On Sept. 8, 1900, a Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Galveston, Texas, a barrier island separating the Gulf of Mexico from Galveston Bay. The island is 27 miles long and up to three miles wide. At the time of the storm, the highest point on Galveston was roughly nine feet above sea level. A storm surge of fifteen feet washed over the entire island. The highest wind speed was 100 mph just after 6:15 p.m. No other wind recordings were made because the anemometer was blown off the top of the building.
Galveston Island had been the land of many firsts in Texas, including the first phone (1878), the first electric lights (1883), and the first medical school (1891). Known as the “Wall Street of the South” for its business center, Galveston was the pride of Texas. Galveston was about to be number one again, but for all the wrong reasons. Between 8,000 and 12,000 people were killed; most drowned, including 10 nuns from Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word and 90 children from St. Mary’s Orphans Asylum. Before the storm, there were 93 children at the orphanage. Only three survived.
To this day, the Great Storm of 1900, also called the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, is known as the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history. Galveston was wiped off the map; it ceased to exist on that day.
When they learn of the hurricane, some ask: Why weren’t the people notified? Why didn’t more people leave?
As someone who has lived about an hour from Galveston for the past 40 years and has survived more than one hurricane, I can truly say that people today don’t want to leave when there’s a hurricane approaching. When Hurricane Ike (Category 2) was bearing down on Galveston, some people refused to leave. Those people were told to write their Social Security numbers on their arms, so when their bodies were found, they could be identified.
Hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30 for the Atlantic Ocean. Anyone who lives on the coast, from Texas to Maryland, keeps an eye on the Atlantic in the summer months. Since hurricanes are mainly warm-water creatures, they normally don’t go as far north as New Jersey or Massachusetts, but they can. Hurricane Sandy (Category 1) devastated coastal New Jersey in late October 2012. Hurricane Bob (Category 2) hit Nantucket Island in August, 1991. I personally sat through Bob with my family. Bob is, as of now, the last hurricane to strike that state.
The peak of hurricane season is usually around September 10. So, the date of September 8th for The Great Storm is spot on. When The Great Storm struck Galveston, there were no categories, no satellites, no evacuation plans. Today, hurricanes are rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with Category 5 being the worst. It wasn’t until after Hurricane Rita (Category 5, downgraded to a 3 at landfall) in 2005 that the coastal counties in Texas put together an evacuation plan. That was fortunate because the plan was put to use in 2009 with Hurricane Ike (Category 2).
Hurricane Katrina was a Category 5, with sustained winds above 157 mph before making landfall in New Orleans as a Category 3. The scale, known as the Saffir-Simpson scale, categorizes hurricanes based on wind speed. The higher the wind speed, the higher the category. This system was developed in 1971 and introduced to the public in 1973. Today, the Saffir-Simpson scale uses wind speed and barometric pressure. Amazingly, before the Saffir-Simpson scale, there was no standardized measurement system. Hurricanes weren’t named until the '50s, beginning with Hurricane Alice in 1954. So in 1900, no names, no system to record wind speed, and no way to track where the storm was headed.
What caused the massive loss of life in Galveston was ignorance and arrogance.
People were ignorant of what lay out in Galveston Bay and the Atlantic. At the time, weather services had to rely on ship reports for major storms such as hurricanes, so notification could be non-existent. The U.S. Weather Bureau had a station in Galveston. Issac Cline, the head of that station during the Great Storm, has a book written about him and the hurricane, titled Issac’s Storm, by Erik Larson. It was a bestseller when released in 2000.
People knew there was a storm coming but not how bad a storm it would be. The main reason they didn’t know was arrogance. Willis Luther Moore, chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, blocked telegraph reports from the Cuban observatory in Havana due to the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. That observatory was considered to be one of the most advanced observatories in the world in 1900. Without those reports, the Weather Bureau could not predict the trajectory of the storm, which then led to at least 8,000 deaths.
The Great Storm was supposed to curve away from Texas and towards Florida. Storm warnings were issued from Miami to New Orleans by September 6. Texas was not included in the warnings. Moore had also changed the policy for storm warnings. Weather Bureau offices had to seek authorization from the central office before issuing them. Because Texas was not included in the warnings, no one on Galveston thought anything unusual was happening when the rain started to fall on the afternoon of Sept. 8, 1900, even though a storm warning flag had been raised outside of the Weather Bureau office. By the time people realized that the storm approaching Galveston was not an average storm, it was far too late. Some of the sturdiest buildings on Galveston Island could not withstand the storm and collapsed into the raging waters, including Issac Cline’s house. Thirty-two people, including Cline’s pregnant wife, were killed in that house alone.
The 15-foot storm surge caused the most destruction, sweeping houses from their foundations. Every house on Galveston Island was damaged, and over 3,000 houses were destroyed, leaving at least 10,000 people homeless. The surge washed away all the bridges connecting Galveston to the mainland and destroyed fifteen miles of train track. It overwhelmed the waterworks powerhouse, and saltwater flowed into every cistern on the island, fouling the water supply. By the time the storm blew inland, at least 8,000 people were dead. There was no power, no water, and no food, and dead bodies were everywhere, quickly creating a desperate situation. After several attempts at disposing of the bodies quickly, including loading barges for burial at sea, after which corpses soon washed back to land, people built large funeral pyres on the beaches and burned them.
Help came from every direction possible, including the federal government and the American Red Cross, with Clara Barton, 78, at the helm. By March of 1901, workers had built over 1,000 cottages and repaired more than 1,000 houses. Galveston’s form of government changed after the storm as well, shifting to a commission government, a system of five to seven people, each responsible for a specific element in city governance. The city kept that form of government until it switched to a council-manager government in 1960.
To prevent another disaster like the Great Storm from happening, Galveston constructed a seawall seventeen feet high, starting in 1902. The seawall was completed in 1963; it stretches for ten miles and is still in use today. Another, larger undertaking to protect the city was to raise the elevation through the use of blocks and sand dredged from Galveston Bay and pumped underneath the buildings, raising some sections of the island by as much as 17 feet. The easiest way to see this change is to look at the graveyards from that time. If the burial crypt only goes up to your waist, the rest is underground. The seawall has been very effective in protecting the island, tested repeatedly by the hurricanes that sweep through the Gulf.
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The Great Storm of 1900 caused Houston to become the powerhouse it is today. In 1900, it was a small city on the banks of Buffalo Bayou named after Sam Houston, a hero of the Texas Revolution. After the storm decimated Galveston, Houston sent as much help as it could by ship and rail. Survivors from the storm poured into Houston, increasing the population. A year later, oil was discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, an hour to the east of Houston, and the oil era had begun. By the time Galveston had rebuilt itself, Houston was outpacing it in every area, especially shipping, with the dredging of the Houston Ship Channel putting it in direct competition with the natural harbor of the Port of Galveston. The Wall Street of the South never returned to the level of national prominence as it had had before the Great Storm.
Today, Galveston is known for its tourism, historic buildings, and healthcare. The island is constantly reinventing itself. When my family moved to Houston in the early '80s, Galveston was a working city. There wasn’t much to see or do, except for the beach. Even then, it wasn’t much of a beach, compared with what I was used to on the East Coast.
Cruise ships arrive and depart from Galveston. It is something to see a cruise ship towering over the historic buildings on the Strand. The Galveston Historic Foundation produces multiple events during the year to celebrate the island's past. From the Historic Homes Tour in May to Dickens on the Strand in December, there is a lot to see and do in Galveston today. Come visit the Playground of the South! A hurricane destroyed the island 126 years ago, but it’s made a terrific recovery.
