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Morning News

Killer Storm 100 Years Later: Galveston, Texas Remembers the Hurricane that Ravaged Their City

Aired September 8, 2000 - 11:02 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: First, we are going to start by looking backwards. We turn our attention now to an event that forever changed the face of Galveston, Texas.

Ceremonies are under way to mark the 100th anniversary of the hurricane that ravaged Galveston. The great storm still ranks as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

Joining us now from Galveston, our own John Zarrella.

John, with all the technology we have today, it's hard to imagine the storm and all the damage and death and destruction it caused in Galveston 100 years ago today.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Daryn.

What happened 100 years ago, about this time, Galvestonians were beginning to take notice, beginning to worry, the waves were breaking over this area. There was no seawall here back then. And many of them came down to watch the great breakers, some of the stories that are recorded.

And, by nightfall, that night, about 7, 8 hours from now, it was a whole different story, 8,000 Galvestonians dead, one in six had lost their lives, tremendous tragedy.

They are marking that for the first time in 100 years, until now, they have never really wanted to have any observances for this event. Today they are. Right here behind me now, one of the most poignant of the events that happened 100 years ago, St. Mary's orphanage, sat on a spot right here across the treat from me.

There were 93 orphans, and 10 sisters in the orphanage at the time. Ninety of the orphans perished, all 10 sisters died, only three of the orphans actually survived. And they heard this morning here at this site from the son of one of those three boys who survived.

They told the story of how his father tried to cling to his young brother and lost him in the waves and the water that had risen.

Just now, the Sisters of Charity, those are the sisters that ran the orphanage have put up a wreath at the base of this monument that stands here, this memorial placard, and there are some teddy bears there and flowers to mark what happened 100 years ago.

Again, it was costliest, deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, it was 8,000 dead, and that's a conservative estimate, some say as many as 12,000.

They say that it probably couldn't happened again because of the seawall that they built. But others say that would only protect them against storms up to category 3, a category 4 or 5 hurricane, if it ever struck again, might well inundate this island one more time -- Daryn, Bill.

KAGAN: John, it is hard to fathom 8,000 people dead. I know one thing that happened post-storm, you mentioned that seawall, that huge seawall they built along Galveston, along the water there. Any other legacy of this storm that has changed how life is lived in Galveston and maybe other coastal areas?

ZARRELLA: Well, actually, in Galveston, people say it never completely recovered. It is a great testament that they built this seawall, they raised the city by several feet after the storm, pumping thousands and thousands of cubic feet of sand into the city to raise the elevation of it. But Galveston has about the same population that it had pre-hurricane, and it never completely recovered the opulence and the glory that it had in 1900.

There was a battle between Houston and Galveston going on at the time for supremacy, and Galveston was winning. It was the Wall Street of the Southwest. There was more money here than in Newport, Rhode Island at the time.

They never completely recovered that, and Houston ended up taking over as the dominant city here along the gulf coast -- Daryn.

KAGAN: John Zarrella, in Galveston, Texas, thank you very much.

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