{"id":214,"date":"2005-09-22T15:08:31","date_gmt":"2005-09-22T19:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2005\/09\/22\/the-galveston-hurricane-of-2005\/"},"modified":"2005-09-22T15:08:31","modified_gmt":"2005-09-22T19:08:31","slug":"the-galveston-hurricane-of-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2005\/09\/22\/the-galveston-hurricane-of-2005\/","title":{"rendered":"The Galveston Hurricane of 2005"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1870, Indianola, Texas<\/a>
\nwas growing rapidly; a coastal town with 5,000 inhabitants.  Then
\nin 1975 it suffered the first of two massive storms, killing hundreds
\nand flattening the city.  It was rebuilt; but a second storm in
\n1886 caused residents to give it up altogether.  Today, thanks to
\nstorm erosion, most of the original city is underwater. <\/p>\n

In 1900, Galveston<\/a>
\nhad enjoyed even greater growth without disaster.  It had a
\npopulation of 42,000.  The city had worried about facing the same
\nfate as Indianola, but as decades passed without any serious storms at
\nall, some experts (including then-director of the Galveston Weather Bureau<\/a>, Isaac Cline) suggested that hurricanes “could not<\/span>” hit Galveston, for one reason or another.<\/p>\n

That fall, an unnamed hurricane swept through town, killing around
\n8,000 people and flattening the city.  There were communication
\nproblems back then… bridges and telegraph lines were cut, making it
\nhard to send messages to the mainland.  Once messengers did
\narrive, they had a great deal of bureaucracy to negotiate, despite the
\nextraordinary damage.<\/p>\n

The first message ran, “I have been deputized by the mayor and Citizen’s Committee of
\nGalveston to inform you that the city of Galveston is in ruins<\/span>.” The
\nmessengers reported an estimated five hundred dead. This was considered
\nto be an exaggeration<\/span>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When rescuers arrived, they found thousands dead, instead. 
\nFuneral pyres were set up all around the city, and burned for
\nweeks.  <\/p>\n

Since then, over the following century, the city has built up a 17-foot
\nhigh seawall, and raised the city some 4-5 meters with dredged
\nsand.  The seawall itself has become a tourist attraction, and
\nhotels and other tourist sites have been built along its length…
\nbuildings along the main Galveston Strand are marked to indicate they
\nsurvived the hurricane.  So far, this has sufficed…<\/p>\n

Losing to nature<\/h3>\n
“Nature will win if we decide that we can beat it.” –Bill Read, from the documentary  Isaac’s Storm<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/div>\n

The pending storm produced by Hurricane Rita<\/a>
\nboasts sea surges of over 30 feet (some have suggested 50), making the
\nseawall seem rather slender protection.  Galveston has built out
\ntowards the water, not back away from it; and the whole city has fled
\nbefore the potential disaster.  <\/p>\n

If history is any indicator, it will take another storm of similar size to change anyone’s habitation habits.  But perhaps architects <\/span>and developers <\/span>will learn to be more respectful to nature in laying out groundplans and designing seaside retreats.<\/p>\n

The Galveston Hurricane of 2005 …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1870, Indianola, Texas was growing rapidly; a coastal town with 5,000 inhabitants.  Then in 1975 it suffered the first of two massive storms, killing hundreds and flattening the city.  It was rebuilt; but a second storm in 1886 caused residents to give it up altogether.  Today, thanks to storm erosion, most of the original […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-la-mod"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-3s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}