City Breathes Sigh of Relief as Barriers Finally Come Down
New York, May 18 — At long last, the Army barricades and police checkpoints hemming in the island of Manhattan have been pulled down. For the first time since the dreadful events of March 13th, the bridges and tunnels are open once again to the public.
Thousands jammed the approaches to the city overnight — some desperate to get in and find loved ones, others just as frantic to get out. By dawn, every rail line, ferry, and roadway was choked tighter than a tin of sardines. Transit companies have thrown extra cars on the lines, but the crowds keep coming.
Whole swaths of the city remain in ruins, scarred by weeks of fires, riots, and the strange plague that struck without mercy. National Guard units still patrol burned-out blocks and shattered storefronts. Officials say it will take months — perhaps years — before New York shakes off the dust of this calamity.
Mayor La Guardia has promised that “the worst is behind us,” though the Army remains stationed across the boroughs “until order is fully restored.”
CENTRAL PARK: NEW YORK’S MORGUE
The Heart of the City Becomes the City’s Graveyard
Central Park has become the somber center of New York’s heartbreak. With hospitals overflowing and morgues beyond capacity, the Great Lawn now lies beneath rows of canvas tents and cots — half for the living, half for the dead.
Army engineers have taken over the area, setting up field kitchens, emergency wards, and a command post. Displaced citizens by the thousands have flooded into makeshift camps, guarded by troops against looters and the desperate.
At the southern end of the park, the air is thick with the smell of disinfectant and despair. Lines of mourners stretch down Fifth Avenue to the registry tents, where citizens sift through photographs of the deceased in search of their missing kin. Officials vow to remove the bodies “as soon as transportation can be arranged,” though no one will say where they’re bound.
One soldier on the scene told our reporter, “You see things here you don’t forget, not in a hundred years.”
ADDITIONAL HEADLINES
MYSTERIOUS LIGHTS OVER HUDSON STIR PUBLIC FEARS
Witnesses along the waterfront last night reported strange green flares and luminous clouds drifting above the river shortly after midnight. Military spokesmen deny any knowledge of aerial maneuvers, though several residents claim the lights moved “against the wind.” Scientists from Columbia University — what remains of its faculty — suggest the phenomenon may be tied to “lingering atmospheric effects” from the March event.
EUROPE ON EDGE AS HITLER AND MUSSOLINI MEET IN ROME
In international dispatches, Europe braces as Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini convene in Rome amid growing tension over the Balkans. With France still reeling from internal unrest and Britain tightening its naval watch, diplomats fear that another continental crisis may be brewing. President Roosevelt has urged calm but warned that “America must not close her eyes to what unfolds abroad.”
