Life on Florida’s West Coast

108 Years Later in Galveston

It feels VERY ironic to look at the headlines on CNN and see that forcasters are telling residents of Galveston, Texas to prepare for hurricane Ike.

Just this evening my daughter I read the book “Hurricanes” by Christy Steele. It’s a children’s book, but it has a gripping chapter about the Galveston hurricane of 1900, which hit 108 years ago today (September 8, 1900). It killed 8,000 people and it is said that people from miles away cold smell the rotting bodies that were floating in the water and wedged into treetops.

Nuns trying to recue children in an orphanage tied themselves with ropes to rows of children and were overtaken by the floodwaters. All of the nuns and the children died – still tied together. It was a harrowing disaster.

Thank God we have the blessing of modern technology now. We can see radar images and Doppler forecasts and have days to prepare for potential disaster – enough time to get people and pets out of danger.

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