The 115th anniversary of this is tomorrow.
Posted on 09/07/2015 2:17:45 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
It was the most powerful hurricane to hit the United States. No, not Katrina whose tenth anniversary was recently widely noted. This was a much more more powerful hurricane with a much higher death toll. It was the hurricane that hit the Middle Keys of Florida 80 Labor Days ago on September 2, 1935 and since hurricanes back then had no names, it was known as the Labor Day Hurricane. There were over 400 official deaths, most of them World War I veterans working in three CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps building the overseas highway. Most of those deaths could have been easily prevented but due to New Deal ineptitude, they met an avoidable fate in the Keys.
Few today have heard about this tragedy in part because the government ineptitude in question was Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal but less than two weeks after the Labor Day Hurricane hit, novelist Ernest Hemingway, who was living in Key West at the time, wrote an essay about it called Who Murdered the Vets? Even if you are not a fan of Hemingway's fiction, you will find his facts about this hurricane tragedy quite interesting.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
On September 2, 1935, Labor Day, the hurricane reached a peak intensity of 892 mb. The hurricane made landfall later that night as a Category 5 storm, crossing the Florida Keys between Key West and Miami, FL. As it made landfall, the hurricane delivered maximum sustained winds of approximately 298 km/h (185 mph). After passing the Keys, the hurricane slowly recurved northward and closely paralleled Florida’s west coast.
http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1930s/LaborDay/
Bush's fault?
Although it was not as powerful - only category four, the great Galveston hurricane of 1900 was far more devastating. The city of Galveston, Texas was destroyed and over 8000 people were killed.
The lack of evacuation of the Keys in general and of the Vets in particular was due to the poor forecast by the U.S. Weather Bureau, which did not recognize the devastating strength of the storm and wrongly forecast that it would hit Cuba instead of the Keys. In fairness to the Weather Bureau, hurricane forecasting was then in its infancy, and even today, hurricane forecasting has a residual element of uncertainty as to strength and track that can have tragic consequences.
When I lived in the Keys decades ago before the new bridges were built, you could still see the twisted rails sticking up out of the bays on the seaward side. FDR sent the Boys on a vacation, a permanent one ...
An almost forgotten anniversary. 80 Labor Days ago.
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My mom says she remembers it but not the details, she was 15 when it happened. She remembers “all those boys drowning”
This storm was mentioned in Key Largo. Great scene.
L
Great movie.
The 115th anniversary of this is tomorrow.
BUMP
The 115th anniversary is tomorrow
On September 2, 1935, Labor Day, the hurricane reached a peak intensity of 892 mb.
...
I wonder how that measurement was made?
The Porto Rico Storm--The Carson Robison Trio (1928)
Quite a few accurate methods of barometer construction that don’t use electronics.
An article from that time period on the storm that discusses measurements.
I was wondering if the hurricane and the location of the setting in “Key Largo” might have been influenced by the Labor Day Hurricane.
The script itself was, “adapted from a 1939 play by Maxwell Anderson. In the play, the gangsters are Mexican bandidos, the war in question is the Spanish Civil War, and Frank is a disgraced deserter who dies at the end.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Largo_(film)
“Johnny Rocko wants more.”
L
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