is estimated at $300,000, and they send out an urgent appeal for aid and relief supplies.
Fifty-four houses were wrecked in Quintana and the debris piled up in the streets. Fortunately, no lives were lost. The town of Velasco, three miles above, on the east side of the river, was completely wrecked and nine killed, three being killed in the hotel, which was badly demolished. Angleton, the county seat of Brazoria, ten miles north of Velasco, was completely destroyed and several lives lost and a number badly injured. The property loss in these three towns and country adjacent thereto will be beyond the ability of the people to repair.
Supplies for the relief of Galveston’s sufferers are coming in from every quarter as rapidly as the limited means of transportation here will admit. Its distribution here has not yet gotten on a systematic basis, and needs to be radically revised, or it will fail of its purpose and defeat the object of those who are so generously contributing. Medical relief is much better organized.
There is not a house of any character in the city but what is foul and ill-smelling. The water failed to materialize to-day as promised, and this aggravates the situation. With a completely crippled fire department, fire apparatus all gone, nine horses drowned, five engines useless and no water supply, should a fire break out, fanned by a stiff breeze, what’s remaining of the city would be speedily wiped out.