Further details of the experiences in Florida during the recent hurricane are contained in a letter from Mrs. Juna Steele of ???, to her sister, Mrs. L. H. Waters of St. Clair Street, this city. Mrs. Steele tells how firemen rescued her from her home with the wind raging at 150 miles an hour. “We are living in our bathing suits now,” she wrote. The letter follows:
“I don’t know how to start to write this morning. I just want to say we were not killed during the hurricane. The storm started here Friday night and we just ???(unreadable section) in time. Oh, I can’t ever tell it. When the firemen came to the house to help save us, the wind was blowing 150 miles an hour, the rain was pouring, and the water was in the house and up to your waist outside. One of the firemen got on one side of me and Ross(?) on the other, and we just waded through the water. The men carred us about a block to the firehouse. That was the safest building around here in the neighborhood. They rescued most of the people in this section and had a regular hospital upstairs in the fire-house. I was almost exhausted when I got there. Lots died after they were brought in.
Oh, I can’t begin to write it all. I don’t know hardly what I am doing. We are all back at our house now, but everything is covered with water. All our clothes are ruined. We are all living in our bathing suits. Water is still up to our doorsteps. Part of our road ??? Water came up three or four feet in the house and you can imagine how things are. But we are so thankful we are living that we are not worrying. So many are so much worse off than we are.
I packed some of our best things in a grip, and they are all wet and faded together, just ruined. I hope I never have to experience anything like this again. It was awful.
I can’t write to all, and so you must notify all the rest that we are safe. We would move out of this house, but we can’t get anywhere to go. We are better off than so many. We have our beds dry enough to sleep on now. We have put canvas tents over part of the roof, and so if it rains again, we will keep a little dry. Don’t be uneasy about us. I hope the worst is over.
Everybody is trying to help the other fellow. We can’t get many groceries now, but they claim they are going to have relief sent in. We only have one two burner oil stove for this whole neighborhood, and it is at my house. So we make coffee and cook a little for all. But the strain of it is awful. All gas and electricity is off. This is the first letter I have written. I hope I get it off to you. Lots of people were killed and lost all they had. Write.
From the front page of the Goldsboro News, Sunday, Sept. 26, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn93064755/1926-09-26/ed-1/seq-1/
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