1900 On the evening of September 7th, people strolled on the solid white sand beach in Galveston Beach. Ladies in long white dresses twirled parasols on their shoulders, and their boyfriends pushed the hard-shelled flat-topped straw hats away from their sweaty foreheads. Around them floated the sad and cheerful music of the Ragtime jazz band. The children were frolicking in the waves. The gentle sea breeze gently brushed the 4-mile-wide pier. Behind the pier stands Galveston, the fourth richest city in the United States at that time (this is the second largest grain port in the United States).
This is not the case when the storm generated at 1200 miles south of the West Indies moves slowly and steadily towards Galveston. At 4 o'clock in the morning of September 8, the storm hit the island with heavy rain at a speed of more than 30 miles per hour. In the morning 10, with the strong wind, the Gulf area with a cost of 6.2 million US dollars was flooded, and huge waves washed ashore and flooded the dock, and a big ship moored there was smashed on the dock by huge waves. The business district facing the bay was quickly submerged, pouring into 4 feet of sea water.
Several buildings collapsed before the alarm stopped. At first, the roof was torn off, and then the walls were destroyed. Most residential areas near Galveston Bay were also attacked. The wind is getting stronger and stronger. Isaac Crane and Joseph Crane, employees of the US Weather Service, rode to the seaside to warn people to take preventive measures, but people on the beach ignored them. The crane brothers raised warning flags on the roof of Lavay to warn the ships in the bay, but these flags were quickly blown by strong winds. At that time, the wind speed had increased to 84 miles per hour.
The crane brothers hurried home to evacuate their families. Isaac later said: "From 3 pm to 7: 30 pm, the sea has been rising gradually. At 7: 30, the flood rose by 4 feet in a few seconds. I stood in front of my house, watching the sea water flow rapidly from east to west. At that time, my home was about 8 inches deep. Later, before I could change my position, it suddenly rose by 4 feet and flooded my waist. "
Death runs through hurricanes. It is reported that three leaders were the first to see death: Stanny Spencer, Charles and Richard Rhodes. At that time, they were sitting in the Ritter Salon in strand Street to drink to the storm. The three of them sat at a table on the first floor, laughing at the frightened cries from the street. Suddenly the roof collapsed, crushing them to death. Dozens of other people in the salon survived because steel bars blocked the collapsed roofs and buildings. They tried their best to leave the heavily tilted building. A black waiter was sent to look for a doctor, but the next day, his swollen body was found next to the building in strand 2 1 Street.
Those residents who live in the bay refused to leave their own huts. As a result, they met with bad luck. The hurricane blew these simple buildings to pieces in an instant, and hundreds of people died on the spot. A huge wave, estimated to be 20 feet high, roared and rushed to the shore, then swept away people, houses, animals and trees, and rushed to a two-story pile of debris and bodies in the sea 1200 feet.
In this disaster, the biggest tragedy happened in the Catholic orphanage, where there were 100 children and 15 charity nuns. This ancient building at the intersection of 2 1 street and M Avenue was quickly destroyed by the hurricane. At 8 o'clock in the evening, the house collapsed and everyone was crushed to death except two little boys who survived.
More than 700 people thought that the city hall could be their refuge, but 50 of them were killed in the city hall, 100 people were injured, and even the dead could not rest in peace. The cemetery on 35th Street was flooded, and the coffin was washed out of the ground and rushed into the bay. A 200-pound metal coffin was washed up in the far corner of Virginia.
Death quietly turned to other fields. Of the 100 people in St. Mary's clinic, only 8 were saved. When the Rosenberg school building collapsed, dozens more people were crushed to death.
Galveston, a proud and undefended ancient city, was destroyed. This city is full of dead bodies and people without arms and legs. It is already a dead city, a slaughterhouse where floods and hurricanes kill people.
At night 1 1, the rainstorm gradually weakened, and the flood began to subside at dawn the next day. People began to look for their living and dead relatives. Some living people found the bodies while looking for relatives and friends. Many people are insane because of this. Several people found their loved ones crushed to death and shot themselves.
Hundreds of marauders gathered here, making this disastrous city even more horrible. Many of them came by boat from the inland cities of Texas and Houston.
After receiving the news that more than 20 black people are robbing a house on the tenth seaside street, the film shouted to the soldiers: "bury them alive!" " "These people immediately rushed to the scene of the accident and killed all 20 people. On Wednesday night, the regular infantry regiment captured 50 body thieves, who were searching for the victims' belongings in a large department store. Some of these 50 people were white women who later proved to be prostitutes in New Orleans. All 50 people stood in a line by a broken wall and were shot. Another 90 blacks were also sentenced to death for robbery the next day.
On Tuesday morning, Mayor Walter Jones declared martial law. He ordered, "all good citizens ... give all guns and ammunition to the city and get receipts from the colonel who filled the teeth."
The disposal of corpses has become a prominent problem. Bodies float in the bay and streets like woodpiles, mixed with rotting livestock. More than 2000 people began to collect these bodies and bury them. Hundreds of black people refused to do the job, but they had to do it at gunpoint.
But it still seems to be of no help. There are too many bodies buried under the sand in Galveston. So people used tugboats to drag a large number of bodies into the bay for water burial. But the bodies buried in the water quickly rushed to the shore. Later, they adopted cremation. On Tuesday, they dug a ditch as long as a block, covered it with firewood, put dead bodies on it, threw firewood on the dead bodies, poured oil on them, and lit a fire in the ditch. People spent two days digging these ditches for the dead, and some people found their relatives and friends thrown in the ditches in the middle of the work. A man examined the teeth of hundreds of female corpses in order to find his wife. They wear camphor heads under their noses, but many people are still disgusted with the smell of corpses. Some people fainted, others had to stop working.
This huge cremation pile burned for a whole week. Black smoke floated upward from this pile of burned corpses, hanging like an unlucky signal in the abandoned city of Galveston. This black smoke reminds people that it is time to build a seawall.
Hurricane Galveston claimed 6,000 lives in just one day and night, which made the once good port no longer exist and replaced it with a desolate scene.
To some extent, the tragic degree of this tragedy is related to the carelessness of Galveston leaders. Galveston is low-lying and not much higher than sea level. The highest point is only 2.7m, and the lowest point is1.5m.. As far as the situation was concerned, Galveston was a city built on the beach. Engineers and meteorologists warned that a wall should be built on the island to protect the city from hurricanes, otherwise, in the event of a storm, the waves will be forced ashore. However, the city leaders were blinded by the prosperity in front of them.
The lessons of this hurricane disaster are painful. It shocked the whole country and even the whole world for a time. Fortunately, the government finally made up its mind to reinforce the seawall. After three years' struggle, a 5 km dampproof dam was finally built at 1904.