The great disaster in Chill — Incidents of the catastrophe.
The Providence
Journal publishes a letter received by
Mr. W. A. Pearce, of
Providence, from his father, resident in
Santiago, who witnessed the recent appalling catastrophe by which more than 2,000 human beings were burnt to death.
It appears that the failure to rescue the unfortunate victims was owing to the idiotic police system of the Chileans.
The writer says:
‘
I hear you asking why were not these sufferers rescued.
Yes, why were they not rescued?
My heart sickens within me at the question.
Those determined stupid ignoramuses of policemen! --Fifty foreigners, had they been allowed to work, and to work in their own way, could and would have rescued nearly or quite the whole mass.
But no, as always the case here on an alarm of fire, the police place a sentry on every avenue leading to the fire.
They have, as you know, no
fire engines except some two or three old
Gordon pumps.
’
I fought my way past the police one entire square, by wresting guns and sabres from their hands, knocking them out of my way, and being knocked in return, until I was overpowered by numbers and compelled to retreat, and all within hearing of the most heart-rending lamentation that ever sounded on human ear. And nearly every foreigner fared similar to myself — was kept back.
Mr. Demilow, of the gas works, received a bayonet wound at the fire while in the act of rescuing a young lady whom he recognized — a
Miss Larren.
He had fought his way, in company with one of the workmen at the gas works, to the church, and battered down a side or private door, and saw
Miss Larren: she at the same time recognizing him, and called on him to save her.
He could not enter in consequence of a sheet of flame between them.
He reached his cant to her, which she grasped with both hands, when he and his friend attempted to drag her through the flames; but she was so surrounded and hummed in with the dead and dying, that her strength was not sufficient.
They abandoned this method and went in pursuit of some other means to rescue her, and returned again — and on presenting themselves with the means of saving her at the door, the police ordered them back, and not heeding the order, he (Damilow) was bayoneted.
His friend wrenched the gun from the policeman, knocked him sense less to the ground, and made a second attempt to save the poor girl.
But the time lost in dispute with the police was a life lost with her. This is only one of many similar scenes.
Your brother Charles battered a door down in Calic Banders, or Flag street, entered and found in a small ante-room some thirty females, and all living, but like so many statues, perfectly unconscious.
He was compelled to take many of them in his arms to carry them into the street and saved them all.
Mr. Meiggs and
Mr. Kelck fought their way through the police and reached the church at a late hour, and when the tower was falling about them, succeeded in saving several.
Mr. Meiggs saw a woman still alive under a crowd of others then dead.
She recognized him, and called to him, saying, ‘"for God's sake, save me!"’ He rushed through the fire to her and pushed several of the dead from her, then attempted to lift her out from among the dead, but they were so firmly wedged in about her and on her, he had to abandon that.
He then procured a lasso, fastened that about her waist, and the united strength of eight men could not extricate her from her companions, and they had to leave her, amid such cries for help as no Christian heart could endure, neither can language describe.
The police had full charge of the church, and in such force that the foreigners could do nothing there.
The police rescued but a few. Axes and crow bars were not to be had until a late hour.
A single instance will suffice to show the stupidity of the police.
An officer of the police set some half dozen of his men to hew or batter down one of those large front doors, with their old broad swords.
The doors are made of two inch hard wood, double thickness, and riveted through and through with iron rivets.
You can judge the effect their old cutlasses made on the door, better than I can describe it.
The scene at the church the following day was most revolting, heart distressing, that ever was witnessed since the world was created.
There were the poor unfortunate dead in all stages of consumption, the greater portion of them naked.
But a few could be recognized by their surviving friends.
The police ordered on the peones or laborers to remove the dead.
Those demons worse than devils damned — commenced their work with as much hilarity as you ever saw school children enter on some pleasure excursion.
The dead were pulled about and pulled apart as one would pull apart tangled brushwood.
You could see two or more peones pulling on a limb of some one buried under the others, until the limb was pulled from the body.
Then they would have a peon howl of exultation, and commence at another.
The dead were actually separated with crow bars and picks.
Limbs, heads and fragments were shovelled into carts with no more feeling than Irish laborers would have in shovelling gravel into a railroad car. Hundreds of bodies but part city burned, entirely naked, were tumbled into open ears and packed up in the cemetery in one promiscuous heap, without even the covering of a bundle of straw, or a bulrush, and hundreds of these heartless wretches, commenting and joking on the scene, and all under the supervision of the police.
Two thousand two hundred bodies have been counted out from the ruins, and it is supposed many were burned entirely up. The prevailing opinion is the number of lives lost will reach 2,500.
The count and names collected to date amount to some 1,500.
Many families have lost the entire female members--six, seven, eight, and nine from one family.
All those that could not be recognized by their surviving friends are now buried in one grave or hole.
A place twenty-five yards square was excavated, and into this they were laid, or tumbled and shovelled.
The city authorities have had their hands full the post week in keeping down mob violence — as the masses are determined that the church shall not be rebuilt — The Govnrnment have stepped in and ordered the ruins to be taken down and carted off, and will purchase the ground and erect a monument to the memory of the dead.
The place into be enclosed with a substantial iron fence, and the remainder of the ground laid out in a flower garden.
