In 1900, only a few short years after storms completely destroyed the then booming port of Indianola, all of Galveston island was inundated by a 15 foot storm surge and over 8000 residents died in Texas' worst natural disaster. Nine years later, half the town of Velasco was destroyed by a hurricane and in 1915, when storms again struck Galveston, not even the newly constructed seawall entirely prevented flooding and 287 lives were lost in high tides. These are only a few of the storms that targeted Texas in the first half of the twentieth century.
The practice of naming these menacing storms began during WWII, and in 1957 Hurricane Audrey made landfall near the Louisiana/Texas border taking 390 lives. Then there was Carla; so huge she covered the entire Gulf of Mexico, terrorizing every Gulf coast state and driving half a million refugees to safer ground. I remember, as a child, riding past the schools in my little inland town and seeing all the people crowding into the buildings where classes had been dismissed in order to provide shelter for fleeing coastal residents.
Born in the Atlantic in early September, Carla danced westward across the Gulf of Mexico and bashed the Texas coastline between Port O'Connor and Port Lavaca on 9-11-61 with twelve foot tides and wind gusts measuring 170 mph. I remember my dad listening to updates on the radio and telling my mom and me that it was time to go into our storm shelter. Rain fell in silver sheets and limbs swayed in the wind. I can't recall just how long we stayed in that little underground, concrete room but we did come out while the eye passed over. All was still and quiet. I watched a flock of white gulls circling above us, trapped in the calm center of that storm. Very shortly, the wind returned in gusts from the opposite direction and we took shelter again.
When we emerged the second time, 16 inches of rain had been dumped on the land, limbs littered the ground and the first tree in a row of five large cedars bordering our yard lay across the road, brutally twisted from the two foot stump that remained. Our house sat unscathed. We drove around town surveying the damage. I remember uprooted trees, battered roofs, and broken windows. Stories circulated of homes washed off foundations and straws driven through telephone poles along the coast. Forty six people lost their lives and $2 billion worth of property was demolished. That experience left a strong impression on my young mind and I learned to respect hurricanes.
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