Posted on 09/01/2005 7:02:06 PM PDT by TIADaily.com
The key question every time there is a natural disaster is not, "How did this happen?" Nature is dangerous, and it is always causing a disaster for someone, somewhere. Nor is the question, "Who is to blame?" There is always something more that could have been done to protect this or that place--at an expenditure of millions or billions, against a risk that could not be predicted.
The only really important question after a disaster is: "How are we going to recover?" See today's Human Achievements for a story of how Americans dealt with a disaster 105 years ago at Galveston...
Human Achievements
The 1900 Storm vs. Galveston, Texas
The 1900 Storm is still the deadliest natural disaster in US history, with estimates of lives lost ranging between 8,000 to 12,000. It utterly destroyed and almost entirely flooded the island city of Galveston, Texas, and killed 6,000 of its inhabitants. This is the story of the rebuilding of Galveston after the storm.
http://www.1900storm.com/rebuilding/index.lasso
"For while the story that began Sept. 8, 1900, is one about the fate of people at the hands of nature, it's also one about people altering their own fates by changing the face of nature.... Despite the unimaginable devastation and what must have been a hard realization that it could happen again, the city immediately began pulling itself out of the mud.... Residents of Galveston quickly decided that they would rebuild, that the city would survive, and almost as soon, leaders began deciding how it would do so."
"The two civil engineering projects leaders decided to pursue--building a seawall and raising the island's elevation--stand today and are almost as great in their scope and effect as the storm itself.... The feat of raising an entire city began with three engineers hired by the city in 1901 to design a means of keeping the gulf in its place.... Along with building a seawall, Alfred Noble, Henry M. Robert and HC Ripley recommended the city be raised 17 feet at the seawall and sloped downward at a pitch of one foot for every 1,500 feet to the bay.... The first task required to translate their vision into a working system was a means of getting more than 16 million cubic yards of sand--enough to fill more than a million dump trucks--to the island.
"Its struggle for survival against nature through the application of technology represents the strongest tradition of Western civilization. Galveston's response to the great storm was its finest hour."
It was the year of 1900 that was 80 years ago
Death come'd a howling on the ocean and when death calls you've got to go
Galveston had a sea wall just to keep the water down
But a high tide from the ocean blew the water all over the town.
Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning
Wasn't that a mighty storm
It blew all the people away.
The sea began to rolling the ships they could not land
I heard a captain crying Oh God save a drowning man
The rain it was a falling and the thunder began to roll
The lightning flashed like Hell-fire and the wind began to blow
The trees fell on the island and the houses gave away
Some they strived and drownded others died every way.
The trains at the station were loaded with the people all leaving town
But the trestle gave way with the water and the trains they went on down
Old death the cruel master when the winds began to blow
Rode in on a team of horses and cried death won't you let me go.
The flood it took my mother it took my brother too
I thought I heard my father cry as I watched my mother go
Old death your hands are clammy when you've got them on my knee
You come and took my mother won't you come back after me?
This was brilliant! They should raise the level of New Orleans, but they won't.
Galveston never really recovered. It was on track to become the premier port of Texas. Today Houston is the premier port city and Galveston is a sleepy little tourist town.
That said, Galveston is a neat place to visit and the sea wall is very prominent part of the town.
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