“Great piles of human bodies, dead animals, rotting vegetation, household furniture, and fragments of the houses themselves are piled in confused heaps right in the main streets of the city. Along the gulf front human bodies are floating around like cordwood. Intermingled with them are to be found the carcasses of horses, chickens, dogs, and rotting vegetable matter. Above all arises the foulest stench that ever emanated from any cesspool, absolutely sickening in its intensity and most dangerous to health in its effects.
“Along the Strand adjacent to the gulf front, where are located all the big wholesale warehouses and stores, the situation is even worse. Great stores of fresh vegetation have been invaded by the incoming waters, and are now turned into garbage piles of most befouling odors. The gulf waters while on the land played at will with everything, smashing in doors of stores, depositing bodies of humans where they pleased, and then receded, leaving the wreckage to tell its own tale of how the work had been done. As a result, the great warehouses are tombs, wherein are to be found the dead bodies of human beings and carcasses, almost defying the efforts of relief parties.
“In the pile of debris along the street, in the water, and scattered throughout the residence portion of the city, are to be found masses of wreckage, and in these great piles are to be found more human bodies and household furniture of every description.
“Handsome pictures are seen lying alongside of the ice-cream freezers and resting beside the nude figure of some man or woman. These great masses of debris are not confined to any one particular section of the city.
“The waters of the gulf and the winds spared no one who was exposed. Whirling houses around in its grasp, the wind piled their shattered frames high in confusing masses and dumped their contents on top.
“Men and women were thrown around like so many logs of wood and left to rot in the withering sun.
“I believe that with the best exertions of the men it will require weeks to secure some semblance of physical order in the city, and it is doubtful even then if all the debris will be disposed of.
“I never saw such a wreck in my life. From the gulf front to the center of the island, from the ocean back, the storm wave left death and destruction in its wake.
“There is hardly a family on the island whose household is not short a member or more, and in some instances entire families have been washed away or killed. Hundreds who escaped from the waves did so only to become victims of a worse death by being crushed by falling buildings.
“Down in the business portion of the city the foundations of great buildings have given way, carrying towering structures to their ruin. These ruins, falling across the streets, formed barricades on which gathered all the floating debris and many human bodies. Many of these bodies were stripped of their clothing by the force of the water and the wind, and there was nothing to protect them from the scorching sun, the millions of flies, and the rapid invasion of decomposition that set in.