Historical perspective---in the Great Hurricane of 1938 that ravaged New England, Rhode Island's Watch Hill Yacht Club got picked up whole and dropped into the bay.
It also took away a number of sturdy lighthouses and innumerable houses built to withstand Atlantic fury.
Hundreds of people died.
Hurricane that wrecked Galveston was deadliest in U.S. history
GALVESTON, Texas (CNN) -- The deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history ripped into the "Jewel of Texas" one century ago, killing some 8,000 men, women and children and wiping away 12 city blocks -- nearly three-quarters of the island city of Galveston, Texas.
The
Category 4 hurricane struck September 8, 1900.
Linda MacDonald, whose late grandfather lived through the Great Storm, remembers the stories he told of how, as a six-year-old boy, he rode out the tempest in his father's bakery as winds howled and waves crashed.
"He could hear children calling for their mothers, women screaming for help and men begging for mercy from God," said MacDonald, a Galveston native and an amateur expert on the storm.
The killer storm did not come without warning.
Days before the hurricane reached Texas, telegraph reports received in Galveston told of the havoc the storm caused in the Caribbean. Sailors arrived in port talking of the stormy seas.
A city with hubris
"People in Galveston knew that there was a storm in the Gulf of Mexico. It was reported in the Galveston County Daily News but they didn't know where the storm would make landfall," said historian Casey Greene.
Some historians say people's attitude increased the number of fatalities...
I wonder how similar Katrina is to the 1900 Galveston hurricane. Galveston was almost, if not entirely, underwater after the storm passed. New Orleans may be underwater for weeks as the water inland keeps flowing south through the Mississippi.