Brunswick, GA Hurricane Strikes, Oct 1898

BRUNSWICK STORM-SWEPT.

GEORGIA SEA COAST TOWN INUNDATED AND SEVERAL LIVES AND MUCH PROPERTY LOST.

SEA WATER FLOODS THE CITY.

VESSELS DRIVEN ASHORE, LOCOMOTIVE FIRES EXTINGUISHED, WHARVES AND DOCKS DEVASTATED, AND HOUSES WRECK BY A FURIOUS WIND.

Brunswick, Ga., Oct. 3. -- During the tropical hurricane of Sunday, a tidal wave was driven in from the sea and inundated for an average depth of five feet practically every business house and warehouse in this city.
Conservative estimates place the property loss at half a million dollars, though, when the details are all in, the figures may be considerably shaded either way. The Mallory Steamship and Southern Railway docks were under water four feet. In the residence section of the city the water was from two to eight feet deep. There was a full sweep of wind and water from the ocean into and across the city.
Two fatalities in Brunswick and one a few miles out of the city have been reported. Those in the city were negro children. Their parents are missing and may have been drowned. A few miles out of town STERRITT AIKEN, colored, was killed by falling bricks blown from a chimney.
Meagrer reports from the Sea Islands on the coast are far from reassuring. At Jekyll Island, where the clubhouses of New York millionaires are situated, much damage has been done. Dixville, a suburb of Brunswick, inhabited by negroes, was inundated and the destruction is almost complete. No lives were lost there.
Five vessels are ashore in Brunswick Harbor, two being the Norwegian barks Record and Louise, one an American schooner, and two valuable pilot boats.
On the docks were hundreds of thousands of feet of lumber and cross ties and naval stores, which will be washed away. Nearly all the docks suffered from lifting. While the water was doing its damage underneath, the wind was playing havoc overhead.
Several fronts of brick buildings were blown partly out and the rain poured through in torrents.
Every church in the city was damaged either by water or wind. All electric wires were prostrated. Fires in locomotives, in and near the city, were put out by the driving sheets of water.
The storm began at 4 A.M. and continued twelve hours, with wind from forty to sixty miles an hour. The loss to railroads has been considerable from washing of tracks and injury to terminal property. Communication cannot be fully restored for a day or two.
The flood which inundated the Islands and lowlands around Savannah and all the neighboring coast has partially subsided. The first news from the Sea Islands, on the South Carolina coast, between Tybee and Beaufort, where the great tidal wave of 1893 caused such fearful fatality, was received tonight. The damage by the storm there was comparatively small, and so far as is known there was no loss of life. The steamer Clifton made the trip from Savannah to Port Royal this afternoon and arrived here late tonight. The flood was driven by a northeast gale, and did not cover any of the Sea Islands ini that section except those nearest the ocean.

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