The construction by the government of two jetties, one eight miles long extending out southeast for the purpose of making a narrower and deeper channel for boats coming into Galveston harbor, made the necessity of remedial work more apparent, but nothing was done. In the last storm, the southwesterly one of the jetties pocketed the water and carried it up over the southeastern end of the island.
This was the place where whole blocks of buildings were literally washed away, leaving hardly enough of the foundations to indicate that buildings ever stood there. In that part of the city the water rose to a depth of fifteen feet in the streets. Had the houses demolished by waves and swept away by wind not formed into a great jam similar to a log jam, but extending along the south shore of the island for seven miles, this enormous body of water would have swept over the entire island and the number of dead would have been quadrupled.
“It formed a dike,” said Engineer Hartrick, in calling attention to this feature of the flood, “and had it not been for that dike we might not any of us be here now.”
According to Mr. Hartrick, Galveston had the wrong style of architecture for a gulf town. Its newer buildings were built on the northern plan with balloon frames, and poorly adapted to stand a blow.
“This storm was a hurricane,” he said, “just such as they have in the West Indies every summer, but which we have here perhaps once in a hundred years. Still we never know when one may come again, and we should build our houses accordingly.”
Colonel Davidson, a member of the relief committee, had given some time in the past to consideration of projects to prevent inundations. He favored the jetty system, but, like Engineer Hartrick, said nothing would ever be done.
“You never heard of a man wanting an umbrella when it wasn’t raining, did you?” he asked. “What we want is not to keep all the water out. We want the waves to break their force before they rise on to the island. It was the force of the great waves which wrecked the houses.”
The work of extracting bodies from the mass of wreckage continued. Tuesday, September 18, over 400 bodies were taken out of the debris which lined the beach front. With all that had been done to recover bodies buried beneath or pinned to the immense drift, the work had scarcely started. There was no time to dig graves and the putrefying flesh, beaten and bruised beyond identification, was consigned to the flames. Volunteers for this grewsome work came in fast. Men who had avoided the dead under ordinary conditions were working with a vigorous will and energy in putting them away.
Under one pile of wreckage Tuesday afternoon twenty bodies were taken out and cremated. In another pile a man pulled out the remains of two children and for a moment gazed upon them, then mechanically cast them into the fire. They were his own flesh and blood. As they slowly burned he watched them until they were consumed, then resumed his work assisting others in removing other bodies.
A large force of men was still engaged in removing the dead from Hurd’s lane, located about four miles west of the city. At this point the water ran to a height of fourteen feet, and hung up in trees and fences were the bodies of men, women and children, which were being collected and cremated as fast as possible.