TERRIFIC STORM.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18802, 21 September 1926, Page 9

TERRIFIC STORM.

PEOPLE UNPREPARED, (ATJSTRALUH AVD N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION.) (Received September 20th, 7.45 p.m.) NEW YORK, September 19. Reports from New York "Times" correspondents from various places along the East Coast of Florida show that the devastation by hurricane, flood, and tidal Wave caused a death roll estimated in the vicinity of 1000, while the number of injured is placed at anything up to 5000.

Exact information may not- be available for days, but fro meyc-witnesses' accounts the damage done and the probable loss of life may be oven greater than is now indicated. Several towns are under six feet of water and one city reports that 3800 homes were destroyed. Coastwise ships and vessels anchored in many places were lifted and driven 150 feet inland.

The hurricane, it appears, came in two parts. The first blast travelling at 130 miles an hour, cut a huge swathe and was succeeded by a deadly calm. Those not caught by the first wind then gained a false sense of security which was shattered by a second blast travelling at an equal speed, and taking everything before it from the waterside cottage to the huge bnnk buildings in thriving cities. The structures, weakened by the first blow, collapsed like houses of cards at the second shock. Moreover, the inhabitants of the devastated area only had an hour or two's warning from the first signal bulletin from the Meteorological Bureau, Washington, giving thorn little time to escape. The barometer dropped to 27.75 inches, being .65 inches below the reading recorded at Galveston flood, which was the only disaster with which this one is comparable. The hurricane came at 5.50 o'clock and 7.30 on Saturday morning, an 'hour when the countryside was asleep and could hot benefit from the Weather Bureau warnings.

All these facts seem to indicate that the total loss of human life will be unusually high, while of the vast extent of property damage, there is little doubt that a strip of the coast, some 50 miles long, from Pompano on the north to Miami on the south, was swept clean. This is America's most notable winter resort area, which has beon built up with large estates, hundreds of many-storeyed hotels and largo cities, which, within the last live years, have earned out building programmes to an extent probably unequalled elsewhere in America. It, is this district in which the great Florida boom occurred.