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Show ADVENTURERS' CLUB f 53 i HEADLINES FROM. THE LIVES J?V OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELFI gj "Through a Tropic Holocaust' By FLOTD GIUBOKS Famous Headline Hunter HELLO EVERYBODY: Well, sir, fellow adventurers, people have all kinds of troubles in this bothersome old world of ours. You have your troubles and I have mine. Maybe the old spinning ball would be just TOO nice a place to live on if we didn't have our share of adversity to make the sweet seem sweeter and the bright seem brighter still. Anyhow, I have a letter here from Alberta L. Ilitchins of New York City, who has had her troubles plenty of 'em but who doesn't let them bother her very much. No, sir. Because every time she begins to think her troubles are too much for her, she looks back on that horrible day in Kingston, Jamaica, in January, 1907, and realizes that what looks like troubles to her now don't really deserve the name of trouble at all. On that fateful day Mrs. Ilitchins was sitting in the office of J. Eustace Burke & Brothers, the firm for which she worked. She wasn't Mrs. Hitchins then Just Alberta, the assistant cashier. With her in the office was her boss, her sister one or two other women who worked there, too. Outside, It was a clear, tropical, sunshiny day. From overhead over-head came the rumble of machinery in a bottling plant on the floor above. When the Earthquake Struck. At 3:30 in the afternoon, a distant, ominous, rumbling aound startled all Kingston. In the office where Alberta worked, how ever, nobody paid any attention to these sounds. The bottling plant on the floor above was always noisy. Rumblings were nothing new to the employees of Burke & Brothers. The first Intimation that Alberta had that anything was wrong was when she happened to look up from her work and saw that the wall In front of her desk SEEMED TO BE BENDING OVER! At the same time, she felt herself suddenly Inexplicably slipping from her chair. She jumped to her feet. From overhead a shower of pluster fell, uttering her desk. All at once, things seemed to be flying in all directions. Then, in a moment, all was quiet again. In the office, there was a moment of tense silence. Then Alberta heard the voice of her boss saying: "My God! An earthquake! San Francisco all over again!" Alberta took a quick look around the of- LaliMiiHilaali- nil nil III II Tr iae l iii (l r ill i i ' A Tottering Wall Fell With a Crash. fice. There were five people in it. Miraculously, not one of them was injured. Alberta heaved a sigh of relief too soon. At that moment the trembling started all over again. From outside came the sound of a piercing shriek. A woman In the next building! Alberta started toward the door felt someone some-one grab her by the arm. It was her sister. "Don't go out there," her sister cried. A tottering wall fell with a crash. The woman's voice was stilled. Terrible Scenes in the Streets. The boss started to gather up the company's books and put them in the safe. The girls turned to and helped. When that was finished, Alberta and her sister made their way out to the street and started to head for home, down by the waterfront. - The town was a shambles. Buildings were down everywhere. Walls were down streets a mass of wreckage debris strewn everywhere. Men, women, children even animals were stretched out on the pavement, pave-ment, dead or frightfully injured. Everywhere, cries for help. People pinned under falling buildings half buried in the wreckage shouted pathetic appeals for aid that almost drove Alberta and her sister mad with pity. And to add to the horror, fire broke out everywhere and many who could otherwise have been saved had to be abandoned by the rescuers to a living death in the flames. It was the most harrowing sight two girls had ever seen. They struggled home to find their mother and younger sister alive, but frightfully Injured. They had Just been dug out from under the wreckage of what had been their home. Earthquake shocks were still coming at Intervals. Alberta and her sister cast about for medical aid for their mother and the little girl. The hospital was miles away and in ruins. The only safe place left was the sea. They took them aboard a vessel anchored in the harbor har-bor and put them in care of the ship's doctor. There were hundreds of other people on that boat hundreds of refugees from the stricken city. All afternoon they' straggled aboard. Doctors volunteer nurses came from the towa They turned that boat into a hospital ship for the care of the injured. Tragedies in a Night of Horrors. Night came a night that transformed the city into a red Inferno rimmed by the cosmic blackness. Fire flamed up anew in a hundred different quarters. Buildings tottered. Walls crumbled. The shrieks i of the victims continued all through the night. Dogs howled in the streets. Fanatics sang wildly. People went insane for no other reason than that : which they had seen and heard. Terrible scenes were enacted In those grim hours. A father and son were trapped between two walls of a fallen building Rescuers were striving to get to them. They were almost free, when flame shot through the building, driving the rescuers back. The trapped man's business partner had just time to pass his hand through a hole in the wall give his friend a last handshake before the flames were upon him and he had to dash back, the cries of his associate and the boy still ringing In his ears. In the heartrending scenes that went on through that terrible night, Alberta almost lost her mind. Long before it was over, she was a woman wom-an moving in a daze. Somehow she lived through it somehow kept her sanity. And now Now Alberta is married. As the mother of three children she has responsibilities sometimes troubles. But when she has troubles, she looks back at that awful January day in Kingston and wonders what the people who bled and died in that holocaust would think of her feeble little woes. WNU Service. |