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MG 1 vol 2124 number 290a
HALIFAX DISASTER RECORD OFFICE
CHRONICLE BUILDING
JOURNAL
HALIFAX, N. S.
January 12, 1918.
From 'The Presbyterian Witness'.
ed from Boston and other points with doctors and nurses and supplies of food and clothing and medicine and surgical instruments, including in one case, a most modern X-Ray machine, The sympathy, speed and effeciency organization and power of adaptation manifested by those sent from Maine, Massachusetts and New York has won the admiration and undying gratitude of the citizens of this sorely stricken city by the sea.
The God of pity and of care, lost for the moment, by some, in the storm and in the tempest, has been found again in the heart of humanity.
With many other public institutions the 'Y' as the Khaki Clad and Boys in Blue call it, has suffered severely. The work organized at Pier 2, at Wellington Barracks and the Naval Dockyard is all temporalily suspended. The new, commodius and well appointed 'Y' building in the Naval Dockyard, one of the first if not the very first of the kind to be erected in such a place, collapsed like a house of cards. The Secretary, Mr. Love, narrowly escaped with his life. Had he been inside instead of outside the building, he could not possibly have survived. The building had only been dedicated a few days before. The city building on Barrington St. also suffered by the shock and it will take quite a few thousand dollars to put it in repair.
It, too, is a comparatively new building. What a transformation in appearance in occupancy and in use in one short hour. Immediately following the announcement that the danger of a second explosion had passed, the whole Association force, aided by a body of volunteer helpers who quickly assembled were at work removing the debris, preparing beds and cots and supplies of various kinds, which included dressings, food, medicine, etc,. and in finding doctors and nurses in anticipation of what was likely to happen and it did.
Within half an hour people began to swarm into the rooms, first the hurt and afterwards the hungry. It was all on a scale so vast, and at a rate so rapid that one's head fairly reels in trying to recall it all, and it seems like awakening from a bad dream, than something that really occured.
The dinner which was cooking at the Y.W.C.A. was brought to the Y.M.C.A. and served to the workers and to those of the injured who could eat. By four o'clock a soup kitchen was established, the first barrel of soup having been sent by Mr. W. A. Hart of the "Green Lantern" Resturant. By six o'clock some two hundred cases had passed through the main reception room which was converted into a dressing and first aid Station. Fifty people were given shelter from the street that night in the Assembly Hall, and hundreds fed who were hungry. Probably not less than one thousand were given free meals during the first three days, while three hundred cases received attention during the first two days; and some six hundred patients have been treated up to the time of writing, Saturday Dec 22.