CATASTROPHE: Great Winds

West Injdies. Last week the Caribbean suddenly became still under a windless sky. Seabirds wheeled inland, crying. Small boats with flapping, empty sails were sculled to harbor. On the Virgin Islands natives took to their homes in the hills, jabbered warnings to each other. Voodoo priests crept about selling charms against death. Everywhere faces looked southeast.

Then a low whine of wind sounded across the water, quivered the palm fronds. Far out the sea turned frothy with whitecaps. The sun grew bloodred. The whine of wind became a scream and the sky shrieked. Roofs, bodies and trees were lifted like paper, scattered abroad. Over the shores rose the tortured sea. The sky was dark.

Up from the Lesser Antilles had come a hurricane. Its centre moved along slowly, nine or ten miles per hour, but the vast volume of air it sucked went raging by at 130 m. p. h.

Porto Rico. The storm’s first major victim was Porto Rico, which it left torn and disrupted. The island has a population of 1,400,000. It was estimated that at least half of this number were left homeless. Chaos prevented a complete count of the dead, but early reports from nine towns indicated that 263 were known to have perished. In San Juan, the principal city, 300 chattering consumptives were forced into the open. Seventy lepers, the roofs of their colony blown away, were gingerly herded into an administration building.

All over the island rich coffee and citrus crops were destroyed. All agriculture suffered. Communication, light and power systems were out of commission. The 600-foot towers at the Navy radio station were toppled. Water service was suspended and the population collected rain water from the heavy showers that fell continuously after the hurricane. The darkened streets were littered with debris.

Horace Mann Towner, governor of the island, hurriedly cabled the War Department: “Full relief and reconstruction will probably reach into millions.” Refugees from the rural districts poured into San Juan. Food prices skyrocketed. Eight representative islanders. watching three days pass in aimless water-soaked turmoil, wrote to the governor. “For 72 hours,” they stated, “more than 300.000 people of this island, to estimate conservatively, have had little or nothing to eat and they will have nothing to eat for at least another week unless immediate and drastic action is taken. . . . Disease and famine are already here.” They urged four relief measures: 1) martial law; 2) requisition of all food supplies and materials; 3) coastwise relief for other parts of the island via boats; 4) the drafting of all available manpower for public service. Again Governor Towner cabled. He beseeched all available aid from the Red Cross and other sources. The estimated property damage was $65,000,000

Florida. The storm whirled northwestward, grazed Santo Domingo, isolated the Bahamas, cut off all wireless communication. Persons in Florida remembered the hurricane of 1926 and were not a little timorous. They sought shelter. The gale struck 80 miles of Florida coast between Jupiter Inlet and Miami, a region which includes Palm Beach. Reports from this area were fragmentary, telephone and telegraph service was interrupted. But it seemed that the hurricane had diminished in violence during its passage from Porto Rico. Nineteen, at last report, were dead on the East coast of Florida. President Coolidge, alarmed, called on nation and Red Cross for help.

Relief. The Red Cross concentrated its national organization. Henry M. Baker, National Director of Disaster Relief, hurried to Porto Rico on a destroyer. Public subscriptions were begged from the nation by radio, press and pulpit. Preparations were made to purchase tons of supplies for shipment to the Caribbean. In Florida, Nominee Robinson of the Democracy interrupted his campaigning to aid in relief.

Diagnosis. Forecaster Mitchell of the U. S. Weather Bureau spoke of hurricanes. “They are probably gentle little eddies of air at first,” he said, “but gather momentum owing to differences in temperature and air pressure until they become gigantic whirls, sucking air toward their central vortices like gargantuan vacuum cleaners.” Caribbean hurricanes of more or less violence are common near the autumnal Equinox. Last week’s winds were reported to have attained at times the unusual velocity of 145 m. p. h.

Illinois. A twisting, strangely swooping tornado lacerated Rockford, Ill. Throughout the city, buildings were damaged. The Rockford Cabinet Company collapsed with 150 workers. Thirty-four were injured, eleven killed and four missing, presumably under tons of debris. Estimated property damage: $5,000,000.

Nebraska, South Dakota. Two tornadoes struck rural districts of Nebraska and South Dakota. Eleven were killed, among them Schoolmistress Rooney, who was tossed 300 feet. Estimated property damage: $1,000,000.