Even today when we have early warning systems in place to alert us to coming weather dangers, hurricanes can be devastating in their impact. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when those systems did not exist, a massive hurricane was apocalyptic.
As the residents of Galveston, Texas, opened their morning papers on Saturday, September 8, 1900, many noticed a small news item on page 3 about a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico. Due to the lack of effective communication channels, no further information was available. But the Weather Bureau had issued a storm warning the previous day, and sure enough, clouds and gusty winds were blowing over the city as many residents left home to put in the last day of what was for most a typical six-day workweek.
Known by many as the “New York of the South,” Galveston in 1900 was a prosperous city of 38,000 people looking forward to the new century. Home of the only deepwater port on the Texas coast, it was also the thriving center of America’s cotton export business; the kind of place where millions of dollars could be made by those with the right connections. In short, it was a great place to live.
But the city had an Achilles’ heel: it was built on an island of sand some 30 miles long, separated from the mainland by 2-mile-wide Galveston Bay. The island’s average height above sea level was only 4.5 feet in 1900, but residents had been assured by meteorologists and geographers alike that the wide, sloping sea bottom that led to the island protected them against incoming storms.
One such meteorologist was local Weather Bureau chief Isaac M. Cline, who had long maintained that the island was not only safe from hurricanes, but that anyone who felt differently was delusional. So far, Cline had been right: major storms had hit Galveston in the past, but none of them had caused severe damage, and as residents left their homes for work, they were secure in the belief that their city was safe.
But Cline was startled to see the barometer plummeting that Saturday morning, the tide rising steadily against a strong offshore wind that should have kept it at bay. Cline took to his horse-drawn carriage and raced down to the beach, telling everyone he encountered to get to higher ground. Few listened: the waves crashing on the beach were a magnificent spectacle, and many had traveled from the mainland just to see them.
But as the storm approached land, the wind shifted, and with nothing to hold them back, the Gulf waters crashed into beachside homes and other buildings, shattering them to bits. Terrified residents ran inland, but there was nowhere to go: the bridges to the mainland had been destroyed by an errant barge, and rising waters were intruding from Galveston Bay, trapping thousands.
By 3 p.m. the entire island was submerged, and refugees climbed onto roofs and into trees to escape the steadily rising water. At 5:15 the Weather Service anemometer blew away after recording gusts of 100 miles per hour, and at 6:30 a giant storm wave driven ashore by the approaching eye of the hurricane suddenly raised the water level to 15 feet. As the waves crashed through the darkening city, they tore entire buildings from their foundations and swept them into the bay.
Some who tried to make their way to safer shelters at the height of the storm were killed by slate shingles flung from rooftops, while others were bombarded with flying bricks and timber. As floodwaters rose around St. Mary’s Orphanage, nuns frantically rushed their young charges to the newly built girls’ dormitory. But by nightfall, the winds were screaming at an estimated 150 miles an hour, and after the dormitory’s roof collapsed, the nuns cut down a clothesline and lashed it around the children like mountain climbers to keep everyone together. Sadly, the orphanage collapsed in the midst of the gale, sweeping ninety-three children and ten nuns into the black, churning water.
The next morning, stunned survivors were met with a scene of utter desolation. Many of those who had ridden out the storm were naked, having been stripped of their clothing by wind and water-driven debris. Galveston Bay was adrift with dead bodies, both human and animal, and as many as 30,000 people were left homeless. The number of deaths was estimated to be between 8,000 and 12,000, but the poor recordkeeping of the time made it impossible to be sure.
Isaac Cline survived, but sadly, his pregnant wife did not; her body was later found in a mound of debris. Three boys from St. Mary’s Orphanage were found clinging to a tree, bruised and battered but still alive, the only orphan survivors of that fateful night. Many families had been completely wiped out by the storm, which became known as the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.
With rising heat and humidity, disposal of the thousands of bodies became a priority. At first, barges were loaded with bodies and sunk in the Gulf, but when the corpses began washing up on the beaches, burning became the preferred method. By the following Tuesday, funeral pyres were burning all over the city. The grisly job of stacking and incinerating the bodies fell to laborers, who were plied with whiskey to dull their senses; others were forced to perform the thankless task at gunpoint.
Clara Barton arrived to care for the survivors of the hurricane in what would be her last relief mission. The Red Cross founder was now seventy-eight years old, but she was still able to establish an orphanage and help obtain lumber for the rebuilding process, raising money by selling photographs of the devastation. Barton later wrote of the scene, describing it as being so horrific that her workers “grew pale and ill” and that even she, who had seen so much heartbreak and devastation in her life, “needed the help of a steadying hand as I walked to the waiting Pullman on the track, courteously tendered free of charge to take us away.”
With Galveston’s sense of security literally gone with the wind, efforts were begun to construct a 17-foot-high seawall that would run 3 miles along the shoreline. In addition, the entire city was raised as high as 17 feet by propping buildings up on pilings and pumping fill underneath. In 1915 another hurricane struck Galveston, but only eight people died, proving that the city’s efforts to protect itself had been successful.
Galveston is no stranger to big storms. Hurricane Rita hit the area in 2005, and Texas officials ordered a mass evacuation. Unfortunately, many roads were clogged, and in the heat as many as 118 deaths were reported. More big storms can be expected in the future. So despite the seawall and other precautions, Galveston remains a city at risk.