The Tales of My Demise – greatly exaggerated

This is an image of the memorial on the Galveston Island Seawall to those who lost their lives in the Great Storm of 1900 that I found on the internet

Memorial to The Great Storm of 1900 in Galveston, TX

In discussing the topic of this post with a friend of mine this morning, I came to realize that many people who haven’t lived in Texas their whole bloody lives may never have heard of the “Great Storm of 1900.”  To make a long story short, on September 8, 1900, what is believed to have been a category 4 hurricane roared onto Galveston Island. The warning systems that were in place were woefully inadequate, and that was before the “sea wall” you likely saw LOTS of during coverage of Ike recently. The entire island was inundated, and very few buildings were left standing. The death toll was estimated between 6,000 and 12,000 – with most using some sort of “low average” of 8,000.  In reading about the storm (I seem to have taken a track of reading endlessly about hurricanes, as if learning about them will keep another from coming our way!), it was eerie to read about similarities between the “Great Storm” and Hurricane Ike. According to my friends in Canada, they got torrential rains, and 30+ mph winds from Ike, and, according to Wikipedia,  The Great Storm continued northeast, much as Ike did, causing flooding, and ferocious winds up through Oklahoma (I think Ike liked Arkansas better – but we didn’t have power then so I’m not totally sure), to the Great Lakes, and actually had 65 mph winds in NY City.
I don’t know who took the above picture but it is as beautful as the memorial is heart-wrenching to me.  While reading the comments below that picture, I learned that the Today show, and others reported that the Memorial did NOT survive its encounter with Ike.  The picture from Ike that I believe will be forever imprinted in my brain is this one, from the Houston Chronicle (where you can see some really remarkable pictures of the area, and some rather mundane ones – but storms are a strange mixture of strange, remarkable, and mundane!), taken by Johnny Hanson, in what had to be the hours leading up to Ike’s arrival:

 

Memorial to Great Storm of 1900 with "Ike" looming - Photo by Johnny Hanson: Houston Chronicle "Best Images from Hurricane Ike"

 As we go forward with our daily lives, many of us changed – some in bigs ways, and some in barely perceptible ways – by our encounters with Ike, I would like to follow this image, which I believe embodies the spirit of Texans, in the face of adversity, with another – taken days after the storm, which does indeed show… The memorial is still there, and was being prepared as the centerpiece for a prayer vigil. The father, and the mother, and the child are still there – still reaching toward God, and still clinging to each other. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are now calm.  Galveston, the Bolivar, Gilchrest, Crystal Beach, the Greater Houston Area, and the many other areas that Ike treated so unkindly, are enjoying the cool breezes of the beginnings of autumn, and their residents are setting their steps on the path to making things whole once again.

Galveston in the Aftermath of Ike Image #147, Houston Chronicle - Mark Wilson: Getty Images

 

I thank God that, while the devastation in some areas may be almost as complete as it was in the Great Storm, the toll in lives was not. With the loss of a single life being such an immense tragedy, I can only imagine the horror in Galveston that fall, with the death of thousands – they say more died in that storm than all the other storms which have hit the US added together.  Thank you for your prayers, for our safety and for our sanity during and after the storm, and for your prayers for those who still suffer from losses much worse than I can allow myself to imagine.