Great Storm Sweeps Nome

Nome is Visited By Fearful Storm-Beach Side of Front Street Wiped Out-Loss Will Be Million-Three Lives Reported Lost-Buildings Topple and Fall When Breakers Pound Over Business District-Worst in History of North-Brings Back memories of 1910 Storm.

Nome, Alaska, Oct.7.-Nome’s business district practically swept away; hundred of thousands of dollars in property lost; five hundred homeless; ruin and destruction and desolation everywhere, and the end not in sight, is the condition existing here today, as a result of a storm that broke with tremendous fury early yesterday morning and continues unabated. There have been no lives lost.

One mile of Front Street has been washed away. The Elite baths and hotel, a four story building, crashed to the ground at the mercy of the waves at 3 a.m. yesterday. Huge walls of water rushed swirling and eddying over the wreckage and a din like the roar of canonn (sic) struck terror to the people.

The scenes in Front Street yesterday were indescribable. Jewelry stores, warehouses, dry goods stores, restaurants, saloons-all this section of Front Street, has been swept out. Breakers forty feet high swept over Front Street. All hands were commandeered to aid in securing the effects of the stricken businessmen. Thousands of dollars worth of goods have been swept out to sea and with winter at hand a famine is feared, as the provisions and stores of the city have been practically wiped out.

Every building along the beach side of Front Street is in ruins. The Board of Trade saloon and restaurant was among the earlier buildings to suffer destruction.

The life saving station is swept away. Nome spent a night of horror last night. The blackness added to the terror of the scene and the terrific wind and rain continued with greater fury.

At 10 o’clock this morning it is feared the entire business section of Nome will be carried away. The people are working hopefully and with the spirit of the times are facing the situation bravely.

It is estimated that fully five hundred people are homeless.

Every building on the sandspit has been washed away excepting the cold storage plant. This building is weakening and may go any minute. The workers are unable to cope with the water and are confining their efforts to moving goods to places of safety.

The storm first broke Saturday morning. A fifty-mile gale blew but this velocity was soon increased to sixty miles, according to weather observations.

By noon yesterday the calamity was almost at its height. The suddenness with which the storm increased left the city entirely unprepared to receive it. Sunday the storm raged and notice was posted that the steamer Victoria would not sail for Seattle until its abatement. Little alarm was felt in Nome Sunday. By midnight the first signs of approaching destruction were in evidence. The firebells were rung to summon the people, but before the hastily called meeting had assembled the waved began to pour onto Front Street. Each receding comber carried debris with it.

Daily Alaska Dispatch, Juneau, AK 8 Oct 1913

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Tells of Terrible Storm at Nome

W.L. COCHRANE Tells Details of $1,000,000 Storm October 5 and 6.

W.L. COCHRANE is now able to be about the city again after having been laid up for the past two weeks with a severe attack of the grip. He was taken ill the day following his arrival home from Nome, Alaska where he spent the summer looking after the mining interests of Aberdeen men there.

Mr. COCHRANE was at Nome when the terrible storm of October 5 and 6 struck there, a storm which Mr. COCHRANE declares was the worst in the history of the north seas. The wind started to blow Friday morning, and all of that day and Saturday continued to grow stronger until it reached a velocity of 75 miles per hour, the highest velocity on record for that country.

The wind was a perfect gale, and kept piling up the waters of the sea until all the buildings along the water front were washed away. At 9 o’clock Sunday night the water from Behring Sea commenced to flood the streets at Nome, and at midnight the Elite bath house, where 100 persons were living, collapsed.

$1,000,000 Damages

From midnight on until 6 o’clock the next morning the storm was at its height, and building after building along the waterfront was undermined and fell back into the sea. Afternoon, Monday, the wind commenced to abate, and the waters began to recede from the streets of the city, leaving awful wreckage behind them. The wreckage was piled about the streets from ten to twenty feet high, an estimate of $1,000,000 being placed on the damage done in the city.

The worst damage, declared Mr. COCHRANE, at least the damage that would work the worst harm, was the fact that so many of the men at Nome who had been successful in saving up enough money during the summer, had stocked their cabins with their winter supply of food and provisions. These outfits were nearly all washed away, and the suffering on this account this winter will be intense.

That more persons were not killed than actually were due to the fact that the city officials of Nome took the initiative as soon as it was certain that the storm would be a serious one. Sunday evening 100 special officers were sworn in, and commenced to patrol the water front, warning the people in the danger zone, and getting them out of harms way. In this manner the people at the Elite bath house were saved before the building collapsed, but as it was nearly all of them lost their possessions and many of them escaped only in scant attire.

Freaks of the Storm

As is usual in all big storms, there were many strange planks played by the wind. A 900-pound steel safe belonging to T. LEHMAN a merchant at Nome, was carried a quarter of a mile and deposited in the basement of another wrecked building, where it was found by Mr. LEHMAN after the storm had subsided.

The native school house was carried a quarter of a mile towards Belmont and after being turned completely around was set down on an even foundation without a crack or jar to the building. In fact even the schoolbooks and papers on the shelves in the buildings were not disturbed in the least. The teachers opened up school at the new location after the storm went down.

Disagreeable Oil

A most disagreeable feature of the storm was the fact that several tanks of oil had been broken open by the storm and the oil was scattered over everything along the beach. Many buildings damaged only by the water only by the water were almost rendered uninhabitable by the oil, which stuck to everything it touched.

Drowned at Sea.

HENRY GEISLER, owner of the gas launch “Nora”, with his wife and children were drowned during the storm. They were enroute from St. Michael to Nunivak, but several days after the storm the wrecked launch was found near Dinrock, twenty-seven miles north of Nome and way off from its course. The bodies were not recovered.

“It was a fearful sight,” said Mr. COCHRANE, “and neither I nor Mrs. COCHRANE will ever forget it. The people along the west coast responded nobly to the call for assistance, and as soon as boats could get through provisions were rushed to the stricken city.”

Aberdeen Daily News, Aberdeen, SD 15 Nov 1913
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Transcribed by June. Thanks June!