The great storm

0 Comments | Current Events, Sept 30, 2005

Hurricane Katrina wasn't the first storm to leave part of the United States in shambles. On Sept. 8, 1900, a deadly hurricane struck Texas. Known as the Great Storm, it killed an estimated 8,000 people.

The Great Storm made landfall on Galveston Island, off the Texas mainland. Situated on the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston was no stranger to hurricanes. So when the city's 38,000 residents got wind of the incoming storm, they didn't panic. As the water started to rise early on September 8, fewer than half of the city's residents left. People from Houston even came to Galveston to check out the huge waves.

But the local U.S. Weather Bureau climatologist, Isaac Cline, grasped the urgency of the situation. He implored people to evacuate, but it was too late.

The storm crept closer, and winds of 150 miles per hour whipped through the air. "The roofs of the houses and timbers were flying through the streets as though they were paper," Cline wrote in a report later that month.

At the same time, the water level continued to rise. By 3 p.m., the whole island was submerged. As darkness fell, a 15-foot storm surge rolled over the island. Houses collapsed under the pressure, and a wall of debris at least two stories high accumulated. The storm pushed the debris across the island, destroying almost everything in its path.

Linda MacDonald's grandfather waited out the storm in his father's bakery. "He could hear children calling for their mothers, women screaming for help, and men begging for mercy from God," MacDonald told CNN.

The next morning, corpses were everywhere. There were so many bodies that survivors weighted them down and sank them in the Gulf of Mexico. Soon after, the bodies floated back to shore.

The survivors were forced to burn the corpses. "The stench could be smelled 50 miles out to sea," says Alice Wygant of the Galveston County Historical Museum.

The Great Storm taught Galveston's residents a valuable lesson. Months after the hurricane, the town built a 17-foot-high seawall for protection.