Investigative Classics is a weekly feature on noteworthy examples of the reporting craft.
The Houston hurricane of 2017 -- a calamity of epic proportions? Before you decide, consider the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which took an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 lives. It remains the deadliest natural disaster in American history.
Another contrast: the reach of media, for better or worse. It was comparatively nonexistent back then, the less to warn people -- and panic them too.
For example, although the storm made landfall on Sept. 8, 1900, the news didn’t reach readers of the Mitchell Capital newspaper in South Dakota until Sept. 21. The article’s main headlines read:
· Frightful Devastation Wrought by the Great Storm
· May Be 5,000 Dead
· Ghouls and Vandals Are Shot Down in the Streets by Troops
The article reports:
The extent and character of the calamity which has befallen the people of Galveston is so great and overwhelming that losses of life and property at other small towns in the track of the hurricane have been lost sight of. There are probably seventy-five villages and towns that were swept by the storm, and in most of these places loss of lives is reported. It is reliably estimated that the loss of life, exclusive of the death list of Galveston, will aggregate 800. Several towns were swept completely out of existence. Through the devastated district the scenes of desolation were terrible to witness. The storm was over 200 miles wide and extended 200 miles inland from the Gulf.
In Brazoria and other counties of that section there is hardly a plantation building left standing. All fences are also gone and the devastation is complete. Many large and expensive sugar refineries are wrecked. The negro cabins were blown down and many negroes were killed. On one plantation a short distance from the ill-fated town of Angleton three families of negroes were killed, the death list of that place alone amounting to fifteen people.
It also details the mayhem that followed in the storm’s wake:
A few government troops who survived assisted in patrolling the city. Private citizens also endeavored to prevent the robbing of the dead and on several occasions killed the offenders. It is said that at one time eight were killed and at another time four. Singly and in twos and threes the offenders were thus shot down until the total of those thus executed exceeds fully fifty.
It became evident Tuesday that burying the dead would have to be abandoned. The heat was so intense that bodies decomposed before they could be taken from the debris. Torches instead of shovels became the order, and wherever bodies could be seen in ruins, the ruins were lighted and the flames licked up the dead.
The un-bylined piece is especially memorable for this poetic, philosophical paragraph:
It is hardly possible that the true story of the frightful catastrophe will or can ever be written. The terror, despair and desperation of the population when at last they realized, Saturday evening, that they were face to face with death cannot be pictured by those not there. Such an experience has fallen to the lot of few since the world began, for no one was optimistic enough to harbor the hope that the entire city was not soon to be swept out of existence. No aid was near; escape was impossible; it was as though the 40,000 people of Galveston were on a vessel which was sinking at sea, the captain having informed them that the ship could survive but a few moments longer. For nearly thirty-six hours the situation was appalling and the inhabitants of the town were compelled to face conditions the like of which have rarely been known. The hurricane, before it reached the city, had lashed the waves of the bay into the utmost fury. The water steadily advanced toward the island upon which Galveston is located, and as it was thrown upon the beach by the .storm the residents there fled from their homes to the higher places. Against such a combination of the elementals no forethought could provide.
