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                 Later an executive seven-man committee was named, a gigantic effort in admirable fashion was carried out together with the state department and the representatives of the Omaha Commercial Club, and from which you may assume, that this enormous task, was to initiate the rebuilding of the destroyed city district.

                The entire community without distinction of rich or poor outdid themselves, with their best efforts to relieve the need of the unfortunate ones. Not only would quick help be considered, but also immediate vigorous steps toward repairing and rebuilding damaged and destroyed homes were taken. A large help fund, similar to the first meeting that was created by the help committees, is still growing today, but must continue to grow, if the largest plans are to be carried out to quickly rebuild the city.

     The first work of the help committee was to provide food and clothing to all those searching for homes, the devastated district would be divided into sections, in which volunteers would work and collect an exact statistics.

     Then relief stations were opened, where food and nutrition was provided for the injured. The suffering was huge among the personally affected, and daily were several hundreds provided with the bare essentials. After relieving the largest need, the six relief stations were combined into one large central location and set up in the Auditorium.

     The relief effort here was under the direction of Commander Stritzinger of the National Guard, where it was conducted with military precision and thoroughness. His work was comparable to providing for a small army.

     In the first assembly of the relief committee $25,000 was immediately collected; the city council approved another $25,000 in a special assembly and the press was asked to request citizens to send in contributions toward the help fund, to which the request was answered.

     Governor Morehead asked the state legislators to approve $100,000 for the help fund to help the sufferers. All large railroads gave $5,000 and local large businesses and firms gave relative to their size, so that the help fund today is $250,000.

     The telegraph connections with the outside world, with the exception of the United Press, were completely down because of the destruction of the wires. Extraordinary versions of the catastrophe, as if it had not been already large enough, were spread throughout the country and Europe and were also believed. All Omaha had disappeared from the face of the earth, a strong fire threatened to burn the whole city to ashes and similar monstrosities that had caused more unnecessary grief and sorrow for the relatives and friends from Omaha. The telegraph company had never before come across such a huge task. From other cities, hundreds of help officials were employed to accomplish the ever-increasing task of the telegraph service.