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WHEN MORNING CAME
When the dawn came it was possible to see the devastation wrought by the storm in East St. Louis. The sky was clear, and the beauty of the morning strikingly contrasted with the scene of desolation that was disclosed. On the river bank, from Keblor's mill on the south to the elevators on the north, not a house was standing. These huge structures and the cold storage company's plant were badly damaged. The river bank was lined with wrecks of boats. With the river banks as the base, the entire triangle formed by what is called the Island, there is not a whole house standing. Even the Relay Depot had its corners broken and two huge roundhouses were shaved off below the tops of the middle of the locomotives which stood within them. One brick house stood without one wall, disclosing the interior and furniture exactly as the dwellers had left it. The pictures, beds, bureaus, washstands, chairs, tables and even the lamps on the tables were undisturbed. A room or two of several houses were left. For the remainder either the walls and roofs of the frame houses were folded together like cardboards and lay flat on the ground or they were broken into kindling wood and were scattered to the four points of the compass. The brick houses were heaps of building materials. It is marvelous that 10 persons escaped from buildings so completely wrecked. The Island, on each side of the roadway, looked like a vast lumber and truck heap. Freight cars were overturned or wrenched from their trucks and turned completely upside down. Across the creek, although few houses escaped damage and many were demolished, the destruction was neither so general nor complete. But in every direction the eye rested on ruins. Walking the length of Missouri avenue and looking up and down the cross streets one would say that a third of the houses were wrecked and seven-tenths were damaged.
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