TALES TOLD BY REFUGEES.
Stories of Suffering and Deeds of Heroism Increase the Fire Literature.
DULUTH, Minn., Sept. 4.—The death roll resulting from the forest fires increases, and now over 650 are known to be lost, the greater part women and children.
The greatest percentage of deaths occurred among settlers, where whole families were swept out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. Not in any one direction, but in every part of, the fire-swept district, the finding of bodies hourly swells the list.
At an early hour this morning a party of thirty experienced woodsmen left by special conveyance to scour the woods for bodies of settlers in out-of-the-way cabins and clearings. They are expected to bring back appalling reports.
In a stretch of territory twenty-six miles long and from one to fifteen miles wide, not a single human habitation has been left standing, except a section house at Miller, and in every part of the track of the flames bodies of men, women, children, horses, and cattle were found. The position of every body from outside of Hinckley shows that shelter of some kind was sought by the anguished sufferers, and the dead are found in holes, behind overturned stumps, trees, marshy depressions, and in every water course.
The general shape of the fire-swept district is like a huge cigar, with a southwestern end about Mission Creek, and the upper terminal a few miles east of Finalyson or Rutledge. From this a number of branches extend to beyond the tracks of the Eastern Minnesota Railroad.
The work of the flames has been cyclonic in character. Where the fire held away not a single tree is standing, except as a blackened stump. Thousands of overturned trees are lying prostrate, and the roots were burning fiercely up to last evening, when the welcome rain fell.
A careful canvas reveals the face that 72 settlers’ homes, outside of towns, fell. As near as can be learned, there were 500 people in these homes.
At Brookdale a little town on the Eastern Minnesota Railroad south of Hinckley, about 90 persons took refuge in the water of a small creek. Out of this place 67 dead bodies were taken and buried, and some 30 living persons were rescued, some badly burned.
Conductor James Sargent of the St. Paul and Duluth has been working for the railroad with an improvised train, consisting of three handcars spliced together with planks, picking up and identifying the bodies of the dead. The party buried 187 at Hinckley and 47 at Miller. All the bodies were carefully examined, and in many cases were fully identified, and in every case a complete record was made of everything that could possibly lead to identification.
By the Duluth relief committees most remarkable work has been done. Without regard to age, sex, or social standing, hundreds of people, including those of the very highest social standing in the city, who have been working day and night since Saturday last, have organized thoroughly into all needed sub-committees, and have in a systematic way taken care of men, women, and children. Special committees have been caring for the little ones. Over $8,000 in cash has been given to temporary relief and goods and clothing valued at as much more have been provided.
S. A. Thompson, who went out on the burial train yesterday, has returned. All the way down the trainmen almost had to throw people off who wished to go along and witness the distressing scene. At Finlayson a party, headed by Ed Finlayson, drooped off and went east several miles, visiting among other places the Billedeaut farm, where the bodies of three children were found. The rest of the family had gone to Sandstone.
A party, headed by Frederick Reynolds, dropped off near Skunk Lake, and got the bodies of Mrs. Lind and five children, whose home was half a mile west of the track. Trainmen picked up the bodies of Littell and Elder, two operators of the North American Telegraph Company, who had been sent out to the scene of the trouble.
Trainmen picked up then bodies, besides that of General Passenger Agent Rowley of the Winnipeg, near the track. It was learned that Pine Lake, a settlement seven miles west of Finlayson, was untouched, but nothing has been heard of Sand Lake, a settlement away form the railroad, and it is feared that it has been destroyed. Another body was discovered in the mud at the edge of Skunk Lake, but it could not be gotten out.
At Miller, A. A Farrington and Robert Forbes headed parties, and started for Sandstone, and have not since been heard from. Thompson himself headed a party that picked up seven bodies in the Westerlund cellar, half a mile east of the wreck. Another party, headed by Iynco, got the bodies of Ed Greenfield’s five children, a half mile south of the wreck, near the track. A large man was picked up over Hinckley Hill, who was recognized by his brother-in-law as Dennis Ryan, watchman at the Hinckley sawmill.
The burial train reached Hinckley at 6 P. M. The Coroner of Pine County said that there were 187 bodies already picked up in Hinckley alone, with more to follow. They were piled up in boxes and coffins near the track like so much cordwood.
Oliver Dubois, a French-Canadian farmer living on the outskirts of the little village of Sandstone, was among the 250 refugees who reached here from that place. He saved his life by jumping into the bottom of a dry well, and was one of the very few who took such refuge that lived. Mr. Dubois was a little way from his home. His family were absent. He heard in the south a great roaring, and thought a tornado was coming. The blackness of the sky added to the belief.
There was a well a few feet away, into which he jumped. It was about twelve feed deep and dry. Above him he could see the rolling cloud of flames high in the air, and then down close to the ground. His position grew stifling, and the air seemed to be so exhausted that he could only breathe by digging a hole into the damp earth and pressing his face to the side. When one place became stifling he would try another spot. The well filled with smoke and gas, and after a time apparently endless, but which was probably about half an hour, he managed to climb out, so weak that he could hardly walk.
“Then I started to town,” he said. It began to grow lighter, so I could see the street. I stood in the centre of Sandstone and called. Not a sound came in answer, I called again and again, but the place I had been in only two hours before was as still as the grave. I walked toward the river, shivering with fear. On the way I counted bodies—bodies—more than fifty of them. I climbed down the river bank and there, crouched in the water, I found the people. During the passage of the fire women had held their screaming children in the water, and had stood, mouth deep, in it themselves.”
The water-power village, two miles west of Sandstone, was in what was the direct line of the cyclone of flames, but only three buildings were destroyed. It is a quarry village and is on the riverside, close under a high hill. When the flames reached the hill, they darted over it and were lost in space high above the houses, while another column circled around the hill, spanned the river in an instant, licking up the brush on the other side, and then recrossed the river at the village, setting fire to three houses.
The population turned out with an engine and kept the fire from spreading. The hill saved the place from total destruction and the loss of a greater percentage of lives than at Hinckley or Sandstone, for there was no room to escape. The next morning the water people, discovering the destitution of the Sandstone people, wired them to come over and share what they had, and in a short time the place was cleared out. Two cows that were badly injured by the flames furnished meat for the hungry souls, as well as half-baked potatoes dug from the gardens. There is not a thing to east in the whole district, and food supplies will be very welcome.
Another town has fallen a prey to devouring flames, making nine in all that have been consumed. This time the village of Granite, on the Omaha Road, two miles south of Baronette, is the victim. A good share of the town, a sawmill, and 5,000,000 feet of lumber, were consumed. No lives were lost.
The mail agent on the Omaha north-bound train arrived here last evening and stated that the face of the entire country is so completely changed by the disasters that he would not know it was the same as he has been in the daily habit of passing.
O. F. Murray, the Eastern Road operator at Hinckley, has not been found, and it is feared that he is dead. Murray was the man who wired here the first report of the disaster, saying that the fires were coming up like magic, that one minute he saw flames down the track, and a minute later sent word that he must leave the instrument, as the flames were on him.
Mr. Bullis, agent of the Eastern Minnesota at Sandstone, arrived here last night. It was through his heroism that the 500 refugees on the Eastern train that arrived here Sunday night did not all suffer the same fate as hundreds of others.
Sandstone Station is a mile out of the town, and Kettle River, crossed by a great bridge, flows between. Bullis was at his instrument when the Eastern train bringing 500 refugees passed back into Sandstone. He flagged the train in the darkness, went back to his burning office, wired north to stop all south-bound business, to give a free road, and sent the train back as quickly as possible, knowing that the bridge might be on fire at any moment.
When the train arrived at the 1,500-foot bridge, Flagman Jessmer saw it burning brightly in several paces, but he at once decided that the chance of getting over was preferable to sure death on the tracks, and it went on. Five hundred lives bless the promptness of these two men.
After Jessmer left the bridge he hurried with his wife and three children to Sandstone, and found the people in the river. They were in the water for three or four hours. Word came in last evening that fifty-one bodies were buried at Sandstone yesterday afternoon, and twelve are still missing. A relief train left here for that place, and started back at 8 o’clock last evening, bringing fifty more survivors and twenty or more injured on stretchers.
