The Great Galveston Disaster, Containing a Full and Thrilling Account of the Most Appalling Calamity of Modern Times Page: 54

54 INCIDENTS OF THE AWFUL HURRICANE.
of 6.30 P. M., just before the anemometer blew away the wind
had reached the frightful velocity of Ioo 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, witll 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. Tie lowest point touched
by the barometer in the press correspondents' office, which was
filled by frightened men and women, was 28.042 ; this was about
7.30 P. M. It then began to rise very slowly, and by io 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 o1 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 iniprovised 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 fiom 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 Comlpaly.