CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHARLESTON, GALVESTON, JOHNSTOWN—OUR AMERICAN DISASTERS.
BY TRUMBULL WHITE.
Earthquake Shock in South Carolina—Many Lives Lost in the Riven City—Flames Follow the Convulsion—Galveston Smitten by Tidal Wave and Hurricane—Thousands Die in Flood and Shattered Buildings—The Gulf Coast Desolated—Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Swept by Water from a Bursting Reservoir—Scenes of Horror—Earthquakes on the California Coast.
OUR own land has experienced very few great convulsions of nature. True, there have been frequent earthshocks in California, and all along the Western coast, and occasionally slight tremors have been felt in other sections, but the damage done to life and property has been in almost every instance comparatively light. The only really great disaster of this class that has been recorded in the United States since the white man first set his foot upon the soil, occurred in 1886, when the partial destruction of Charleston, South Carolina, was accomplished by earthquake and fire.
On the morning of August 28, a slight shock was felt throughout North and South Carolina, and in portions of Georgia. It was evidently a warning of the calamity to follow, but naturally was not so recognized, and no particular attention was paid to it. But on the night of August 31, at about ten o’clock, the city was rent asunder by a great shock which swept over it, carrying death and destruction in its path.
During the night there were ten distinct shocks, but they were only the subsiding of the earth-waves. The disaster was wrought by the first. Its force may be inferred from the fact that the whole area of the country between the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi river, and as far to the north as Milwaukee, felt its power to a greater or lesser degree.
Charleston, however, was the special victim of this elemental destruction. The city was in ruins, two-thirds of its houses were uninhabitable. Railroads and telegraph lines were torn up and destroyed. Fires burst forth in different sections of the city, adding to the horror of the panic-stricken people. Forty lives were lost, over 100 seriously wounded were reported, and property valued at nearly $5,000,000 was destroyed.