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Galveston Hurricane of 1900
Over 100 years have pasted since the Hurricane of 1900 in Galveston, Texas, and yet if
you refer to “The Great Storm”, the people of Galveston know exactly what you mean.
Galveston never returned to the city that it was, but it survived.
On the morning of September 8th ,1900 the 38,000 people of the coastal city of
Galveston had no idea that they would experience the worst natural disaster in America’s
history. There was very little warning and even though some streets were flooded the
blue skies gave the residents a sense of security. The island was 8.7 foot high and the
waves that destroyed the city were over 15 foot high. Most residents had been through
storms before and they had no clue that the magnitude of the storm would kill over 8000
of their fellow citizens.
By mid-morning the rain clouds took over the sky and the wind had begun to pick up.
The hurricane hit hard by the afternoon and only grew as darkness fell. The storm lasted
until the early morning hours the next day. When the sun came up the survivors could not
believe the total devastation they saw. The landscape was covered with bodies. Historians
contend that between 10,000 and 12,000 people were killed, at least 6,000 of them were
on the island itself. Over 3,600 homes were destroyed and most all commercial buildings.
The damages were estimated to be close to 30 million dollars, 700 million by today’s
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dollar. Despite the degree of devastation the city began to pull itself out of the mud.
On September 9th, the mayor Walter Jones called...