The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado
L >>
Logan Marshall >> The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 | 16 |
17 |
18
"We should make this a common cause. The needs of those upon whom
this sudden and overwhelming disaster has come should quicken
everyone capable of sympathy and compassion to give immediate aid
to those who are laboring to rescue and relieve.
"WOODROW WILSON."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Indicating the gravity of the situation in Ohio, a telegram from
Governor Cox was received by Secretary of War Garrison asking for food
and medical supplies and tents for the sufferers.
Secretary Garrison promptly took steps to meet the emergency, and the
supplies requested were sent by express to Columbus. The two experienced
officers who handled the Mississippi flood situation, Majors Normoyle
and Logan, were also ordered to proceed to Columbus to aid Governor Cox.
All troops in Western New York and all available troops in the Central
Department were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to proceed to
relief work in Ohio and Indiana, if needed.
President Wilson issued his appeal for funds for the Red Cross following
a conference with Miss Mabel Boardman, chairman of the relief board of
the organization.
The Secretary of the Treasury enlisted promptly in the relief movement,
and the public health service and the life-saving service and marine
hospital surgeons available were placed at the command of the state
authorities. The public health hospitals at Detroit, Cleveland,
Louisville, Cairo, Evansville and St. Louis were thrown open for the
care of the flood victims. Surgeons P. W. Wille, of the Marine Hospital
at Cleveland, was instructed to go to Columbus to co-operate with the
state board of health. Dr. J. O. Cobb, of the Chicago Marine Hospital,
was ordered to Indianapolis.
BACKING OF CONGRESS PLEDGED
The President was in his office all day Wednesday, March 26th, in close
touch with the situation. He apprised the chairmen of the Senate and
House appropriations committees that the government was going ahead with
emergency expenditures on the assumption that Congress would back up the
administration later. Both promised hearty support, and orders went out
on every side for a gigantic work of relief.
Major P. C. Fauntleroy was sent to Columbus to handle the medical
supplies. Nine medical officers and fifty-four hospital corps men went
from the Department of the East carrying a big supply of surgical
dressings, anti-typhoid prophylactics and the complete "reserve medical
supply" comprising hundreds of drugs sufficient to treat 20,000 patients
for one month. Precautions against the spread of disease were to be
handled by sanitation experts.
Life-saving crews were ordered from Louisville to Dayton and from
Lorain, Ohio, to Delaware, Ohio, and the public health service
distributed its agents over the afflicted districts.
SUPPLIES ON THE WAY
By Friday more than double the apparently necessary medical supplies for
the flood sufferers were on their way to Ohio and Indiana, a full quota
of supplies having been started from the army supply warehouses at St.
Louis and a second consignment from Washington.
From the naval stores a huge consignment of wearing apparel and bedding
for the sufferers was sent to Columbus. These supplies were started from
the naval stores at New York. Paymaster-General Cowie made the
arrangements under orders from Secretary of the Navy Daniels. The
shipment included 12,000 blankets, 7,000 watch caps, 50,000 pairs of
light weight drawers, 80,000 light weight undershirts, 30,000 heavy
weight drawers, 30,000 heavy weight shirts, 4,200 navy jerseys, 15,000
khaki jumpers, 24,000 pairs of dungaree trousers, 8,000 overcoats,
24,000 pairs of shoes and 15,000 pairs of woolen socks.
In addition to the clothing supply the Navy sent also 300,000 rations on
the way to Columbus and Dayton. Paymaster Nesbit and Paymaster's Clerk
Conell were in charge of the distribution. Assistant Secretary Roosevelt
supplied them with $25,000 in currency with full authority to expend it
for such supplies and services as they might find necessary.
For a time President Wilson considered going himself to the flood
districts; but reports from Secretary Garrison and others were so
encouraging that he decided it was unnecessary.
"Refreshed by the tears of the American people, Ohio stands ready from
today to meet the crisis alone," wrote Governor Cox of Ohio on March
31st.
After seeing the situation well in hand in Dayton, Secretary Garrison
returned to Cincinnati and then proceeded to Columbus. By April 2d he
was able to return to Washington.
AMERICAN RED CROSS TO THE RESCUE
From the first day when Miss Mabel T. Boardman conferred with President
Wilson, the American Red Cross and the government worked hand in hand.
At headquarters of the National Red Cross funds from all quarters of the
Union rained in on the officials. Friday night the Red Cross
headquarters had received more than $190,000 in cash and drafts, and
basing their estimates on telegraphic advices from other points, they
were assured that their total already exceeded $350,000. Boston sent in
$32,000, Cleveland $33,000 subject to call. Baltimore notified Miss
Boardman to draw on the local chapter of the order for $7,000. New York
reported $75,000 in hand and the District of Columbia chapter had more
than $25,000 ready for instant use. Henry C. Frick sent a check for
$10,000 and John D. Rockefeller $5,000, with the suggestion that more
was ready when needed.
With Miss Boardman at the head of the party the Red Cross relief train
left Washington Friday over the Chesapeake and Ohio, bound for Columbus.
The train comprised six express coaches, two of which were loaded with
steel cots for use of the homeless. Two others were loaded with bedding
and clothing supplies and two with foodstuffs of all sorts.
Hurrying to Omaha to assist in relief work in that city, Ernest P.
Bicknell, of the American National Red Cross, halted in Chicago.
Informed of the serious situation in Indiana and Ohio, he telegraphed to
Omaha and received word that the relief work was well in hand. He then
decided to go to the flood-stricken districts in Indiana and Ohio.
Reaching Columbus, Mr. Bicknell had soon established Red Cross
headquarters and the corps under his direction was working in closest
harmony with the state flood relief committee, the Governor of Ohio and
the United States army and navy relief officials.
The disaster in the Middle West was the greatest the Red Cross Society
was ever called upon to deal with. The amount of suffering entailed by
the flood far exceeded that of the San Francisco earthquake and fire.
RAILROADS BRAVELY HELPING
Bravely the railroads worked their way into the stricken territory.
While a blizzard raged in Ohio from Cleveland to Cincinnati, with the
temperature down to twenty-eight degrees above zero, the
railroads--which means all the railroads in every section, the New York
Central, the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, and their
allied lines--threw into the battle thousands upon thousands of men,
trainload after trainload of machinery, and money rewards as a stimulus
for the repair of miles of washed-out tracks and shattered bridges.
Every division superintendent of every line in the district, his
assistants, usually with some high executive officer of the system in
control; every man and boy able to handle a pick or shovel or crowbar,
to carry his end of a girder or drag a coil of rope, was out on the job.
It was not for any selfish purpose that the roads threw this immense
power into the work. Their object was to open up rail communication
with the desolated cities, towns and villages and send relief trains
with bread, with blankets, with medicines, doctors and nurses. It was
not a race for money.
"We will carry every pound of supplies for the devastated district free
over any lines" announced the Pennsylvania, and it added free passage
for doctors, nurses and every other good Samaritan.
"No charge," was the echo of the New York Central, and that order went
to every freight and passenger agent of the big system everywhere. The
Baltimore and Ohio, the Erie, and every other line followed in an
instant. The railroads helped all they could.
RELIEF FROM STATES AND INDIVIDUALS
If the nation was generous and prompt in its relief, neighboring states
and individuals were not less so. Governors in many states and mayors of
many cities, following the noble example of the President, issued
appeals for help. Mayor Dahlman of Omaha and Governor Morehead of
Nebraska bravely declined the help offered by President Wilson and
others for sufferers from the tornado; but the flood-stricken districts,
for whom recovery was far less easy, in many cases were obliged to
appeal for aid. From towns throughout Ohio and Indiana came desperate
cries for help, and to all of them a sympathetic nation listened and
responded.
AN ARMY OF PEACE
If the great calamity stirred the hearts of the nation with pity, so did
the prompt and splendid relief inspire enthusiasm. Even though the
despatch of United States troops to the scene of devastation in the West
lacked legal sanction the whole country unanimously approved the
movement which thus itself becomes a signal to all nations, and a
corroboration of the truth that the American is not hidebound by
fantastic traditions when some serious achievement is to be done. Our
soldiers in this case for the nonce became missionaries. Under the
leadership of the Secretary of War, the troops carried clothes, food,
medicaments, tents, blankets, and in short all the paraphernalia
necessary to succor the distressed, assuage the pangs of suffering and
restore normal conditions within the wide areas battered by the
destructive elements.
This peaceful use of our fighting men brings into realization the vision
so strongly cherished by John Ruskin--the vision of the time when
soldiership should develop into a form of modern knight-errantry, and
the "passion to bless and save" should inspire those who were formerly
drilled only in the exercises of conquest and slaughter. Americans may
well be proud to reflect that this era, which a few decades ago seemed
but the chimerical dream of a doctrinaire, has found its pledge and
promise in the generous endeavors of our standing army.
"Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war."
In narrowing the dimension of suffering, and lending a strong hand to
those overwhelmed by calamity, our soldiers raised up the defeated from
the sore battle of life.
CHAPTER XXXII
PREVIOUS GREAT FLOODS AND TORNADOES
THE JOHNSTOWN HORROR--THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY--THE MISSISSIPPI ON A
RAMPAGE--DESTRUCTION IN LOUISVILLE--THE ST. LOUIS TORNADO.
Floods are not usually so dramatic and awe-inspiring as tornadoes, but
they are even more destructive of life. The Johnstown flood of 1889,
however, was dramatic and even spectacular--so swiftly did it come and
so certainly could it have been avoided. It destroyed 2,235 lives, swept
away ten millions of dollars worth of property, and carried unutterable
grief into countless happy homes.
Lying in a narrow valley were eight villages, aggregating 50,000 to
80,000 inhabitants, the largest of the eight being situated at the lower
end, with about 25,000 inhabitants.
Far up in the mountain, 300 feet above the chief village of the valley,
hung a huge body of water. As nature had designed it, this had been a
small lake with natural outlets, which prevented it from being a menace
to the valley below. But the hand of man sought to improve the work of
nature. An immense dam, 110 feet in height, held back the water till the
lake was more than quadrupled in size.
THE SWOLLEN WATERS
These were the conditions on May 31, 1889. There had been heavy rains
for several days. The artificially enlarged lake was really a receiving
reservoir of the water-shed of the Alleghany Mountains. Every little
stream running into it was swollen to a torrent. The lake, which in
ordinary times was three and a half miles long, with an average width of
over a mile, and a depth in some portions of 100 feet, was swollen into
a volume of water of enormous proportions. Between it and the valley
below there was a dam nearly 1,000 feet wide, 100 feet high, ninety feet
thick at the base and twenty at the top. This barrier gave way and the
water rushed into the valley in a solid wave with a perpendicular front
of forty feet.
It swept away the seven smaller villages like straw, hurled them,
together with uncounted thousands of their inhabitants, upon the larger
village, and then, with the accumulated ruin of the whole eight, dashed
upon the stone bridge at the bottom of the valley. The bridge withstood
the shock, and a new dam, as fateful with horror as the first had been,
was formed. It held back the water so that the whole valley was a lake
from twenty to forty feet in depth, with the remains of its villages
beneath its surface. The wreckage of the ruined villages, piled from
forty to sixty feet high, against the bridge, spread over a vast area,
with countless bodies of the living and the dead crushed within it and
struggling for life upon it, caught fire, and burned to the water's
edge.
When the flood came--a terrific punishment for the carelessness of the
past--the doubters saw their homes washed away, their dear ones
drowned; in some cases they did not even live to see the extent of the
havoc wrought. Whole families were drowned like rats; houses were
shattered to pieces or floated about on the water like wrecked ships.
Intolerable was the suffering that followed--grief for the loss of dear
ones, actual physical hurt, hunger and want. The problem for many in the
eight towns was to begin life all over--and that without hope. Immediate
suffering was in some measure prevented by the speedy help rendered by
neighboring towns, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the entire nation.
But nothing could undo the fearful damage of the past.
THE GALVESTON TRAGEDY
Great as was the Johnstown flood, it shrinks into insignificance before
the appalling hurricane-brought flood of Galveston, which devastated the
city and swept thousands of its inhabitants to their death. There is
little in the new city which arose to remind one of the awful
tragedy--unless it be the strong sea-walls constructed to keep out
future floods.
The storm came over the bay from the gulf before daylight Saturday
morning, September 8, 1900. At 10 A. M. the inundation from the bay
began, but even then no alarm was felt. The wind took on new strength
and the waters were carried four blocks through the business section
into Market Street. Ocean freighters dragged anchors in the channel and
were soon crashing against the wharves. The wind reached the hurricane
stage, blowing at something like one hundred and twenty miles an hour,
and buildings began to crumble. By this time the bay water had reached
a high point on Tremont Street. The gulf, however, was quiet.
Then a remarkable thing happened. The wind suddenly shifted from the
north to the southeast, the hurricane increased in fury, and, picking up
the waters of the gulf, hurled them with crushing force against the four
miles of residences stretched along the beach. There was nothing in the
way of protection, and houses were knocked over like so many toy
structures.
By three o'clock the gulf had spread over the city and mingled in the
streets with the waters of the bay. The violence of the wind continued.
Higher and higher rose the water. Buildings began to collapse. Shrieks
of agony were heard. One family of five took refuge in four different
houses, abandoning each in turn just in time to save themselves.
Hundreds, struck by the flying wreckage, fell unconscious in the water.
SCENES OF HORROR
When night settled down over the city the whole bay side was in process
of destruction. Wreckage was thrown with the force of a catapult against
houses which still offered resistance. Electric light and gas plants
were flooded and the city was in darkness.
In the cemeteries the dead of years were washed from their graves and
carried across to the mainland. A tramp steamer was carried over to
Virginia Point, then sent like a shot through three bridges. The
steamers "Alamo" and "Red Cross" were dropped upon Pelican Flats, and
when the waves retreated were left high and dry upon the sand. Yachts
and sailboats were driven over the mainland and could be seen in the
grass far beyond Texas City. Railroad cars loaded and empty were carried
into the bay, and miles of track torn up and washed away.
THE RECEDING WATERS
Between ten and eleven the wind fell and the water began to recede,
almost as rapidly as it had come. Before daylight the streets were clear
of water, but covered with slime and choked with wreckage. It was not
necessary to go to the beach to find the dead. They lay thick along the
streets.
A Committee of Public Safety was organized, and all men, white and
black, were asked to assist in the removal of the dead. The
superstitious negroes refused, but were finally compelled at the muzzle
of guns to gather in the bodies. It was suggested that the burials be
made at sea. Society men, clubmen, millionaires, longshoremen and
negroes took up the work, loading the bodies on drays and conveying them
to barges. The dreadful procession lasted all of Sunday and Monday.
Three barge loads of dead were taken out to sea and given back to the
waves. The weights, however, were not properly attached, and soon the
corpses were back in the surf, washing on the beach.
After the storm the weather turned milder. By Monday the city reeked
with the smell of a charnel house and pestilence was in the air. The
bodies of dead animals lay in the streets; the waters of the bay and
gulf were thick with the dead. All the disinfectants in the city were
quickly consumed. An earnest appeal for more was sent to Houston and
other places. Tuesday a general cremation of the dead began. Trenches
were dug and lined with wood. The corpses were tossed in, covered with
more wood, saturated with oil, and set on fire. Later, bodies were
collected and placed in piles of wreckage, and the whole then given to
the flames. Men engaged in this horrible task frequently found relatives
and friends among the dead. The men wore camphor bags under their noses,
but frequently became so nauseated that they were forced to stop work.
The fire purified the air, however, and disinfectants began to come in
in answer to the appeal. The streets were covered with a solution of
lime, and carbolic acid was showered everywhere.
GALVESTON NOT THE ONLY SUFFERER
And not only Galveston was a sufferer in this storm. For fifty miles
along the coast, on both sides of the city, the storm found victims. The
waters of the sea were carried inland ten miles all along the coast. The
total loss of life in Galveston and near-by places amounted to 9,000;
the property damage to $30,000,000.
THE MISSISSIPPI ON A RAMPAGE
"The Mississippi River in flood," says a recent writer, "takes
everything with it. To watch the endless procession which the swift
current carries by is to see all the properties of tragedies. The
Mississippi in flood is the despoiler of homes. Houses come floating
down the stream, outbuildings, furniture and myriads of smaller things,
tossed by waves in the 'runs' or sailing on serenely in the broader
stretches. Great trees go by. They are evidence that the Mississippi has
asserted its majesty somewhere and has cut a new channel to please
itself, eating away bank, growth, and all. Carcasses of cows and horses
and dogs float down the stream, carrying a pair of buzzards, those
scavengers who have so much work to do after the floods have receded. It
is a terrible and a melancholy sight."
THE FLOOD OF 1912
In April and May, 1912, the Mississippi reached a height never before
equaled, and the great river went tearing through levee after levee on
its resolute course to the sea. The river reached a maximum width of
sixty miles, killed 1,000 persons, rendered 30,000 homeless, and caused
damage to the amount of $50,000,000.
By April 2d, Columbus, Missouri, was buried under fifteen feet of water,
and in some parts of the town residences were wholly submerged. New
Madrid was not much better off, and Hickman, Kentucky, looked like a
small city of Venice. President Taft sent a hurry call to Congress for
half a million dollars, and within fifteen minutes after his message was
read, the lower house had passed an appropriation bill and sent it to
the Senate, which laid everything else aside to give it right of way. By
April 5th, the Reelfoot Lake district, covering 150 square miles of
Kentucky farm land, was an inland lake and the river at Cairo, Illinois,
had risen to nearly fifty-four feet, the average depth from St. Louis to
New Orleans being ordinarily but nine feet. Cairo was for days
surrounded by the torrents from the Ohio and the Mississippi beating at
the levees, while to the north of the city factory buildings were
immersed to their roofs or even entirely covered. By April 7th, the
levee in Arkansas, seven miles south of Memphis, had a gap a mile long
and Lake County, Tennessee, had no ground above water but a strip six
miles long by four wide. By the middle of the month, the levees at
Panther Forest, Arkansas; Alsatia, Louisiana; and Roosevelt, Louisiana,
had succumbed, and a thousand square miles of fertile plantations were
from five to seven feet under water.
FARMS AND PLANTATIONS SUBMERGED
Rain-storm after rain-storm caused the stream to swell, undermined
dikes, and broke new crevasses all the way from Vicksburg to New
Orleans. Hundred of farmers and their families, a majority of them
negroes, were cut off and overwhelmed by the flood. For several weeks
the people of New Orleans were under the fear that a large part of the
city might be submerged and ruined. Near by vast sugar plantations were
under water, while the prosperous town of Moreauville was inundated.
Refugees' camps were established and relief work began. Many vessels
assisted the army. Pitiful stories of famished and suffering victims of
the flood were told, and the miles and miles of desolated country struck
horror to the heart. They have a pregnant saying down there: "Come hell
and high water." Some day, it is to be hoped, we are going to take the
force out of that expression.
DESTRUCTION IN LOUISVILLE
Disaster by tornado is not so easy to avoid as disaster by flood. One of
the most destructive storms of recent years was that which swept over
Louisville, Kentucky, in the evening of March 27, 1890, killing 113
persons, injuring 200, and destroying property to the amount of
$2,500,000. The storm came from the southwest and cut a path through the
heart of the city three miles long and nearly a half mile wide. Nearly
every building in its course was leveled to the ground or otherwise
damaged. Outlying towns were also devastated by the storm, and flood
calamities occurred simultaneously along the Mississippi.
About eight o'clock the storm was raging with tremendous force. The rain
fell in sheets, the lightning was constant and vivid, the wind blew
ominously. The streets were soon miniature rivers, and telegraph and
telephone poles began to snap. By 8.30 there was alarm all over the
city, but before any measure of safety could be adopted the body of the
mighty tempest dashed itself on the houses along Fifteenth Street and
tore itself diagonally across the city, leaping the river at Front
Street to Jeffersonville.
The passage across the city was not continuous and in uniform direction,
but the storm lifted itself up, fell with furious force on a block, then
rolled over into adjacent blocks, when it rested a moment, then dashed
furiously up and forward again, launching to the right and left with
demoniacal whimsicality.
Everything it touched suffered. Church steeples fell, crushing beneath
their weight the buildings over which they had stood guard. Wrenching
warehouses to fragments the tornado passed to the river front, leaving a
broad swath of wreckage and dead bodies. The belt of destruction
extended from the west side of Seventh Street as far as Ninth and Main
Streets, and an equal width across to the point where the city was first
touched. Along this path were demolished homes and wrecked business
houses--the annihilated work of years. On the river the storm found full
sway. The tawny water of the swollen Ohio became a lake of seething
foam. Steamboat after steamboat was driven from its moorings and tossed
like a drop of spray in the boiling stream.
CITIZENS MADDENED WITH GRIEF
Almost immediately after the storm had passed thousands crowded into the
distressed district; maddened men and women fought and struggled through
the debris trying to find some loved relative or friend. From every side
arose the groans of the wounded and dying. About the Falls City Hotel
groups thronged waiting for news.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 | 16 |
17 |
18