Someone at MSNBC should have Erik Larson on to discuss the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 ...

Larson wrote "Isaac's Storm", a narrative of events surrounding the disaster. http://www.randomhouse.com/features/isaacsstorm/links.html

More than 6,000 people died, making it the worst disaster in US history. Much of the city was reduced to kindling. I'm sure they were happy to have no resources brought in from outside as they tried to recover!


What idiots like Ron Paul don't admit is that people "made do" because they had no choice! People in DC didn't even know how bad the disaster was for days. It wasn't just a question of policy, there was much less adequate communication and transportation in 1900 compared to today. Any outside relief effort would have arrived only after two-three weeks minimum. This wasn't due to any abundance of civic virtue or resolve, it was simply unavoidable.



(More links, photos, videos, at http://www.1900storm.com/ )

And a good background on how weather forecasting has developed over the years.

newfangled communication and weather services we have now v. then. That will never happen again luckily; damage might be grave, but people now have a chance to get out of town.

Galveston was supposed to be the next major city. It would have been New York, Chicago, Galveston.

which teabaggers will try to construe as a virtue--- i.e., the virtue of ocal response as opposed to Federal governmental...

Of course that is ridiculous, but that is what they will say.... :shrug: BTW, I intend to get the book.

The hauled men from Houston in to try to save the people trapped in the wreckage. The people of Galveston couldn't have helped themselves, since many of them were buried in their homes or wandering homeless around their destroyed city.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane

"As severe as the damage to the city's buildings was, the human toll was even greater. Because of 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 U.S. 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. It is believed 8,000 people—20% of the island's population—had lost their lives. Estimates range from 6,000 to 12,000. 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. A further 30,000 were left homeless.

So many died that corpses were piled onto carts for burial at sea.
The dead bodies were so numerous that burying them all was not possible. The dead were initially weighted down and dumped at sea, but when the gulf currents washed many of the bodies back onto the beach, a new solution was needed. Funeral pyres were set up wherever the dead were found and burned for weeks after the storm. The authorities passed out free whiskey to sustain the distraught men conscripted for the gruesome work of collecting and burning the dead. More people were killed in this single storm than the total of those killed in all the tropical cyclones that have struck the United States since. This count is greater than 300 cyclones, as of 2009. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history"

I can't believe what idiots these guys are.