“The Great Disaster”
Submitted by Larie Tedesco
Daily Picayune 10-14-1893; pg. 9; Issue 263; col A


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Under the above heading the New York Sun – the first of New
York papers to make an appeal for Louisiana storm sufferers – 
published the following editorial:

We were hope for a time that there might be exaggeration in 
the reports of the destruction of life and property by the 
terrific tornado that swept along the southern coast of 
Louisiana and Alabama last Sunday and Monday. The people who 
have been left alive in the afflicted region were panic-struck; 
it was impossible for two or three days to collect information 
from the outlying islands and the settlements along the bayous; 
the floods rendered travel exceedingly difficult, and both 
telegraphic and railroad communication were interrupted. It 
was but natural that, under the circumstances, there should be 
doubt of the correctness of at least some of the statements 
procured from terror-stricken fugitives, none of who had the 
means of making any trustworthy estimate of the measure of the 
ruin that had been wrought.
 
It is with the utmost grief that we are compelled to admit that 
our hope that there might be exaggeration in the fearful stories 
has not been justified by the authentic reports sent to us within 
the past three days. As our latest dispatches have shown, the tornado 
and the floods destroyed even a greater number of lives then the number 
estimated in our earlier dispatches, and destroyed also a greater amount 
of property than the amount reported as destroyed last Tuesday. The 
figures which we printed yesterday must have harrowed the minds of all 
our readers, and many of the incidents narrated during the week must 
have caused even strong men to shudder. The dead number over 2000! At 
the settlement of Caminadaville on Friday last the count of the dead 
ran up to 822, of whom 406 were children. Houses were blown to pieces,
villages were destroyed, scores of fishermen’s craft were wrecked, crops 
were ruined. But we need not here repeat the details which we have already 
printed. There were fearful times between Barataria bay and the delta of 
the Mississippi last Sunday night and Monday morning, and all through the 
days and nights of the past week. The whole country is in profound sympathy 
with the sufferers.
 
So far as human help can be of any avail to the survivors, it will be 
freely offered. New Orleans has acted nobly in providing money and supplies 
for them. Hundreds of its citizens are engaged in relief work. The amount of 
help needed must be large. The New Orleans Board of Trade has appealed to our 
commercial exchanges for assistance, and these bodies will certainly, in this 
case, be true to their record. There have been many calls upon New York this 
year. During the past fortnight our citizens have been contributing supplies 
for the destitute people of the South Carolina seaboard, the sufferers from 
the tornado and the flood which wrought havoc there last month. They are 
contributing of their means for the relief of the yellow-fever-smitten 
regions of southern Georgia. They have been pressed for contributions to 
the charitable societies of the city which aid the unemployed. But, for 
all that, the appeal of the New Orleans Board of Trade has been heard in 
our commercial exchanges, and will be answered by them. No such terrible 
cry of distress as that which reaches us from the State of Louisiana has 
ever been left unheeded by the city of New York.