THE FLORIDA DISASTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 238, 8 October 1928, Page 5

THE FLORIDA DISASTER.

A DEVASTATING HURRICANE.

WidE ARKO SWEPT.

DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, September 19. Florida will long remember the devastating hurricane which bruised and battered the fair State with a lashing and terrific force. It came ripping, twisting, tearing like mad out of the south-east and swept with relentless fury along a ninety-mile path across the State. The area hardest hit was from Miami to the Palm Beaches and Jupiter, the destruction equalling that wrought by the hurricane which hit Florida two years ago almost to the day. Communication with the stricken area was cut off for many hours, and it was for a time impossible to calculate the loss of life and the millions of dollars of damage to property. The storm already had laid waste two large areas in Porto Rico, the Virginian Islands and other islands of the West Indies, where 600,000 persons needed assistance, according to reports by the Red Cross and the U.S. War Department The storm struck Miami on Sunday 'afternoon at 3.15, when the sky turned | greenish black. The accompanying wind j roared through the city at sixty mile# an hour and rain fell in talents. A story of destructive force, hundreds of minor injuries and paralysed public utilities was brought to Daytona Beach by two telephone company employees, who had driven a light sedan automobile from Palm Beach, the first persons from the beleaguered city. J. W. Hutchinson, of Atlanta, inspector, and J. P. Mason, lineman, reported that hardly a single place of business or residence escaped the destructive storm. They said hundreds of persons with cuts, bruises, broken limbs, and more minor injuries, were centralised in the telephone office and at all the hotels. Hotel windows were largely blown from their casements, and the guests slept on cots in the halls. No light, power, or gas or sewers were in operation. The Red Cros3 local organisation quickly functioned and established a relief station in ths telephone office. At Miami and Jupiter the wind attained a velocity of over 100 miles an hour. Palm Beach, the exclusive winter resort, was cut off from all communication with the mainland since the storm struck, and a check on deaths and other casualties was possible only through the medium of the radio. West Palm Beach was badly damaged, only one business establishment on the principal street escaping serious damage. At Orlando, in Florida, all the wires were blown down by the hurricane, and trees were mowed down as though simply straws before the wind, and many buildings of flimsy construction were converted into matchwood with the inmates either killed or mortally wounded. Most of the towns and cities of the State presented a terrifying sight when the outside world went to the rescue some hours after storm had shown some cessation. Plateglass windows had been smashed. Signs, trees, and shrubbery littered the thoroughfares, and other debris made a shambles of the once prosperous communities a few hours -previously. The tide was running unusually high against the ocean seawall at Daytona Beach, and doctors and nurses had a busy time attending to the injured, and undertakers worked day and night. San Joan's Story. Meanwhile, in Porto Rico, dispatchcs from San Juan showed that the hurricane death-roll exceeded one thousand and the spectre of famine stalked , through the American possession, with 300,000 persons on the verge of starvation ' and disease was threatened. Half of i the island's population of almost 2,000,000 was said to be homeless. Property damage was placed at 100,000,000 dollars. Declaration of martial law, ! requisitioning and rationing of food and the drafting of all able-bodied men was urged upon Governor Horace M. Towner I by a group of leading citizens. The National Guard was ordered out to protect property from looters, and effort* , were made to prevent profiteering. Mo?t - of the food crops were destroyed and ' half of the homes, even those of thatcli, were destroyed or damaged beyond ! repair. But the most seriously situated were the "jivaros," the poor counti j folk, numbering nearly 1,000,000, who had no reserve resources. Joaquin Villaneuva, a university Instructor at Vega Baja, described the bedraggled condition of hundreds of country people who had arrived in town, bspring for food. Hard pressed merchants "gave them as much as they were able. Villaneuva. with his family, walked most of the twenty-five miles from Vega Baja to San Juan. ® Paul Maloney, who motored from r Naguabo on the east coast, said a man with a bag of rice, a bag of beans and " a side of pork, was literally mobbed by " 230 homeless and hungry people at Mag- ' uabo, Playa. An American salesman, who required i thirty-six hours to cover the fifty-five miles from Arecibo, said hundreds of homes at that point were carried away.