Sua Francisco, Sept. 21.
'A great hurricane, blowing at) the phenomenal rate of 180 miles! per hour, yesterday devastated the! Florida coast from Palm Beach, south to below Homestead, sweeping away lives, property and des-} fraying cities.' Fifteen hundred people at the lowest estimate were killed; at least 100,000 are home-Jess; thousands were injured as) the hurricane, coming out of the West Indies, laid the playground! tities of the United States in ruins, Damage to Miami alone is estimat-a hundred million, Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, Hialeah, Pompano, Dania, Hallandale, Moorchaven, Clewiston, Key' Larg: Homestead,' Coral Gables, Muck-way, and Key West, all suffered, People who live in China therefore, really do know something of what bad storms are like, but no China typhoon within the recollection of this writer ever caused such terror as this Florida storm has wrought. It is true that when bad typhoon strikes with full force upon some Chinese city, the flimsy houses collapse like matehwood, and thousands are rendered homeless or are killed, but nothing has ever happened in Shanghel, where buildings are much stronger, as has befallen Floride in thir terriffe tornado. Here whole modern cities fell overnight, Readece will recall the phenomenal rear estate boom in Florida during the last year or two, when cities grew up almost as one looked on. Most of these cities now have disappear:
1 Many cities inland in' adjoining Tt was six days previously that states also were swept by the dis-the storm was born in West faster, some of them being entire-dian waters, and it rolled westly isolated, so that at the moment: ward striking Miami from the of writing it is not possible to north-west, roaring and whirling compute the total damage that this at a velocity of 180 miles per hour. unprecedented storm has been res-/ 'One writer in a fine touch of des-for. Florida, however, cription says: "The rear tower on an entirely new as-of the 'Miami News', famed the pect, and fashionable resorts, world over for its" architecture, Known the whole world round as, Teaned over to a 20-degree angle, the resting and playing places of, twisted and wrenched. "Building the rich have been reduced in many after building was blown down or eases to utter debris. The mind} was shattered and torn. Boats is almost unable to conceive the were tossed, sunk and destroyed in havoc. President Coolidge imme-the harbour as if they were but Gintely called out naval reserve, {things of flimsy tissue.
People forces. 'The American Red Cross: were crushed, injured and _kille'. started relief measures. by armour Lights went out, Communication ing to the nation that money an: was an impossibility. Railroads supplies were needed, and the re-were disrupted and tracks des: sult has been that-from every corner toyed. Rain fell in. torrents. of the country succour has generously Water, banked up by the harbour flowed into a part of the Union by the vast power of the—hurri-+ which was always rightly regard." cane, swept on to the shore, wreck-one of the most~ wealthy ing what was in its path and leav-eas, One is reminded of the ing boats high on the land."
earthquake days in San Francisco, And while this was going on in when from practically every cou Miami, others of the Florida magic try in the world assistance was cities on the east coast were al sent in money and in other ways. most equal sufferers.
Some China Coast Typhoons Situation Beyond Description All people who have experienced 'a typhoon of the type which this, writer remembers with—terror through a long Far Eastern resid-fence Will have some idea of what this storm meant. I remember—and a great many people in Shanghai at the present time will also remember—the—famous typhoon which struck Shanghai in 1915, At four in the morning I lay in peril jin my bed, fearing that my house would collapse—and this is what actually happened in Florida in thousands of eases. During that typhoon a ten-thousand ton steamer, tearing away from her vioorings, two anchors fore and to aft, drifted willy-nilly from the middle of the river abreast of Soschow Creek, the terrific wind driv. ing her clear up to the Bund Gardens, and when she lay stationary: there were dozens of sampans ard small launches crushed like matchboxes between her battered—bulwarks and the Bund. All over the Settlement roofs were sent But what is the use of trying to describe such a calamity; The storms that rise around the West Indies have to be experience be believed, and even then. the thing is so ghastly in its sudo. ness and unbelievable force tone seems unable to take it Back in 1898, this writer was sail ing on the deck of a 2,000 ton steam yacht through the Carribean Sea, making for Kingston in Jamaica. It was an airless depressing night. I lay in a long! chair on the after-deck, watching the flashes of lightning playing in and out among the clouds, which though storm-laden, did not indicate. that we wore to strike wind of such force as I had never before or have since experienced with the possible} exception perhaps, of the high titude in China Far West in monsoon weather. everything was dead calm, still, sultry; the next minute I had been capsized and rolled towards the to West Palm Beach were crowded! with automobiles Inden down with. refugees who eagerly sought lost relatives... The whole region became a waste, where " food dizappeared, where the children died because they could not get milk, where lack of water and sanitary immediately set up a grave condition likely to menace:. the health of the unfortunate pe.- ple forced to remain there.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.