The Great Galveston hurricane, known regionally as the Great Storm of 1900, was the deadliest natural disaster in United States history. The hurricane left between 6,000 and 12,000 fatalities in the United States; the number most cited in official reports is 8,000. Most of these deaths occurred in and near Galvestan, Texas, after storm surge inundated the coastline with 8 to 12 ft of water. The storm is believed to have originated from a tropical wave which moved off the west of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean.
About 1900 Galveston hurricane in brief
The Great Galveston hurricane, known regionally as the Great Storm of 1900, was the deadliest natural disaster in United States history and the fifth-deadliest Atlantic hurricane overall. The hurricane left between 6,000 and 12,000 fatalities in the United States; the number most cited in official reports is 8,000. Most of these deaths occurred in and near Galvestan, Texas, after storm surge inundated the coastline with 8 to 12 ft of water. Throughout its path, the storm caused more than USD 35. 4 million in damage. The storm is believed to have originated from a tropical wave which moved off the west of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. The first formal sighting of the tropical storm occurred on August 27, 1900, when a ship encountered an area of unsettled weather in the Caribbean Sea. On August 31, Father Lorenzo Gango, the director of the Belen College Observatory in Havana, Cuba, noted that the storm was in its early stages, with only vague indications of its form. On September 1, a ship east of the Windward Islands detected a tropical cyclone, the first observed during the annual season. On September 3, the cyclone struck modern day Santiago de Cuba Province and then slowly drifted along the southern coast of Cuba. The system peaked as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph on September 8. Early on the next day, it made landfall to the south of Houston, Texas. The remnants of the hurricane caused at least 52 deaths – and possibly as many as 232 deaths – in Canada, mostly due to sunken vessels near Newfoundland and the French territory of Saint-Pierre.
In Ontario, damage reached about USD 1. 35 million, with USD 1 million to crops. The storm turned east-northeastward and became extratropical over Iowa on September 11. It is thought to have passed through the Leeward Islands and entered the Leeward Kerguelen Sea on September 12. The cyclone weakened quickly after moving inland and fell to tropical storm intensity late on September 9. It then entered the far North Atlantic Ocean and weakened, with the remnants last observed near Iceland on September 15. The Great Storm brought flooding and severe thunderstorms to portions of the Caribbean, especially Cuba and Jamaica. It also brought severe impact to Canada, though mostly minor damage occurred in the state of New England. It left approximately 10,000 people in the city homeless, out of a total population of fewer than 38,000, as the hurricane alarmed potential investors, who turned to Houston instead. In response to the storm, three engineers designed and oversaw plans to raise the Gulf of Mexico shoreline ofGalveston island by 17 ft and erect a 10 mi seawall. In addition to the number killed, about 7,000buildings of all uses in Galvesten, which included 3,636 demolished homes; every dwelling in theCity suffered some degree of damage.
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