The Final Storm

About The Storm

The Galveston Daily News continued publishing from the island.Sept. 9 and 10, 1900, were published together on a single sheet of paper. One side listed the dead. The other reported the devastation of the storm.

The Storm

The hurricane that devastated Galveston on September 8, 1900, remains the nation’s deadliest natural disaster. Because record keeping was not precise in those day, its exact death toll is not known. But the 1900 Storm claimed upwards of 6,000 lives, some authorities say 8,000, on Galveston Island. Several thousand more were killed on the the mainland.

Trains continued to drop off passengers on the Island until noon of September 7, even though the storm had begun. By midnight, the hurricane was growing to full force.

On September 8, 1900, a hurricane struck Galveston. Winds estimated at 140 mph swept over the island, leaving devastation in their wake. After the storm surge of 15.7 feet subsided, Galvestonians left their shelters to find 6,000 of the city’s 37,000 residents dead and more than 3,600 buildings totally destroyed.

The 1900 Storm is still considered to be the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. After the storm, Galveston constructed a seawall and raised the grade of the island to protect it from future hurricanes.

Facts about the 1900 Storm:

• 8.7 feet: The highest elevation on Galveston Island in 1900.

• 15.7 feet: The height of the storm surge.

• 28.55 inches: Barometric pressure recorded in Galveston, 30 miles from where the eye of the storm is best estimated. At the time, this was the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded.

• 6,000 to 8,000: Number of people estimated to have died during the storm.

• 37,000 people: Population of Galveston in 1900.

• 3,600: Number of buildings destroyed by the storm.

• 130 to 140 miles per hour: Speed meteorologists estimate the winds reached during the storm.

• $20 million: Estimated damage costs related to the storm. In today’s dollars, that would be more than $700 million.

The Island
Galveston Island is about an hour’s drive south from downtown Houston. Interstate 45 South ends on the 7 mile Galveston Seawall. A ferry on the north side of the island takes you, car and all, for an 18 minute trip to Port Bolivar. Bottle nose dolphins often splash through the waves beside the ferry.

Hurricanes rotate in a counter clockwise direction around an “eye.” A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when winds reach 74 mph. There are on average six Atlantic hurricanes each year; over a three-year period, approximately five hurricanes strike the United States coastline from Texas to Maine. The Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1 and ends November 30. The East Pacific hurricane season runs from May 15 through November 30, with peak activity occurring during July through September. In a normal season, the East Pacific would expect 15 or 16 tropical storms. Nine of these would become hurricanes, of which four or five would be major hurricanes.

When hurricanes move onto land, the heavy rain, strong winds and heavy waves can damage buildings, trees and cars. The heavy waves are called a storm surge. Storm surge is very dangerous and a major reason why you MUST stay away from the ocean during a hurricane.

The generic name for a hurricane is tropical cyclone. These storms are called typhoons when they occur in the western Pacific Ocean, and cyclones in the Indian and southern Pacific Oceans.

When hurricanes move onto land, the heavy rain, strong winds and heavy waves can damage buildings, trees and cars. The heavy waves are called a storm surge. Storm surge is very dangerous and a major reason why you MUST stay away from the ocean during a hurricane.

The generic name for a hurricane is tropical cyclone. These storms are called typhoons when they occur in the western Pacific Ocean, and cyclones in the Indian and southern Pacific Oceans.

What a hurricane looks like:

Eye

The centre of a hurricane is known as the eye of the storm. When seen from above, this eye is in the middle of the hurricane and looks cloud free. It is clear because the air has a downward, or sinking, motion, and since clouds require rising air to form, the eye of the hurricane has no clouds. This calm, however, is deceptive. The eye still has some wind and rain but it is calm compared with the rest of the violent storm.

Eye Wall

Have you ever noticed that an ice skater spins faster when she pulls in her arms? The same thing happens to clouds as they are pulled by the low pressure of the eye into the centre of the hurricane. When looking at a hurricane from above, you will see this area called the eye wall — looking like a bright cloud ring right around the eye. It is the broad band immediately surrounding the eye and is where the storm is the worst.

Feeder Bands

Feeder bands are what give energy to — or feed — a hurricane. They are the long zones of clouds, showers, and thundershower activity that get their moisture over warm water. This is why there are hurricanes over the ocean and on the coastline. You will never find a hurricane in the desert. There can be one or more feeder bands energizing a hurricane.

What makes a hurricane?

o Ocean water temperatures of at least 80º Fahrenheit. This provides the storm with heat energy it needs to grow. That’s why hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere form in June through November, when ocean temperatures are warmest. September 10 is the peak of the Atlantic Ocean’s hurricane season.

o Low wind shear from the top to the bottom of the atmosphere. For example, if the winds at the oceans’ surface are light, and winds at high altitude over the tropical wave are strong, this “shear” will act to tear the developing hurricane apart.

o Something to get the tropical wave spinning. This is usually provided by a low-pressure system or front that moves from land over the tropical ocean. The part of the Earth’s spin that points straight up at the point of interest, or the Coriolis force, must help get the storm spinning. Near the equator, the Coriolis force is zero, so no hurricanes form within about 500 miles of the equator.
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OnLine NewsHour KERA
THE GALVESTON HURRICANE
OF 1900
September 21, 2005

A professor of history at the University of North Texas and co-author of the book “Galveston and the 1900 Storm” discusses the devastating hurricane in 1900 that nearly wiped Galveston, Texas off the map.

JEFFREY BROWN: September 8, 1900: The day a Category 4 storm hit Galveston, then a city of about 38,000, and one the most prosperous in Texas. After the storm, between six and ten thousand people were dead, and more than three quarters of the city were completely destroyed. Elizabeth Hayes Turner wrote about it all as co-author of “Galveston and the 1900 Storm.” She’s a professor of history at the University of North Texas, and joins us from Dallas.

Professor Turner, we just saw the citizens of Galveston today have warnings. They have evacuations underway. What was it like for people back then as that storm approached?

ELIZABETH HAYES TURNER: It was very different. Isaac Cline was chief of the weather bureau at Galveston. And his only contact was by telephone or by telegraph with the U.S. Weather Service in Washington D.C. And at that time, there was no ship-to-shore communication. So they had to rely on land reports coming from Cuba.

The earliest reports came about September 4, and they weren’t very seriously taken from Cubans who gave a devastating report of what was happening on their island. So the U.S. Weather Bureau reported to Cline that we see a tropical storm commencing and it’s coming your way. But it wasn’t until September 7 that it started to look worrisome.

The way warnings were communicated in 1900 was by the weather bureau chief putting a flag up on top of the levee building indicating that a serious storm was about to approach. Isaac Cline claimed in his later reports that he went along the beach and he warned people to leave the island. But he of course would have to stay because he was responsible for seeing it through the storm.

JEFFREY BROWN: So a lot has changed in that way.

ELIZABETH HAYES TURNER: Absolutely.

JEFFREY BROWN: Give us a picture of Galveston then before the storm, this prosperous town.

ELIZABETH HAYES TURNER: It was the entrepot of Texas. It was the main port through which the commerce of Texas came and went. There were beautiful mansions created by wealthy citizens who had made their money out of either cotton exporting or cotton pressing and shipping, of course.

JEFFREY BROWN: Tell us then what happened with the storm. Give us — if you could, paint us a picture of the devastation.

ELIZABETH HAYES TURNER: The storm began to surge around noon on Saturday, September 8. And it was at that point that residents closest to the shore began to panic, not panic exactly but get out of their homes, move to safer, higher grounds and safer structures. Now higher ground wasn’t very high. It was only nine feet high at the highest point on the island. But those that did not leave their homes, who felt that their homes were seaworthy enough, sadly many of those died because the storm surge was 15 feet and the winds were probably in the neighborhood of 130 miles per hour.

The houses closest to the shore were demolished first by the waves and the wind and they served as battering rams to the houses behind them until finally, a whole 1500-acre stretch of land near the coast was absolutely wiped clean of homes. And those structures then ended up in a 30-foot, three-mile pile of debris down the middle of the island. That pile of debris actually protected parts of the interior of the city, the part where many of the wealthier homes were. And so what emerged out of the storm was then a civic elite who could lead the city into its recovery.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well let’s talk — or tell us a little bit about that recovery. How quickly could it take place? And what was different about the Galveston that was built?

ELIZABETH HAYES TURNER: It did not take place very rapidly. In fact, it was days before there was sufficient communication between the mainland and the island. All of the means of communication were gone. The railroad bridges were washed away. So people had to cross the bay in boats. The rescue efforts began as soon as they heard the news on very early Monday morning. And Houstonians brought in about 100,000 gallons of water first in car trains as well as supplies and a volunteer force of about 250 rescuers to come to the island.

By Sept. 13, it was clear that martial law had to be declared on the island because of looting and because of civilians killing each other over the aspect of looting. So the mayor brought in the Texas militia. Martial law was declared. The militia men arrived. They set up tents for the homeless along the beach.

A couple of days later, September 17, Clara Barton arrived with the Red Cross and with eight members of her team began to set up a distribution and warehouse center in the commercial district. I would like to say that Clara Barton’s influence on the recovery was very great. There were several things that she could do for the catastrophe. One, she served as a magnet. People sent money and goods in kind to Clara Barton because they trusted her and they knew her work.

The second thing that she did was to elevate middle class white women on the island to official roles within the emergency civic structure. She demanded that they become co-chairs of all the wards where relief was given out because she said these women had been doing these relief efforts anyway for years. Why not make it official? So white women were elevated to the role of political entities at that point.

JEFFREY BROWN: Professor, just briefly because we only have a few seconds left here. But I just want to ask you in the long term, Galveston, I gather, missed out on the oil boom that was taking place and was really never quite the same that it had been before?

ELIZABETH HAYES TURNER: Spindle Top was a phenomenon in 1901. Galveston was in its recovery stage at that point. And the wharfage on the island is limited so the oil refining business ended up in Houston. And after 1914 Houston dredged a deep water port giving access to sea going ships. And they bypassed Galveston so its recovery — in its recovery it missed the oil boom.

JEFFREY BROWN: Okay. Elizabeth Hayes Turner, thank you very much.

ELIZABETH HAYES TURNER: Thank you.
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Galveston – The 1900 Storm (CNN) — The worst weather disaster in American history took place in Galveston, Texas, in 1900 when a hurricane estimated as a Category 4 intensity blew ashore, killing thousands of residents and obliterating the town.

The unnamed storm was first detected in the Atlantic on August 27, reaching Cuba as a tropical storm on September 3. Like Ike, the hurricane crossed Cuba and entered the Gulf of Mexico, crashing ashore just south of Galveston on September 8.

Galveston Island was completely covered by 8- to 16-foot storm tides. Estimates of the death toll range from 6,000 to 12,000, and property damage was estimated at $30 million.

Galveston in 1900 was a rich shipping city, home to nearly 40,000 people, many of them made wealthy by Galveston’s position as Texas’ chief port. But they weren’t prepared for September 8. Video Watch how Ike and the 1900 hurricane are similar »

The flood waters began rising before dawn that morning, and initially the people of Galveston thought nothing of it. For the most part, they even ignored the warnings of U.S. Weather Service meteorologist Isaac Cline, who took to his horse and rode up and down the beach warning people to seek higher ground, an urging that ultimately meant little to a city 8 to 9 feet above sea level at its highest point.

“In reality, there was no island, just the ocean with houses standing out of the waves which rolled between them,” Cline wrote in his 1945 memoirs.

Ironically, Cline had argued against building a sea wall in Galveston, saying it was unnecessary and that a storm of any significant strength, in any event, would never strike the island.
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The gargantuan storm tides collapsed houses along the beach front and turned them into a wall of debris that pushed further inland on the island. At its final stopping point, the debris kept buildings beyond it from collapse, but not from damage. In the aftermath, everything was bulldozed for 15 blocks from the beach.

Photographs could only begin to tell the story of the destruction. Haunting black-and-white images show residents searching through ruins with only a peaked gable to indicate that it was once a home, a house picked up from its foundations and shoved 30 yards away, a body half buried in the debris. Several clips of film exist of the devastation, as well. Black and white and silent, they record the search for bodies and the complete devastation wrought by the hurricane.

Many of the storm’s victims were washed out to sea, and many more were taken out to sea and dumped. But those bodies came back to shore with the tides. The city set about burning the bodies on funeral pyres that blazed for weeks. News accounts at the time record the stench of death that hovered over the remains of the city.

The destruction was so complete that word of the aftermath could not reach the outside world. Telegraph lines and bridges to the mainland were all down. Messengers aboard one of the few ships to survive the storm reached Houston on September 10, sending a short message to the Texas governor and U.S. President William McKinley. “The city of Galveston is in ruins,” the message said, estimating 500 dead.
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But Galveston was revitalized in the aftermath of the storm, as well. A sea wall was built. The city was elevated 16 feet at the seawall, sloping downward across the 32-mile-long, 2 1/2-mile-wide island to the bay on the other side.

Today, Galveston is a vibrant city and a popular tourist destination with a population approaching 60,000. Although it never regained its high status as a shipping port, Galveston is still a port of call for cargo ships and now for cruise ships, as well.

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