Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1902 — YEAR OF DISASTERS. [ARTICLE]

YEAR OF DISASTERS.

PREDICTIONS OF T HE PROPHETB BEING VERIFIED. Nature Has Been Bnsy with Her Forces of Devastation During the Past Five Months—A Total of Sixty Thousand Lives Thought to Have Been Lost. “One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, so fast they follow.” Public interest in the recent disasters among the West Indian Islands lias hardly begun to abate before reports come of others which, but for the exceptional magnitude of the former, would he regarded ns unusual in their fatality. The cyclone which struck the little town of Goliad, Texas, on Sunday not only nearly destroyed the place, but left iu its wake ninety dead and over one hundred injured—an unusual cyclone record for a single locality. The mine explosion at Coal Creek. Tenn., is the worst of the year, over 200 men and toys being killed. Simultaneously with these events edines the news of a terrible hurricane which has swept over the province of Seiudo, in British India, carrying away houses, bridges and embankments, and washing away miles of railroad tracks. The few words, “many lives were lost,” are significant. The prophets who predicted that 1902 would be a year of disasters were cor” rect. They have been in the habit of uttering these prophecies year after yoar without result, but this year they have beeu verified, though but five months have passed. If one only prophesies patiently and persistently'he will assuredly be right. Nature'has not been so busy with her forces of devastation for many years past as she has been during the first five months of the present year. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes have destroyed 48,450 lives storms 704, tornadoes 41t5. cyclones 220, floods 333, avalanches 228, tidal waves 103, snowslides 39, and waterspouts 12, a total of 50.505 lives destroyed by nature’s elemental disturbances. If to this total were added the lives lost by agencies over which man has more or less control, such as fires, mine disasters, explosions, railroad accidents and vessel wrecks, it would be increased to over 60,000, and this takes no account of individual lives lost in this country, which would bring the grand total up to about 100,000 lives lost in the short period of five months. In the presence of these great natural’ convulsions man is powerless and probably always will be. As to the disasters occasioned by human ignorance or carelessness or neglect the despair of the situation is that the catastrophe of today is a sensation for the day and tomorrow is generally forgotten. It has its lesson, but it is not often read.