Читать книгу The Great Galveston Disaster - Paul Lester - Страница 13

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At this time the heavy sea from the southeast was constantly rising and already covered the streets of about half the city. Up to Sunday morning no reports were received from southern Texas, but the barometer at Fort Worth gave some indications that the storm was passing into the southern portion of the State. An observation taken at San Antonio at 11 o’clock, but not received until half-past five, indicated that the centre of the storm had passed a short distance east of the place, and had then turned in the northward.

Situated as Galveston is, with much of the shore but a few feet above the mean high water, there is so scant a margin of safety that, as was the case on the South Carolina Sea Islands on August 27, 1893, and among the bayous of Louisiana in October of the same year, any abnormal tide means death and destruction. Sabine Pass is a mere sand spit, and Galveston Island itself is but a few feet above the ocean level at the best, and is but three feet above high tide in many places. As the great storm wave raised by the cyclonic winds of the average hurricane may easily have a crest of from eight to nine feet, for a city such as Galveston this would be most ominous.

Such a fate as an inundation during the prevalence of a hurricane has been forecast for the island city, whose population according to the new census is 37,789, many of whom live under conditions that invite loss of life in case of a tidal overflow. And yet, though such a disaster has been foreseen and forecast, the inertia of one’s adherence to normal life and duties is such that even in the face of specific warning it is not likely any number would flee to the mainland. On September 8th, for instance, the Weather Bureau, which had not lost track of the storm, very correctly pointed out that the hurricane was moving northwestward slowly, towards the Texas coast, Port Eads, La., giving a wind velocity of fifty-six miles an hour. Storm warnings were ordered for the eastern Texas and middle Gulf region, and high winds were specifically forecast for the coast of eastern Texas. More the Bureau could not do, but it looks as if its warnings were in vain.