The searchers by thrusting down a stick or fork are pretty sure to find a corpse. I saw a man run a cane in the débris down to the hilt and it came up with human flesh sticking to it. Another ran a stick into the thoroughly cooked skull of a little boy two feet below the surface. There are bodies probably as far down as seventy feet in some cases, and it does not seem plain now how they are to be recovered. One plan would be to take away the top layers of wood with derricks, and of course the mass beneath will rise closer to the surface. The weather is cold to-day, and the offensive smell that was so troublesome on the warm days is not noticeable at a distance.
The workers began on the wreck on Main street just opposite the First National Bank, one of the busiest parts of the city. A large number of people were lost here, the houses being crushed on one side of the street and being almost untouched on the other, a most remarkable thing considering the terrific force of the flood. Twenty-one bodies were taken out in the early morning and removed to the morgue. They were not very much injured, considering the weight of lumber above them. In many instances they were wedged in crevices. They were all in a good state of preservation, and when they were embalmed they looked almost lifelike. In this central part of the city examination is sure to result in the unearthing of bodies in every corner. Cottages which are still standing are banked up with lumber and driftwood, and it is like mining to make any kind of a clear space. I have seen relations of people who are missing, and who are supposed to be in the ruins of their homes, waiting patiently by the hour for men to come and take away the débris.
When bodies are found, the location of which was known, there are frequently two or three friends on the spot to see them dug up. Four and five of the same family have been taken from a space of ten feet square. In one part of the river gorge this afternoon were found the bodies of a woman and a child. They were close together and they were probably mother and infant. Not far away was the corpse of a man looking like a gnarled and mis-shapen section of a root of a tree. The bodies from the fire often seem to have been twisted up, as if the victims died in great agony.