Galveston
Hurricane of 1900
The Galveston
Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on the city
of Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900. It
had estimated winds of 135 miles per hour (215
km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm
on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.
The
Great Storm
The hurricane
caused great loss of life. The death toll has
been estimated to be between 6,000 and 12,000
individuals,depending on whether one counts
casualties from the city of Galveston
itself, the larger island, or the region as
a whole. The number most cited in official reports
is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest
number of casualties of any Atlantic hurricane,
after the Great Hurricane of 1780 and 1998’s
Hurricane Mitch. The Galveston Hurricane of
1900 is to date the deadliest natural disaster
ever to strike the United States. By contrast,
the second-deadliest storm to strike the United
States, the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, caused
approximately 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest
storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, has
caused approximately 1,600 deaths.
THE GREAT STORM
OF 1900, bodies of the victims laying in rows
in a make shift morgue.
For more information
on the flood of Galveston: www.1900storm.com
this sight contains pictures, accounts of family
legends about the storm, and eyewitness accounts,
plus more.
The hurricane
has no official name, and as such, it is referred
to under various descriptive, unofficial names.
Common names for the storm include the Galveston
Hurricane of 1900, the Great Galveston Hurricane,
and—in older documentation—the Galveston
Flood. It is often locally known in the Galveston
area as The Great Storm or The 1900 Storm.
The city of Galveston
at the end of the 19th century was a booming
town with a population of 42,000. Its position
on the natural harbor of Galveston Bay along
the Gulf of Mexico made it the center of trade
and the biggest city in the state of Texas.
With this prosperity came a sense of complacency.
This photograph shows the aftermath of the hurricane
and the destruction it wrought.A quarter of
a century earlier, the nearby town of Indianola
on Matagorda Bay was undergoing its own boom
and was second to Galveston among Texas port
cities. Then in 1875, a powerful hurricane blew
through, nearly destroying the town. Indianola
was rebuilt, but a second hurricane in 1886
caused residents to simply give up and move
elsewhere.
Many Galveston
residents took the destruction of Indianola
as an object lesson on the threat posed by hurricanes.
Galveston was a low, flat island, little more
than a giant sandbar along the Gulf Coast. They
called for a seawall to be constructed to protect
the city, but their concerns were dismissed
by the majority of the population and the city’s
government.
Since its formal
founding in 1839, the city of Galveston had
weathered numerous storms, all of which the
city survived with ease. Residents believed
any future storms would be no worse than previous
events. In order to provide an official meteorological
statement on the threat of hurricanes, Galveston
Weather Bureau section director Isaac Cline
wrote an 1891 article in the Galveston Daily
News in which he argued not only that a seawall
was not needed to protect the city, but also
that it would be impossible for a hurricane
of significant strength to strike the island.
The seawall was
not built, and development activities on the
island actively increased its vulnerability
to storms. Sand dunes along the shore were cut
down to fill low areas in the city, removing
what little barrier there was to the Gulf of
Mexico.
On September
4, the Galveston office of the U.S. Weather
Bureau began receiving warnings from the Bureau’s
central office in Washington, D.C. that a “tropical
storm” had moved northward over Cuba.
The Weather Bureau forecasters had no way of
knowing where the storm was or where it was
going.
Conditions in
the Gulf of Mexico were ripe for further strengthening
of the storm. The Gulf had seen little cloud
cover for several weeks, and the seas were as
warm as bathwater, according to one report.
For a storm system that feeds off moisture,
the Gulf of Mexico was enough to boost the storm
from a tropical storm to a hurricane in a matter
of days, with further strengthening likely.
The storm was
reported to be north of Key West on September
6, and in the early morning hours of Friday,
September 7, the Weather Bureau office in New
Orléans, Louisiana issued a report of
heavy damage along the Louisiana and Mississippi
coasts. Details of the storm were not widespread;
damage to telegraph lines limited communication.
The Weather Bureau’s central office in
Washington, D.C. ordered storm warnings raised
from Pensacola, Florida to Galveston.
By the afternoon
of the 7th, large swells from the southeast
were observed on the Gulf, and clouds at all
altitudes began moving in from the northeast.
Both of these observations are consistent with
a hurricane approaching from the east. The Galveston
Weather Bureau office raised its double square
flags; a hurricane warning was in effect.
The ship Louisiana
encountered the hurricane at 1 p.m. that day
after departing New Orléans. Captain
Halsey estimated wind speeds of 150 mph (240
km/h).
Weather Bureau
forecasters believed the storm would travel
northeast and affect the mid-Atlantic coast.
“To them, the storm appeared to have begun
a long turn or ‘recurve’ that would
take it first into Florida, then drive it northeast
toward an eventual exit into the Atlantic.”Cuban
forecasters disagreed, saying the hurricane
would continue west. One Cuban forecaster predicted
the hurricane would continue into central Texas
near San Antonio.
Early the next
morning, the swells continued despite only partly
cloudy skies. Largely because of the unremarkable
weather, few residents heeded the warning. Few
people evacuated across Galveston’s bridges
to the mainland, and the majority of the population
was unconcerned by the rain clouds that had
begun rolling in by midmorning.
Isaac Cline claimed
that he took it upon himself to travel along
the beach and other low-lying areas warning
people personally of the storm’s approach.
This is based on Cline’s own reports and
has been called into question in recent years,
as no other survivors corroborated his account.
Cline’s
role in the disaster is the subject of some
controversy. Supporters point to Cline’s
issuing a hurricane warning without permission
from the Bureau’s central office; detractors
(including author Erik Larson) point to Cline’s
earlier insistence that a seawall was unnecessary
and his belief that an intense hurricane could
not strike the island.
The last train
to reach Galveston left Houston on the morning
of September 8 at 9:45 a.m. It found the tracks
washed out, and passengers were forced to transfer
to a relief train on parallel tracks to complete
their journey. Even then, debris on the track
kept the train’s progress at a crawl.
The ninety-five
travelers on the train from Beaumont were not
so lucky. They found themselves at the Bolivar
Peninsula waiting for the ferry that would carry
them, train and all, to the island. When they
arrived, the high seas forced the ferry captain
to give up on his attempt to dock. The train
attempted to return the way it had come, but
rising water blocked its path.
By early afternoon,
a steady northeastern wind had picked up. By
5 p.m., the Bureau office was recording sustained
hurricane-force winds. That night, the wind
direction shifted to the east, and then to the
southeast as the hurricane's eye began to pass
over the island.
One of the last
messages that reached the mainland was from
Cline's brother at 3:30 p.m., reporting “Gulf
rising, water covers streets of about half of
city." Later he regretted not saying the
whole city was under water.” Shortly thereafter,
the telegraph lines were cut.
The highest measured
wind speed was 100 mph (160 km/h) just after
6 p.m., but the Weather Bureau’s anemometer
was blown off the building shortly after that
measurement was recorded. The eye passed over
the city around 8 p.m. Maximum winds were estimated
at 120 mph at the time, but later estimates
placed the hurricane at the higher Category
4 classification on the Saffir-Simpson Scale
The lowest recorded barometric pressure was
28.48 inHg (964.4 mbar), considered at the time
to be so low as to be obviously in error. Modern
estimates later placed the storm’s central
pressure at 27.49 inHg (930.9 mbar), but this
was subsequently adjusted to the storm's official
lowest measured central pressure of 27.63 inHg
(936 mbar).
Homes in Galveston such as this one were reduced
to timbers by the hurricane winds and floods.Ten
refugees from the Beaumont train sought shelter
at the Point Bolivar lighthouse with two hundred
residents of Port Bolivar that were already
there. The eighty-five that stayed with the
train died when the storm surge overran the
tops of the cars.
By 11 p.m., the
wind was southerly and diminishing. On Sunday
morning, clear skies and a 20 mph breeze off
the Gulf of Mexico greeted the Galveston survivors.
The storm continued
on, and was tracked into Oklahoma. From there,
it continued over the Great Lakes while still
sustaining winds of almost 40 mph (as recorded
over Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and passed north
of Halifax, Nova Scotia on September 12. From
there it traveled into the North Atlantic where
it disappeared from observations.
At the time of
the 1900 storm, the highest point in the city
of Galveston was only 8.7 feet (2.7 m) above
sea level.The hurricane had brought with it
a storm surge of over 15 feet (4.6 m), which
washed over the entire island. The surge knocked
buildings off their foundations, and the surf
pounded them to pieces. Over 3,600 homes were
destroyed, and a wall of debris faced the ocean.
The few buildings which survived, mostly solidly-built
mansions and houses along the Strand District,
are today maintained as tourist attractions.
A marker along The Strand indicating a building
that survived the 1900 hurricane.As terrible
as the damage to the city’s buildings
was, the human cost was even greater. Due to
the destruction of the bridges to the mainland
and the telegraph lines, no word of the city’s
destruction was able to reach the mainland.
At 11 a.m. on September 9, one of the few ships
at the Galveston wharfs to survive the storm,
the Pherabe, arrived in Texas City on the western
side of Galveston Bay. It carried six messengers
from the city. When they reached the telegraph
office in Houston at 3 a.m. on September 10,
a short message was sent to Texas Governor Joseph
D. Sayers and President William McKinley: “I
have been deputized by the mayor and Citizen’s
Committee of Galveston to inform you that the
city of Galveston is in ruins.” The messengers
reported an estimated five hundred dead; this
was considered to be an exaggeration at the
time.
The citizens
of Houston knew a powerful storm had blown through
and had made ready to provide assistance. Workers
set out by rail and ship for the island almost
immediately. Rescuers arrived to find the city
completely destroyed. Eight thousand people—20%
of the island’s population—had lost
their lives. Most had drowned or been crushed
as the waves pounded the debris that had been
their homes hours earlier. Many survived the
storm itself, but died after several days trapped
under the wreckage of the city, with rescuers
unable to reach them. The rescuers could hear
the screams of the survivors as they walked
on the debris trying to rescue those they could.
They realized that there was no hope.
Most intense
Atlantic hurricanes
Intensity is measured solely by central pressure
Rank Hurricane Season Min. pressure
1 Wilma 2005 882 mbar (hPa)
2 Gilbert 1988 888 mbar (hPa)
3 "Labor Day" 1935 892 mbar (hPa)
4 Rita 2005 895 mbar (hPa)
5 Allen 1980 899 mbar (hPa)
6 Katrina 2005 902 mbar (hPa)
7 Camille 1969 905 mbar (hPa)
Mitch 1998 905 mbar (hPa)
9 Ivan 2004 910 mbar (hPa)
10 Janet 1955 914 mbar (hPa)
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
So many died that corpses were piled onto carts
for burial at sea.The bodies were so numerous
that burial was not a viable option. Initially,
the dead were taken out to sea and dumped; however,
the currents of the gulf washed the bodies back
onto the beach, so a new solution was needed.Funeral
pyres were set up wherever the dead were found.
In the aftermath of the storm, pyres burned
for weeks. Authorities had to pass out free
whiskey to the work crews that were having to
throw the bodies of their wives and children
on the burn piles.
More people were
killed in this single storm than have been killed
in the over three hundred hurricanes that have
struck the United States since, combined, as
of 2006. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is
the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
Survivors set
up temporary shelters in surplus U.S. Army tents
along the shore. They were so numerous that
observers began referring to it as the “White
City on the Beach.” Others constructed
so-called “storm lumber” homes,
using salvageable material from the debris to
build shelter.
Reporter Winifred
Bonfils, a young journalist working for William
R. Hearst, dressed as a boy and was the first
reporter on the line at the flood's aftermath.
She delivered an exclusive set of reports and
Hearst sent relief supplies by train.
By September
12, the first post-storm mail was received at
Galveston. The next day, basic water service
was restored, and Western Union began providing
minimal telegraph service. Within three weeks,
cotton was again being shipped out of the port.
[10]
Prior to the
Hurricane of 1900, Galveston was considered
to be a beautiful and prestigious city and was
known as “the New York of the South.”
Many people say that had it not been for the
hurricane, Galveston would today be one of the
nation’s largest and most beautiful cities.
However, development shifted north to Houston,
which was enjoying the benefits of the oil boom.
The dredging of the Houston Ship Channel in
1909 and 1914 ended Galveston’s hopes
of returning to its former state as a major
commercial center.
To prevent future
storms from causing destruction like that of
the 1900 hurricane, many improvements to the
island were made. The first three miles (4.8
km) of the 17-foot-high (5.2 m) Galveston Seawall
were built beginning in 1902 under the direction
of Henry Martyn Robert. An all-weather bridge
was constructed to the mainland to replace the
ones destroyed in the storm.
The most dramatic
effort to protect the city was its raising.
Dredged sand was used to raise the city of Galveston
by as much as 17 feet (5.2 m) above its previous
elevation. Over 2,100 buildings were raised
in the process, including the 3,000-ton St.
Patrick’s Church. The seawall and raising
of the island were jointly named a National
Historical Civil Engineering Landmark by the
American Society of Civil Engineers in 2001.
In 1915, a storm
similar in strength and track to the 1900 hurricane
struck Galveston. The 1915 storm brought a 12-foot
(4 m) storm surge which tested the new seawall.
Although 275 people lost their lives in the
1915 storm, this was a great reduction from
the thousands that died in 1900.
The Galveston
city government was reorganized into a commission
government, a newly devised structure wherein
the government is made of a small group of commissioners,
each responsible for one aspect of governance.
This was prompted by fears that the existing
city council would be unable to handle the problem
of rebuilding the city.
Today, Galveston
is home to a major cruise port, two universities,
and a major insurance corporation. Homes and
other buildings that survived the hurricane
have been preserved, and give much of the city
a Victorian look. The seawall, since extended
to ten miles (16 km), is now an attraction itself,
as hotels and tourist attractions have been
built along its length in seeming defiance of
future storms.
The last reported
survivor of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900,
Mrs. Maude Conic of Wharton, Texas, died November
14, 2004, at the claimed age of 116.(Census
records indicate she was younger than that.)
Modern observation
and forecasting help ensure that if another
storm of similar strength threatens Galveston,
the city will not be caught by surprise.
Bixel, Patricia
Bellis & Turner, Elizabeth Hayes. (2000)
Galveston and the 1900 Storm: Catastrophe and
catalyst (1st ed.). University of Texas Press
ISBN 0-292-70883-1
Larson, Erik. (1999) Isaac's Storm: A Man, A
Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
(1st ed.). New York:Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-609-60233-0
Reference Notes
^ 1900 Galveston Hurricane Part 1 at weather.com
^ a b c Handbook of Texas entry for the Galveston
Hurricane of 1900
^ Handbook of Texas entry for Indianola Hurricanes
^ a b c d Dr Isaac M. Cline: A Man of Storm
and Floods — Part 2
^ Larson, Erik (1999). Isaac's Storm. Vintage
Books, 111 (paperback edition). ISBN 0-609-60233-0.
^ The 1900 Storm: An Island Washed Away
^ NOAA retrospective on the Galveston Storm
of 1900
^ a b Houston Chronicle: Echoes of the Storm
^ Excerpts from Isaac's Storm: Storm Tracker
^ a b c Isaac Cline's report on the hurricane
^ The 1900 Storm: Mother Nature's Wrath
^ 1900 Galveston Hurricane Part 2 at weather.com
^ The 1900 Storm: Rebuilding a city
^ Oldest living Texas Republican celebrates
113th birthday
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