A View of the Storm-Swept District
THE exact hour we were rescued I do not know, but it was about 12 o'clock noon Saturday, and I brought coffee from our kitchen and eggs and other food, and soon the famished children and adults were fed. I had a great thirst and drank three cups of Mrs. Sutherland's excellent (dripped) coffee, but I could not eat. Fear or anxiety, whatever it was, had effectually checked hunger, and I had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. While we were having coffee, the occupants of two other houses that had been wrecked came in. One was a former Rabbi who was sorely undone over his loss, but refused to break his fast, and though I was in the same boat physically, I marveled at the man's resolution, for I had no desire to eat and it was easy to see that he had. It was here that we heard of many narrow escapes, but as there were no fatalities in our immediate neighborhood it was some hours before the news of these began to come in.
At the first opportunity I walked all the way to town from Fortythird Street, N. W., and viewed the wreck and ruin present on every hand. There seemed to be few exceptions to the rule of destruction until I reached the older part of the downtown section which had been built some fifteen or twenty years before. When first I came to Miami (in 1909) I was struck and impressed with the generally low structure of houses, and inquired the reason, for I found many living in such who could afford more pretentious domiciles. I received the reply, (which seemed sufficient) that diminutive structures were favored because of hurricanes. Now, it was interesting to notice how many of these old time structures had passed through the storm unharmed when demolition was somewhat general. This was not true absolutely throughout the city, for nothing would have been left had it been so, but a citation of the damages in my own neighborhood is sufficient to demonstrate how general was the destruction. Our own house was unroofed, and the entrance was blocked by a pile of concrete blocks and coping that had been blown off. The awnings which had hung above the windows had been whipped into shreds and the metal frames upon which they were stretched had been broken and twisted beyond repair. The screening had been broken in and beaten full of holes, and the plastering had been rended into seams and seemed imminently likely to fall. Mr. Sutherland's
