To those who previously had no fear, the certainty that the wind would change came as the first real note of warning. With the first shifting of the wind the waters of the Gulf swept over the city. Houses near the beach began to crumble and collapse, their timbers being picked up by the wind and waves and thrown in a long line of battering rams against the structures. Men, women and children fled from their homes and sought safety in higher portions of the city, or in buildings more strongly built. Some were taken out in boats, some in wagons, some waded through the waters, but the flood rose so rapidly that the approach of night found many hundreds battling in the waters, unable to reach places of safety. The air was full of missiles. The wind tore slates from roofs and carried them along like wafers. A person struck by one of these, driven with the fearful violence of the storm, was certain to be maimed, if not killed outright. The waves, with each succeeding sweep of the in-rushing tide, brought a greater volume of wreckage as house after house toppled and fell into the waters. So tremendous was the roar of the storm that all other sounds were dwarfed and drowned. During the eight hours from 4 P. M. until midnight, the hurricane raged with a fury greater than words can describe. What height the winds reached will never be known. The wind gauge at the weather bureau recorded an average of 84 miles an hour for five consecutive minutes, and then the instruments were carried away. That was before the storm had become really serious. The belief, as expressed by the observer, that the wind averaged between 110 and 120 miles an hour, is as good information as is obtainable. Nothing so exemplified the impotency of man as the storm. Massive buildings were crushed like egg shells, great timbers were carried through the air as though they were of no weight, and the winds and the waves swept everything before them until their appetite for destruction was satiated and their force spent. A remarkable feature about the storm is the disparity in the depth of water in different portions of the city, and the undoubted fact that the waters subsided on the north side of the city hours before they did on the south side. These peculiarities are explained by the topography of the island. Broadway, which marks the center, or middle of the city, proper, is on the ridge, from which the land slopes on one side, toward the bay and on the other, toward the Gulf. The waters from the Gulf passed over this ridge and swept on toward the bay during the most furious stages of the storm, but the full energies of wind and water were directed upon that portion of the city between the Gulf and the Broadway Ridge. Of the lives lost in the city, 90 per cent. were in the district named.