At Galveston their wharves, warehouses, depots and tracks were ruined. The costly bridges which connected the island with the mainland were in ruins and must be entirely rebuilt.
The International and Great Northern and Santa Fe had considerable track washed out, while the Galveston, Houston and Northern suffered heavily.
All track between Seabrooke and Virginia Point, with all of the bridges, was washed away, and Section Foreman Scanlan and all his crew at Nadeau had been lost.
Naturally the question of insurance carried on the lives and property of people of Galveston was one much discussed after the first feeling of horror occasioned by the catastrophe had worn away, and the fact was developed that while the life insurance companies were somewhat badly hit--although in not so great a degree as would naturally be supposed when the heavy death list was taken into consideration--very little property insurance was carried by the business men and property owners of the desolated city.
Although the loss of life was over 5,000, a large proportion of the victims was composed of women and children, a class which rarely if ever carries insurance; again, the majority of the men drowned and crushed were residents of the poorer districts of the town, the wealthier men having abandoned their homes at the first alarm and fled to the elevated places. These victims were caught in their houses, together with their families, and husbands, wives and children died together.
As a matter of fact, the men who work for a living at trades and in the various branches of employment where skilled labor is not demanded, do not carry life insurance as a general thing, except in benevolent or fraternal societies of which they may be members, and this is the main reason why the "straight" life insurance companies, as they are called, did not suffer more than they did.
One of the most prominent insurance managers in the United States said three days after the catastrophe:
"Life insurance companies will feel the blow of the Galveston storm. How much insurance was carried by the victims of the storm is not known, but it must have been great in the aggregate. The large proportion of women and children among the dead will lighten the burden, as they do not often carry insurance.