Florida's Great Hurricane/Chapter 6

ONE of the most impressive evidences which the wind left as a token of its force was the steel flag pole in front of the fire station at Miami Beach, which was bent into a triangle, and another was the huge dredgeboat of the Meteor Transport Company which was cast up on the County Causeway, crushing a yacht of considerable size as it was beached.

Among those most thrilled by the storm were Mr. and Mrs. Chas. J. Blake, of New York, who were occupying a ground floor apartment at Miami Beach, only a few blocks from the ocean. In the midst of the storm they heard a call for help, which proceeded from a building to the rear of the apartment from a couple who feared that their house was doomed and wished for assistance in removing their children. Mr. Blake felt duty bound to respond, and started out alone, facing the wind and feeling his way to the house, which he found empty. The occupants had been rescued by two men who were in the apartment above the Blakes. They had gone out through the back door, holding hands, as a protection, and had reached the house before Mr. Blake got there. When they returned and Mr. Blake was not with them, Mrs. Blake became frantic and implored them to rescue her husband, whereupon the men returned to the scene of the first rescue, but in the meantime Mr. Blake had made a safe return. Nobody was injured, but for the time being there was plenty of excitement, as there was cause to be, for it was easy enough for one to be lost in the storm when rain was blowing down in sheets and it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.

One Miami Beach resident made a ghastly find on his front porch after the storm in the form of a man's dead body which had floated in, probably one of the many who were drowned on dredges and other vessels.

It was a common thing to see a mere shack of frame structure standing undamaged by the side of a concrete house that had been demolished.Queerest of all the many idiosyncrasies of the storm, perhaps, was the sparing of two beach umbrellas that were left standing after practically every building about them had succumbed to the combined furies of wind and water.

Many physicians and nurses from other cities in and out of Florida came to Miami to assist in relief work, and some weeks after ​the storm Dr. Hoy, of the White Cross Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, came to examine fractured bones and to help in corrective work, that being his specialty. Dr. Hoy examined over 300 fractures and pronounced the work that had been done by Miami physicians under the circumstances to have been remarkably efficient, but among the odd incidents of his visit was the discovery of an aged man who had a broken neck and was unaware of it. He complained that his neck had been stiff ever since the storm, for which he was unable to account. Dr. Hoy at once insisted on making an examination, and found, much to the man's surprise and consternation, that his neck had been broken. The most singular feature of the incident was that the man could not tell when or in what manner the accident had occurred. Needless to say, remedial measures were taken at once with the likelihood that the man with the broken neck will have had the unusual experience of passing through an ordeal which, under the excitement of the storm, proved to me without pain or very much inconvenience.

Another storm freak, and there are too many to recount, was that attending an old shack on Northwest Fifth street, which had been condemned some time before the storm. It was feared that the ramshackle building would collapse and kill someone. Accordingly the streets were roped off about it to keep pedestrians well out of range until the shack could be razed. But the storm struck before this was done. As we are told in biblical language, the storm raged, the winds blew, the water rose, and everything else took place that seemed possible, but the old shack stood, and after the storm the building that had been condemned had to be taken down by main strength and awkwardness.