Relief station

“ The distribution of food supplies and clothing and relieving of distress was put on a business basis. Supplies reached Dayton in large quantities, and the relief stations were sufficiently organized to take care of the incoming refugees from the flood districts. The problem of caring for the homeless was still serious, but with all promise of warm weather it was hoped there would be less suffering. ”

“ The first thing that Johnstown people do in the morning is to go to the relief stations and get something to eat. They go carrying big baskets, and their endeavor is to get all they can. There has been a new system every day about the manner of dispensing the food and clothing to the sufferers. At first the [Pg 399] supplies were placed where people could help themselves. Then they were placed in yards and handed to people over the fences. Then people had to get orders for what they wanted from the citizens' committee and their orders were filled at the different relief stations. ”

“ Every automobile in the city was pressed into service and used to meet paths and take the refugees at once to the hospitals.49
"Our greatest need is a dozen motor boats and men to run them," was the message contained in an appeal sent out by Mr. Patterson. Skiffs and rowboats could not live in torrents rushing through the city's principal streets.
The big plant of the National Cash Register Company was made relief headquarters. As persons were rescued they were taken to a relief sub-station, where their names were recorded and they received first aid. ”

“ Although legislation in Germany and Switzerland is severe upon the vagrant loafers, generous provision is made in those countries for bona fide seekers of work. This is done by the complementary systems of public and semi-public Relief Stations and Hostels or popular lodging-houses. The Relief Stations are plain places of entertainment at which passing workmen, if duly accredited, may obtain food and a night's lodging in return for a certain task of work. ”

“ There is no denying that a great deal of ill-feeling is breeding here between the survivors of the flood over the distribution of the relief supplies. The supplies are spread along the railroad track down as far as Morrellville in great stacks; provisions, clothing, shoes, and everything else. The people come for them in swarms with baskets and other means of conveyance. ”

“ In a scanty widening of the main canyon a few hundred yards below the station a graders' camp of rude slab shelters is turning out its horde of wild-looking Italians; and on a crooked spur track fronting the shanties blue wood-smoke is curling lazily upward from the kitchen car of a construction train. ”

“ In the treatment of the flood problem, prevention, by the use of storage reservoirs, for the purpose of holding back the damaging part of the flood water, is the rational and comprehensive method, as it goes to the source of the trouble, and extends its benefits throughout the entire river valleys, not only in the form of flood relief, but by improvement of the low-water flow, due to the release of the impounded flood waters during the dry season. ”

“ Father traced the origin of the flood and drew up plans, and received the thanks of the railway company.
Now there are some people, especially those who live in large towns, who may think that a small country station is a very dull place to live in, but that is because they have never tried it. Apart from such occasional and exciting events as that just described, the country has interests and amusements of its own. ”

“ One buys the bedding, with waterproof hold-all for it at almost any shop—there is no difficulty about it.
January 30. What a spectacle the railway station was, at train-time! It was a very large station, yet when we arrived it seemed as if the whole world was present—half of it inside, the other half outside, and both halves, bearing mountainous head-loads of bedding and other freight, trying simultaneously to pass each other, in opposing floods, in one narrow door. These opposing floods were patient, gentle, long-suffering natives, with whites scattered among them at rare intervals ”

“ Fortunately, stations are seldom placed in deep cuttings or upon high embankments; but frequently when a station is opened, houses will be erected around it, thus causing any movement of the ground to be of serious moment and dangerous. ”

“ The station itself is pretty; its trim houses and shady trees, backed against the hills, overlook the wide expanse of Kavirondo Bay and its encircling promontories. Unluckily, it is unhealthy, for the climate is depressing and the sewage accumulates in the tideless and shallow inlet. Some day one of two things 84 will happen: either the waters of the Victoria Nyanza will be raised by a dam across the Ripon Falls and Kavirondo Bay will be proportionately deepened and cleansed, or the railway will be deflected and prolonged to its natural terminus on the deep waters of the lake at Port Victoria. ”

“ In an exceptional situation where a railway must be located in a ravine and close to a river, and the material of which an embankment is made is compact earth or the ground firm, it may be advisable to allow the overflow waters of a river, or the flow of surface water towards it, when the extreme flood level is known, to gently pass over a line of railway, it being kept at such a level as not to impede free working, and to ensure that any back water is not prevented from escaping. ”

“ Moreover we must be both able and willing to help ourselves in regard to the wear and tear in our dwelling and station buildings. We must make and keep in repair buildings, fences, drainage, etc., and all amid surroundings in which the climate and its forces are leagued against us. ”

“ In other sections, railroads have been the greatest foe to station improvement and have absolutely prevented beautification of buildings and the grounds through their ownership of the surrounding area. Sometimes benevolently minded individuals and organizations have themselves financed or have aided in the building and beautification of the railway approach. Again where the villagers were rich colonists or the size of the center required rebuilding frequently, as in New York, a suitable station has resulted through the adaptation of the company to the environment. ”

“ The railroad is in a terrible condition. The day express and the limited, which left Pittsburg on Friday morning, are lying between Johnstown and Conemaugh on the east, having been cut off by the flood. Linemen were sent down from our train at every station to repair the telegraph wires which are damaged. Tremendous efforts are being exerted to repair the injury sustained by the railroad, and it is only a question of a couple of days until through communication is reëstablished. ”

“ Structures costing tens of thousands sterling in future will be restricted to important places, especially in connection with sea-rocks, such as landfalls, or to those some distance from the land, where a fog-signal station must be maintained, unless the example of the Platte Fougère land-controlled station becomes adopted. ”

“ Accordingly an option should be secured upon a large piece of land not over forty miles from a large city, near a railroad station. The transportation at first is not important, as the new commuters will make a demand for it, and cheap autos will largely fill the gap; it will improve rapidly.
If possible it should have a lake or a fair stream on it for irrigation and small water power; the soil should be examined by experts, to see that it is suitable for trucking and market gardening. ”

“ A dam site was discovered sixty-two miles from a railroad, and they proceeded to connect it with civilization by a marvellous road which winds its way for forty miles through deep cañons, along the face of frowning precipices, over foaming cataracts, and across broad areas of treeless desert. It opens up to the transcontinental traveller a new region of compelling interest and of splendid scenery. Better than that, it provides an easy thoroughfare for the transportation of heavy machinery of all kinds and the supplies for the new community which sprang into life almost at a word. ”

“ Always our first business at the end of a day's trek was to ride away and look for the railway station, with its one solitary hut and the half-dozen tents occupied by the water-guard.
I have ventured to mention these details in order to show how very carefully the move across the desert of even one small unit, especially a mounted unit, had to be planned out from beginning to end, if it was to have rations and water in the right place at the right time; the least hitch and men had to go foodless for a day or even longer. ”

“ The mission station lies at the foot of the hill of Thaba Bosiyo, in a singular region where crags of white or grey sandstone, detached from the main mass of the tabular hills, stand up in solitary shafts and pinnacles, and give a weird, uncanny look to the landscape. The soil is fertile and well cultivated, but being alluvial, it is intersected in all directions by the channels of streams, which have dug so deep into it that much good land is every year lost by the mischief the streams work when in flood. ”

“ At 8.34 we reached the reservoir of the station of al-Aḫẓar. The station is built on the right-hand side of the valley of the same name and is a rectangular stone stronghold without towers. On the north and east are six deep reservoirs, the water for which used to be obtained from a well about ten meters deep and more than two meters broad, hollowed out in the courtyard of the stronghold. The water is now conducted into a large cistern excavated in the rocky southern slope, whence it is conveyed to the railway water tower constructed by the side of the embankment. ”

“ Relief work for the suffering goes on at the headquarters of the Relief Committee on that little, muddy, rubbish-filled street which escaped destruction at the edge of the flood.
The building is a wretched shanty, once a Hungarian boarding-house, and a long line of miserable women stretches out in front of it all day waiting for relief. They are the unfortunate who have lost everything in the flood.
Quarters for five thousand of these people are provided in tents on the hillside. For provisions they are dependent on the charity of the country. ”

“ Over the Customs House gate might be written, varying Dante's terrible line, "All hope of cleanliness abandon, ye who enter here": for once inside Progreso town you must do battle with tropical dust at its worst. Through the railway yard, where the sun beats down with a blistering heat on trucks, mules, and men, you make your way to the train through filthy little arcaded streets, your boots disappearing at each footstep in the ill-smelling, garbage-littered compound, your eyes smarting in the clouds of it you kick up. ”

“ They recommend the removal of the steam railway lines from the surface of the streets of the city and the location of the necessary depots in such places as may be convenient for the public accommodation, and they call attention to the deficiency of the water supply, which seriously affects the material prosperity of the city and the health and comfort of its inhabitants. ”

“ By these people even the distant valley of the Ili is being largely populated. Being on foot, with their extraordinary loads balanced on flexible shoulder-poles, these poor fellows could make only one station, or from twelve to twenty miles a day. In the presence of their patience and endurance, we were ashamed to think of such a thing as hardship.
IN THE GOBI DESERT. The station-houses on the desert were nothing more than a collection of mud huts near a surface well of strongly brackish water. Here, most of the caravans would put up during the day, and travel at night. ”

“ We know, when we stop at a station to drink, that we are drawing near the primeval basin of a stagnant sea, now shrunk to its final pool in Salt Lake, but once in size a rival of the Mediterranean. We pass over an alternation of mountain-grades and sandy levels, cross the Green or Upper Colorado River, stop for five minutes at the Fort-Bridger station, thread the sinuous galleries of the Wahsatch, and come down from a savage wilderness of sage-brush, granite, and red sandstone, into the luxuriant green pastures of Mormondom, heavy with crops and irrigated from the snow-peaks. ”

“ The track of the railway runs over broad, almost level, valleys, hemmed in by masses of elevated land which have been broken up by ages of torrential rains, and whose soil has been swept by the floods over the valleys, naturally leaving the bases of the mountains higher than the central depression. ”

“ On the other hand, the location of a station directly across the bed of a river in this way makes it impossible to protect the machinery if the up-stream wall, which acts as the dam, should ever give way. The peculiar natural conditions favorable to the construction just considered are seldom found. ”

“ They wind around the mountain-sides, their roofs built so slanting that the mighty avalanche of rock and snow that comes thundering down from above glides harmlessly over, and down the chasm on the other side, while the train glides along unharmed beneath them. The section-houses, the water-tanks, stations, and everything along here are all under the gloomy but friendly shelter of the great protecting sheds. ”

“ All the gateways may be traced with considerable distinctness; the southern one has suffered least from depredation. The interior of the station is filled with the ruins of buildings; some of them would well repay examination. Of the modern structures which have been raised within its area, two are peel-houses or fortified dwellings of considerable strength. The suburban buildings of the station have been situated on the west side, where their foundations still appear. Here they would be protected by the valley along which, at about a quarter of a mile’s distance, the Sills-burn runs. ”