The Great Storm, Galveston Texas

Vorus
Williams of Shreveport, La., holds a picture
of his grandfather, Isaac Cline. Photo by Kevin Bartram

The powerful, panoramic documentary, The Great Storm, recreates the turning point in Galveston history: the 1900 hurricane. Experience the devastation of the deadliest…

This map shows the approximate path of the 1900 Galveston hurricane.

" September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Issac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau, failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged by a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over 6,000 people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history- and Issac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy. Using Clines's own telegrams, letters, and repoerts, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic striggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Thrilling, powerful and unrelentingly suspenseful, _Issac's Storm_is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the uncontrollable force of nature."

The great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the deadliest natural disaster in American history. See how the city's overconfidence would prove tragic and how th...

What
makes the story of the nation's greatest natural disaster so unusual is
the incomparable optimism of its survivors. For the most part, residents
chose to remain in Galveston and rebuild the city they so loved.

Dredge
material is pumped into the island during the
grade raising after the 1900 hurricane. Residents endured
years of pumps, sludge, canals, stench and miles of catwalks
during the project. Photo courtesy of Rosenberg Library.