August 25, 2024 • 37 mins
How have hurricanes shaped the history, culture, and political landscape of Texas? Join us as we continue the discussion on the profound effects these powerful storms have had on the Lone Star State.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not
reflect the views of theinstitutions that employ us.
It is solely our thoughts andideas, based upon our
professional training and studyof the past.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that
explores Texas history beforeand beyond the Alamo.
Not only will we talk Texashistory, we'll visit with folks
who teach it, write it, supportit, and with some who've made it
and, of course, all of us wholive it and love it.
This is Talking Texas History.
(00:34):
Welcome to another edition ofTalking Texas History.
I'm Gene Foyce.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
And I'm Scott Sosby, gene.
Last week we did not.
Last week we don't do theseevery week.
Nobody could stand to listen tous every week.
Last cast we did.
We talked about hurricanes in ageneral sense in Texas and it
spawned on us.
Hey, we should do another one.
So what we decided to do todayis let's talk about just
(01:08):
historic Texas hurricanes.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, you know, we talked a lot last time about, in
general, hurricanes and thedamage they cause.
And why is it that historiansdon't look at weather very often
and they don't look at naturalevents or in some cases it seems
(01:33):
like an unnatural event andtalk about the effects of the
environment on history, history,and there have been some, there
have been some environmentalhistorians that have done that,
especially talking about theWest and droughts and things
like that.
But hurricanes, my gosh, youthink about the damage and
(01:59):
destruction and I'm very partialto that because, living here in
Houston, we get them and itseems like we're getting them
more and more.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's true.
I mean Houston is something Imean you have to start thinking
about it.
I mean it is the largest cityin the United States that sits
in the direct paths ofhurricanes.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Don Walker, our old mentor.
Old Don, yes, you know he usedto talk about towns in Texas.
You know he used to talk abouttowns in Texas and I think, you
(02:40):
know, I think DW Mining or maybeit was another book on Texas
cities and environment andwhatnot, like Texas culture
cities dallas, san antonio,houston, el paso walker would
often emphasize that they shouldnot be where they are no, there
, I mean, there are a lot ofthem for reasons for putting.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I mean you put, basically, you establish houston
in a malarial swamp.
It remains, you know, uh, uh,dallas is the.
Dallas is the largest Americancity, not on a navigable, uh,
stream of water, right, uh, ithas.
Of course, when you say thathas no reason to exist and
(03:15):
established it didn't, but ofcourse a lot of reasons why
people were on establishingcities on water because of
transportation.
Well, dallas is right, wheremajor railroads intersected and
eventually major interstate.
So I always thoughttransportation Well, dallas is
right, where major railroadsintersected and eventually major
interstates.
So I always thought that'stransportation, right, yeah,
that's transportation, it's thesame thing.
So to say, dallas has no reasonto exist.
You're not going well, you'rekind of forgetting the later
(03:37):
history of things established.
But that is a point in thethings that are happening and a
lot of the population of theUnited States lies right along
the coastline and coastlines,particularly on the Gulf of
Mexico, get stormed and theyhave been historic, they have
changed Texas history, if youthink about even some of the
storms we talk about today.
It essentially wiped out threemajor Texas port cities in the
(04:02):
19th century in Indianola,velasco and Quintana, because of
hurricanes that are essentiallywiped out.
It changed the fortunes, thegreat hurricanes, of course of
1900 changed the fortunes ofGalveston.
It's utterly amazing that wesomewhat ignore these hurricanes
when we're talking about thegrander narrative of history.
We somewhat ignore thesehurricanes when we're talking
(04:23):
about the grander narrative ofhistory.
So let's just see if we can'tstop that today, gene.
Let's talk about somehurricanes that have been
historic in history.
And I'll start because this isone I don't think a lot of
people talk about.
You know, we get used totalking about hurricanes by
(04:43):
their names, because they werenamed first for females and then
we changed it in the 1980s toalso include males, uh, but we
didn't start doing naming stormsand, uh, hurricanes, tropical
systems, after human names until1950 and so and I and maybe
that's one reason why some ofthese earlier storms get short
shrift, but also because there'snot that many people but this
was a storm that happened inOctober, basically second
(05:07):
through sixth, four days, 1837.
Texas is a brand-new republic.
It gets the nickname of RacerStorm because it was named after
the British sloop that firstsaw the storm and documented the
storm.
Remember, forecasting was notvery precise then, but this
storm is not mentioned much inTexas history, probably because
the sparse population and thetime period.
(05:27):
But it really was a spectacularstorm.
In 1837 it first comes and hitsland near present-day
brownsville and then essentiallymoves up the curved gulf coast
right along the coastlines uh oftexas.
For three days it raged kind ofoffshore somewhat as it moved
(05:48):
up and did incredible,incredible damage.
Every single ship at Velascowas tossed ashore.
Velasco begins its slow declineand eventually a hurricane in
1874 is going to wipe it out,but begins this decline because
of that storm.
Galveston then just a nascentcommunity, barely had been
(06:10):
established was wholly inundated, I mean completely covered up
where there was no island leftwith water.
The new Tremont Hotel that wasjust built a few months earlier
was blown down and completelyleveled and they had to build it
all over again.
If you've ever stayed inGalveston, that's from my
recommended.
I enjoy staying at the Tremontall the time.
Hardly any structure in thelittle city was left.
(06:32):
The storm finally entered landin Louisiana and it remained a
tropical system.
It remained a hurricane untilit got over Tennessee and it's a
tropical system until it exitsto the Atlantic near Hilton Head
, south Carolina.
A spectacular storm.
We don't talk about very muchGene.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well, you know and you're right.
I mean, think about where thatstorm tracked from.
And certainly it hit placeslike the Yucatan and places
where hurricanes hit frequently,places where hurricanes hit
(07:10):
frequently, but along the texasgulf coast it made that entire
arc right all the way tolouisiana before it really
starts moving inland and umgolly the damage, as you were
saying.
You know and you know.
I mean, most of the buildingsweren't built for that.
Sure, you know they're woodenstructures and it just, you know
, think about the damage.
(07:30):
Think about, you know, theplants, the animals that that
displaced and how much water itdumped.
Like you said, the island ofGalveston was inundated
Tremendous, tremendous effectall throughout it.
And we don't know right,because if you're reading books,
(07:50):
you're reading books in texasin the 1840s, a, you know, 1830s
, even most of the 1837.
You know you're still readingstuff about the texas, uh, early
republic, and not enough andnot enough books are focused on
that period.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Anyway, not at all but talk about.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I wonder what that storm did to the early texas
government and you know thetexas government was in houston.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Uh, yeah, then it had to affect it.
But you know, maybe the factthat it wasn't a very good
government anyway didn't affectas much as it was, since I mean,
like we're talking about anation that essentially didn't
have a postal service, so therewasn't much to affect.
But can you imagine if a stormdid that same path today, a
(08:41):
powerful storm did that arctoday, what kind of damage it
would be?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, let me throw out a question here, and I don't
know the answer to this, butyou know, the government went
back and forth between Houstonand Lamar.
Lamar wants to move the capitalinland, deep inland, to Austin
(09:08):
right, and Houston wants it toremain in Houston.
I wonder how much Storms had todo with that debate.
We don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I don't, because I'm not real privy to
them.
There's got to be somecommunication about it, of
course.
You know.
I mean mean a lot of it was egoalso.
Lamar didn't want to, didn'twant to be in a city named after
houston and houston didn't wantto leave the city named after
him.
So yeah, we don't know anythingabout ego and politics.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
That hasn't happened, that's right.
Yeah, well, let me talk about ahurricane.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonnaactually talk about a hurricane
.
I'm going to actually talkabout a hurricane that wasn't a
hurricane.
Now, we talked about this lasttime, but just I looked it up.
What does a hurricane make?
It is essentially a rotatinglow-pressure system.
(10:00):
Now, what does that mean?
I don't know.
I once read a meteor.
I was interested in meteorologyfor a while I mean never, I was
.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I did.
I took meteorology class, didyou really?
Yeah, that was actually mysciences for meteorology.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
So you know, maybe that substitutes, but it's a
low-pressure system and I washeard once that it's like the
atmosphere is rivers of air andyou get, if you look at a river,
you get these swirling areasfrom time to time.
(10:40):
And it's the same principle asI was instructed.
I don't know, people maydisagree with me, but it's these
low pressure systems rotating,so, unlike a storm system that
normally comes with a front,hurricanes don't have that.
And if the wind is less than 40miles an hour, if it is less
(11:00):
than 40 miles an hour, it's atropical depression.
If it's more than 39 miles perhour, it's a tropical storm.
Once it gets to 74 miles perhour it becomes a hurricane.
And you know it varies.
(11:22):
We talked last time about howintense those winds can blow,
but I wasn't aware of the, Iguess, the growth history.
It's just like watching yourchild and here's the benchmark
on the wall where you're growingup 39 miles per hour, 74 miles
per hour.
Are these demarcation lines?
This was not a hurricane, butit was a tropical storm that
(11:52):
wreaked tremendous havoc becauseit would come in and go out and
went back and forth and wetalked about this last time and
that is Allison in 2001.
And the amount of rainfall thatit dumped in places like
Houston.
40 inches of rainfall in Texaswas where it peaked.
(12:12):
That is a tremendous amount ofwater over an area.
30,000 people became homeless,70,000 houses destroyed, so it
(12:32):
caused a tremendous amount ofrelocation of people and just
misery.
And, of course, you know whenis hurricane season During the
Labor Day, during September andAugust, when it's hot and you
think about all those peoplebeing without homes, being
(12:52):
without electricity, beingwithout means of communication,
so flooding.
We've got the in the downtownarea of Houston.
We've got the well, not thedowntown, but we've got the in
the downtown area of houston.
We've got the well, not thedowntown, but we've got the
business district.
And then, a little bit furthersouth from there, we've got the
hospital district.
23 people died in texas, almost10 billion dollars of damage
(13:18):
here in texas, 13 billion, $13billion in money today, 2020.
So talk about inflation.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It's still the most right, the costliest tropical
storm ever in American history.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, so it's not a hurricane, but it wreaked a
bunch of damage?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It sure did, and so I will riff on that, I suppose,
because I guess we can sayhouston didn't learn its lesson,
uh, from allison in 1983, orperhaps forgot when allison?
Uh, when allison came, therewas much discussion about
renovating the uh, thereservoirs, like attics and
(14:04):
things that reservoirs in hou,houston that are supposed to
catch the flood water and doingsome flood improvement projects
on Buffalo Bayou to keep thisfrom happening again, and there
was much, much talk.
Well, like a lot of things thatget political and everything
else, there was a lot of talkingand not a whole lot of doing.
That happened in Houston andthen, as the years went, nothing
(14:26):
ever happened again.
Texas had other hurricanes thatcame through that didn't seem
to cause that much trouble inHouston, so I think they forgot
about it.
But then, of course, came onealmost everybody in our audience
remembers because it was sorecent, but that's Harvey.
In 2017.
That happened and it's a biggerstorm.
(14:47):
Harvey was a huge storm when itcame ashore, but it did kind of
like you were talking aboutAllison did.
It would go out and come back,go out and come back.
You mentioned hurricanes andlow-pressure systems and things.
Hurricanes are like a massive,massive concentrated storage of
energy is what they are, are asthey do, and that energy feeds
(15:08):
off of warm, warm seawater iswhat they feel and that's, and
the Gulf has an abundance ofwarm seawater and that's what
Harvey did.
Harvey first came ashore nearRockport with devastating winds.
It was a, it was a categoryfour hurricane and a big storm
surge.
And then, but what it did?
(15:28):
It kind of went inland, kind ofabout Victoria and then the
cause of a high pressure systemthat was influencing it.
It went back out into the Gulfand then set there and just
swirled for a long time anddidn't move and then came back
up and, essentially as a system,came inland and then, as it
(15:49):
downgraded from a hurricane,stalled right over the
metropolitan area of houston anddumped copious amounts of rain
all over the area.
And we all remember the pictures, the devastation.
Almost every, every sector ofHouston was flooded.
Almost hardly anybody in ametropolitan area of almost five
(16:12):
million people, hardly anybodywas not affected by Harvey.
It was a devastation.
For weeks People still werehomeless, couldn't go home,
homes were flooded.
You had all kinds of thisdislocation of people and
animals and everything else.
Totally devastating, just likeAllison was, and once again.
There was a big call we'regoing to have to do flood
(16:35):
abatement projects andeverything.
Gene, you're sitting there inHouston.
I'm not so sure we've actuallystill learned the lesson from
that.
As we just saw from thehurricane that came through,
yeah, barrel some of the barrelwith some of the same problems
it?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
uh, well, you know we're.
We talk about hurricanes andthose heading houston.
Um, you know what about ike,the thing about you you were
mentioning?
So ike was 10 years or beforethat, or nine years before that.
So harvey comes through talkingabout the devastation.
(17:13):
Look, when it was aroundvictoria, that thing was only
traveling five miles an hour.
It was moving five, that'swalking speed and it's just
walking speed for some of y'all.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You know I'll walk by mom.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, that's true, but you know it's just sitting
there, growing because it's notmoving very fast and it's
continuing to bring.
You know, you talk about thedry side and then the wet side
of a hurricane that, as it'sspinning and they spend
counterclockwise, it's justbringing in water and dumping it
.
And if it's, if it's if it'smoving, if they were moving like
(17:49):
30 miles an hour like a regularstorm, okay, it'll pass in an
hour or so, but this one juststayed there and that was what
increased the, the damage ofthat.
We'll go back to ike.
I was mentioning I, so I'lltalk a little bit about Ike.
So 2008.
And another gigantic stormsaround the same time At least.
(18:18):
Well, almost 200 deaths Now,not just in Texas but all over.
But it came in, killed about113 people, many were missing
for a while, and it everywhere,from around Kennedy, carn City,
(18:43):
in that area, you know, corpusChristi, all the way up through
the Mississippi region, maybeeven over to.
I think it crossed over to,well, it didn't, but it came in
around southern Florida.
It didn't hit.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Florida.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
But then it and then it went, you know, up north
towards the Great Lakes area.
But you know, talk aboutanother devastating hurricane.
I don't remember how much rainit dumped, but 140 mile-per-hour
winds, 145 mile-per-hour winds,category 4 hurricane.
(19:22):
It just wreaked a lot of heaven.
I'll tell you one thing aboutit that I hadn't thought about.
So that was what?
2008?
So the next year, mary and Iwent on a cruise and we went out
(19:42):
to Turk and Caicos.
And we went out to Turk andCaicos and out at Turk and
Caicos you know that's where,what was it?
John Glenn landed one of thefirst orbitals and they picked
it up out there and they've gota replica out there.
But we were going on thislittle tour of the island and
the guy was a taxi driver and hewas telling us there was a lot
(20:04):
of devastation, a lot ofconstruction going on.
And he said well, you know, ikecame over the island and hit it
, and I hadn't thought about howmuch damage those hurricanes do
to other parts of the world.
I mean other parts of theCaribbean.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Ike is my first experience ever with any sort of
a hurricane.
We had just moved toNacogdoches in 2006.
With any sort of a hurricane wehad just moved to Nacogdoches
in 2006, and Ike, when it cameaboard, hit Boulevard and it
kind of came in towards Houstonbut really it was North Houston
and came over to somewhere nearthe Conroe area and then
essentially turned and wentright straight up the path of
(20:40):
Highway 59, and it was still aCategory 1 when it came over
Nacogdoches and it you know Ican't listen to that it
literally scared us as we satthere in the dark because power
went out and we could hear thetrees snapping around us and the
massive amounts of wind andeverything.
(21:01):
And I remember telling Leslie,my wife, I said can you imagine
what it would be like livingthrough a category four or
category five hurricane withthis type of thing?
It was just unbelievable.
So you know, ike was a bad one.
Let's, you know, take a timeout.
You can edit this out.
I think we just keep going.
We're gonna run out.
We might can do this foranother show, because we got a
(21:22):
lot we could do.
So, don't?
I think we could probably getanother.
Just, keep yeah probably okay,uh, so yeah, so ike was a, ike
was a horrible one.
Well, I'm going to go back uhand talk about some historic
hurricanes, because one thingabout particularly I mean in the
20th century, 20th and 21stcentury you're generally not
(21:42):
going to have hurricanes thatyou can say wipe out a town and
cause it to cease to exist.
But in the 17th, 18th, 19thcenturies, storms literally
could inundate and destroy atown and cause it to cease to
exist.
And that's the case with thetown hit by two hurricanes in
(22:02):
the late 19th century, one in1875 and one in 1886.
And these were hurricanes thatcame to store, that essentially
ended the life of the Texas portcity of Indianola.
If you go down to Indianola nowin Calhoun County at certain
times when the tide is out, youcan see foundations of buildings
that are now out in the gulf ofwhat used to be Indianola,
(22:25):
foundations of buildings thatare now out in the goal of what
used to be Indianola.
Indianola was one of the primaryports of entry in Texas.
It was located on the westshore of Matagorda Bay,
established in 1844, and itbecame the primary point where
immigrants came in to thethen-Republican and then the
state of Texas, particularly alot of German immigrants that
(22:46):
were moving in.
The German built around NewBraunfels.
This is where they came Right.
Right, they landed in Indianola.
It was a great port, had over10,000 people living there at
one time.
It had had a few hurricanesbefore, but in September 15th
1875, a storm struck Indianolaon the night.
It began on the night of the15th with its eye passing over
(23:10):
San Jose Island, and then itraged.
It was another one of thosethat kind of stalled for a while
and just raged over Copano Bayand then into Indianola for all
day of the 16th before it movedinland.
The surge was estimated to be15 feet.
The storm surge at indianola270 people were killed.
(23:30):
Three-quarters parts of thetown were washed away.
Indianola, though, survived.
The survivors came back.
They did rebuild it.
They rebuilt it a littlefurther inland than it was
before, but they rebuilt itcompletely back up and it
continued to be a thriving portuntil August 20, 1886, when
(23:50):
another huge hurricane struckIndianola.
Wind, surge and rain made thetown, as one official that
surveyed it afterwards called ita universal wreck.
As he looked at it, not asingle dwelling in the city
survived.
They were all either blown downor washed away.
It left indianola in ruins andthe people, the survivors,
(24:13):
decided that's enough, we're notcoming back.
They picked up stakes, thoseare left and they mostly moved
to victoria and some to sanantonio.
The same storm swept away thisuh, the city, quintana, at the
mouth of the Brazos, which wasthe sister city of Velasco.
Both of those went away and theremnants moved inland and you
see it now around the LakeJackson Freeport area.
(24:34):
But those cities don't exist.
So a hurricane altered,actually altered, the physical
nature of Texas's infrastructurein those years and did away
with Indianola.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
One of the other things about the Indianola there
was a feud trial or there was atrial going on over a feud.
Yeah, the Sutton-Taylor feud.
The Sutton-Taylor feud, you know, and Chuck Parsons and Jimmy
Smallwood both wrote on thatfeud and we talk about the
(25:06):
history and I don't know if theymentioned that in those books,
um, but talk about just the, theeffect on history and that
indianola.
So, uh, I, I grew up in newbronfels and we've talked about,
uh, you know, christmas in newbronf, braunfels, last year or
so ago.
(25:27):
Tune into our episodes andlisten to the back episodes.
And in Texas, german-americanhistory, indianola was starting
off.
The big port town by PrinceCarl of Psalms, braunfels, and
the Adelsverein brought inimmigrants into Indianola.
(25:47):
That changed as a result ofthose hurricanes.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
That's where the US Army landed camels and brought
the camels in for the camelexperience at Indianola, the
West Texas camels right.
Some people claim they stillsee they're not out there.
People Quit saying that you seeit.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
The ghost of Campbell's past.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, that's a.
So that is another great stormlet's talk about.
I want to come up and talkabout Hurricane Carla.
Now this is a 20th century one.
This is 1961.
So Cold War era Texas rightcomes across 1961 around Corpus
(26:35):
Christi, port O'Connor, thatarea category four hurricane and
it goes up kind of straight upnorth towards Oklahoma before it
heads out towards the GreatLakes and then over Canada.
(26:57):
Almost 2,000 homes destroyedhere in Texas and Texas was very
rural at the time but itaffected farmers.
There were almost 6,000 farmbuildings destroyed.
It didn't just affect the coastbecause it kind of directly
(27:23):
went inland and just startedhitting north up through Dallas
and in that area.
An estimated 1 million head ofcattle killed during hurricane
carla 1 million head right andthen, in addition to 43 people,
died, million, 300 milliondollars in damage, and that was
(27:46):
61 dollars yeah, back whenthey're big.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
well, well, I did.
You know it destroyed so muchinfrastructure.
It was the first I like to callit kind of in Texas, the first
hurricane that hit modern Texasand destroyed modern
infrastructure, because thedevastation amongst those
petrochemical plants and thoseare from the Freeport area and
on up towards the Port Arthurarea was devastating, and what
(28:14):
was so monumental about thedamage at the time was a record.
There is no way Texas could payto rebuild after Carla.
The state of Texas's resourceswere completely stretched.
Governor Price Daniel was likehe was at a complete loss about
what to do, as he was on a lotof issues, but that's a whole
other episode.
If we want to talk about PriceDaniel, we'll get Chuck Wade on
here to do as he was on a lot ofissues, but that's a whole
nother episode.
(28:34):
If we want to talk about pricedaniel, uh, we'll get chuck wade
on here to do that, right, uhto talk about that but and what
it also it?
it carla was one, along withaudrey, that had hit louisiana a
few years earlier and thenlater on, uh celia, which would
hit uh corporates, corpusChristi, and do terrible damage
(28:54):
down there and then on into someof the other 1970s hurricanes.
There was this how the federalresponse, and there was no
coordinated federal response.
Congress had to pass a seriesof bills appropriating money
that you were going to send to aplace if you're going to help
it rebuild.
As you know, anything comingout of of congress it's
(29:16):
cumbersome, it takes time, uh,and it's a long process.
And carla was people were, youknow like, say, homeless,
devastated.
This had to be done quickly andthere was no coordinated
federal response to do that.
Lyndon john, vice president ofthe United States at the time, a
creature of Congress.
He did a fantastic job of goingand talking to leaders of
(29:40):
Congress and getting those billsthrough to get rebuilding from
Carla May.
But it set a germ in him and hestarts it when he's president
talking about it.
He doesn't get it accomplishedbut Carla is, if you want to
talk about that little germ of agenesis, a genesis germ of a
seed of starting.
Carla is kind of consideredthat germ that starts and if we
(30:03):
go through other things in the70s, finally in 1979, under the
Jimmy Carter administration, wefinally see talk about how long
it takes federal government torespond.
The creation of the FederalEmergency Management
Administration, fema thatcoordinates federal responses to
these natural disasters.
Historic in that sense becauseit was so huge to do that, to do
(30:27):
this.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I think you also mentioned last discussion about
this.
This really launched thenational career of Dan Rather.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
That's true.
Yeah, before he becameAfghanistan Dan and dressed in
the garb of the Mujahideen andI'm not making fun of Dan, I'm a
fan of Dan Rather.
He gained a reputation.
He was a reporter for atelevision station in houston
and he stood out through all thewinds were blowing and he was
(30:59):
getting he was the early day,jim cantori, uh and getting
blown around and that.
That.
That caught the attention of uhcbs news and he was hired to
for the broadcast network cbsused and, of course, goes on to
distinguish career there andstill alive, right, dan reathers
in his 90s and still stillworking.
He still.
He has a podcast that youshould listen to that he does
(31:20):
and writes columns still still aworking journalist in over 90
years old.
We have these modern storms andI think we have to talk about
you mentioned it before but Ithink it plays into.
I'm gonna put them togetherbecause it happened like back to
back almost Beulah, celia atthe same time, because these
(31:42):
were both again modern,devastating storms that were
unbelievable.
Beulah was in September 22nd of1967.
Like Carla, it was a largestorm.
Carla, at the time it came in,was the largest hurricane on
record in terms of expanse ofthe mast Beulah was the third
largest hurricane.
It's since been passed by anumber.
At that time it hit Brownsville.
(32:04):
Beulah hit Brownsville area buthurricane force winds stretched
all the way to Corpus Christi.
It destroyed the citrus cropthat year.
Oranges were expensive thatyear.
Destroyed the citrus crop thatyear.
Oranges were expensive thatyear until the citrus crop was
destroyed.
And then it goes on inland andcauses terrible, terrible
flooding in Houston.
And it's the same problem aswith Carla.
There is no real mechanism forthe federal government to
(32:28):
respond.
And again it has to go throughall of these machinations.
And then, just two years later,in August 1970, celia hits
Corpus Christi on the 3rd ofAugust.
It was another one that hadcome across the Caribbean.
It had hit Florida before itcame in and hit Texas and came
(32:50):
through it's hurricane warnings.
That Corpus sounded early inthe morning that day, waking
people up out of bed.
It actually makes landfallbetween Corpus and Port Aransas.
Around 3 o'clock in theafternoon I was about North
Mathis, if you know where thatone is.
Wind gusts of over 150 miles anhour before it blew the
anemometer off at Aransas Pass.
(33:11):
An hour before it blew theanemometer off at Aransas Pass
they estimated those gusts couldhave reached as high as 160 to
180 miles an hour.
It hits Corpus at 530.
The seawall holds but Corpushas great wind damage, great
flooding damage.
It moves on inland and floodseven places as far away as Del
(33:34):
rio and del rio winds were stilldusting at 90 miles an hour.
Uh, from celia, storm surge ofreal near uh to 10 feet uh is
what it was.
And again awful damage fromcelia.
And again a federalgovernmental response was slow
in coming and tex, texas'sgovernment could not afford it.
(33:55):
He had to go through all thecongressional stuff and a lot of
people suffered because theycouldn't get rebuilding from
those.
Another one of these thatactually spurred, helped spur
FEMA in its development.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
You're talking about Celia, that storm tracked all
the way out towards El Paso, andtalk about a weird path and you
mentioned Beulah in connectionwith that.
So Beulah and this was 67,beulah was weird in that you
know many of the hurricaneswe've been talking about.
(34:27):
We say, you know they come intothe Gulf Coast that affect
Texas and they go up north outto the, uh, the great lakes or
up through new england orsomeplace like that, or
sometimes into florida.
Beulah came in aroundbrownsville and then, uh, went
through mexico, went south westthrough mexico, before coming
(34:54):
out again in the Gulf.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Oaxaca, not Oaxaca, but maybe around the capital
area of Mexico.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
So that's a weird yeah, and dumped rain.
Durango, I think it was Durango, mexico has a record amount of
rain, all kinds of flamesflooding from Beulah after it
already hit, so these storms arelong lasting.
That's one of these things thatwe don't think about.
I mean, we just had Beryl comethrough.
Beryl went all the way up andwas causing as a tropical system
(35:31):
or a sub-tropical system,causing massive amounts of
rainfall in Canada after havingbeen around in Texas.
I mean this is how powerfulthese storms are.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Scott, I hate to say this, but we didn't get nearly
as far as we thought we weregoing to get.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
No, we didn't.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
And we only were scratching the surface we may
have to do something again,right?
I think we're going to dosomething again and you know,
one of the things we need to doget somebody from Galveston talk
about the Galveston hurricanebecause they have a whole
culture built up down there onthat historical infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
And you know we may have hit on a vein here, gene,
we may have becomemeteorological historians here,
right, right, we're talkingabout hurricanes.
Texas is again, because of itssize, has more tornadoes than
any state in the United States,and tornadoes have shaped the
(36:39):
history of Texas a whole greatlot.
We haven't even talked abouttornadoes and then devastating
rain events and droughts andvarious other things.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
We've got it all here .
Speaker 1 (36:50):
We can talk about weather all summer and then into
the fall, probably right, andthat way we can do this and we
don't have to work at findingpeople to come in and talk to
and we can just pontificateourselves, right.
I like not having to work.
I base my whole body of work onnot having to work.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
That's our careers, that's right.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
A career of not working Well, so we will.
We'll get into this later, butthat's just some of the
hurricanes that we've beentalking about.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
as we said, just scratch the surface and that's
it well, once again, thanks forlistening, everybody and Scott,
we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yes, sir, bye, bye everybody bye, bye everybody,
bye bye.
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not
reflect the views of theinstitutions that employ us.
It is solely our thoughts andideas, based upon our
professional training and studyof the past.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that
explores Texas history beforeand beyond the Alamo.
Not only will we talk Texashistory, we'll visit with folks
who teach it, write it, supportit, and with some who've made it
and, of course, all of us wholive it and love it.
This is Talking Texas History.
(00:34):
Welcome to another edition ofTalking Texas History.
I'm Gene Foyce.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
And I'm Scott Sosby, gene.
Last week we did not.
Last week we don't do theseevery week.
Nobody could stand to listen tous every week.
Last cast we did.
We talked about hurricanes in ageneral sense in Texas and it
spawned on us.
Hey, we should do another one.
So what we decided to do todayis let's talk about just
(01:08):
historic Texas hurricanes.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well, you know, we talked a lot last time about, in
general, hurricanes and thedamage they cause.
And why is it that historiansdon't look at weather very often
and they don't look at naturalevents or in some cases it seems
(01:33):
like an unnatural event andtalk about the effects of the
environment on history, history,and there have been some, there
have been some environmentalhistorians that have done that,
especially talking about theWest and droughts and things
like that.
But hurricanes, my gosh, youthink about the damage and
(01:59):
destruction and I'm very partialto that because, living here in
Houston, we get them and itseems like we're getting them
more and more.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's true.
I mean Houston is something Imean you have to start thinking
about it.
I mean it is the largest cityin the United States that sits
in the direct paths ofhurricanes.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Don Walker, our old mentor.
Old Don, yes, you know he usedto talk about towns in Texas.
You know he used to talk abouttowns in Texas and I think, you
(02:40):
know, I think DW Mining or maybeit was another book on Texas
cities and environment andwhatnot, like Texas culture
cities dallas, san antonio,houston, el paso walker would
often emphasize that they shouldnot be where they are no, there
, I mean, there are a lot ofthem for reasons for putting.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I mean you put, basically, you establish houston
in a malarial swamp.
It remains, you know, uh, uh,dallas is the.
Dallas is the largest Americancity, not on a navigable, uh,
stream of water, right, uh, ithas.
Of course, when you say thathas no reason to exist and
(03:15):
established it didn't, but ofcourse a lot of reasons why
people were on establishingcities on water because of
transportation.
Well, dallas is right, wheremajor railroads intersected and
eventually major interstate.
So I always thoughttransportation Well, dallas is
right, where major railroadsintersected and eventually major
interstates.
So I always thought that'stransportation, right, yeah,
that's transportation, it's thesame thing.
So to say, dallas has no reasonto exist.
You're not going well, you'rekind of forgetting the later
(03:37):
history of things established.
But that is a point in thethings that are happening and a
lot of the population of theUnited States lies right along
the coastline and coastlines,particularly on the Gulf of
Mexico, get stormed and theyhave been historic, they have
changed Texas history, if youthink about even some of the
storms we talk about today.
It essentially wiped out threemajor Texas port cities in the
(04:02):
19th century in Indianola,velasco and Quintana, because of
hurricanes that are essentiallywiped out.
It changed the fortunes, thegreat hurricanes, of course of
1900 changed the fortunes ofGalveston.
It's utterly amazing that wesomewhat ignore these hurricanes
when we're talking about thegrander narrative of history.
We somewhat ignore thesehurricanes when we're talking
(04:23):
about the grander narrative ofhistory.
So let's just see if we can'tstop that today, gene.
Let's talk about somehurricanes that have been
historic in history.
And I'll start because this isone I don't think a lot of
people talk about.
You know, we get used totalking about hurricanes by
(04:43):
their names, because they werenamed first for females and then
we changed it in the 1980s toalso include males, uh, but we
didn't start doing naming stormsand, uh, hurricanes, tropical
systems, after human names until1950 and so and I and maybe
that's one reason why some ofthese earlier storms get short
shrift, but also because there'snot that many people but this
was a storm that happened inOctober, basically second
(05:07):
through sixth, four days, 1837.
Texas is a brand-new republic.
It gets the nickname of RacerStorm because it was named after
the British sloop that firstsaw the storm and documented the
storm.
Remember, forecasting was notvery precise then, but this
storm is not mentioned much inTexas history, probably because
the sparse population and thetime period.
(05:27):
But it really was a spectacularstorm.
In 1837 it first comes and hitsland near present-day
brownsville and then essentiallymoves up the curved gulf coast
right along the coastlines uh oftexas.
For three days it raged kind ofoffshore somewhat as it moved
(05:48):
up and did incredible,incredible damage.
Every single ship at Velascowas tossed ashore.
Velasco begins its slow declineand eventually a hurricane in
1874 is going to wipe it out,but begins this decline because
of that storm.
Galveston then just a nascentcommunity, barely had been
(06:10):
established was wholly inundated, I mean completely covered up
where there was no island leftwith water.
The new Tremont Hotel that wasjust built a few months earlier
was blown down and completelyleveled and they had to build it
all over again.
If you've ever stayed inGalveston, that's from my
recommended.
I enjoy staying at the Tremontall the time.
Hardly any structure in thelittle city was left.
(06:32):
The storm finally entered landin Louisiana and it remained a
tropical system.
It remained a hurricane untilit got over Tennessee and it's a
tropical system until it exitsto the Atlantic near Hilton Head
, south Carolina.
A spectacular storm.
We don't talk about very muchGene.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well, you know and you're right.
I mean, think about where thatstorm tracked from.
And certainly it hit placeslike the Yucatan and places
where hurricanes hit frequently,places where hurricanes hit
(07:10):
frequently, but along the texasgulf coast it made that entire
arc right all the way tolouisiana before it really
starts moving inland and umgolly the damage, as you were
saying.
You know and you know.
I mean, most of the buildingsweren't built for that.
Sure, you know they're woodenstructures and it just, you know
, think about the damage.
(07:30):
Think about, you know, theplants, the animals that that
displaced and how much water itdumped.
Like you said, the island ofGalveston was inundated
Tremendous, tremendous effectall throughout it.
And we don't know right,because if you're reading books,
(07:50):
you're reading books in texasin the 1840s, a, you know, 1830s
, even most of the 1837.
You know you're still readingstuff about the texas, uh, early
republic, and not enough andnot enough books are focused on
that period.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Anyway, not at all but talk about.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
I wonder what that storm did to the early texas
government and you know thetexas government was in houston.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Uh, yeah, then it had to affect it.
But you know, maybe the factthat it wasn't a very good
government anyway didn't affectas much as it was, since I mean,
like we're talking about anation that essentially didn't
have a postal service, so therewasn't much to affect.
But can you imagine if a stormdid that same path today, a
(08:41):
powerful storm did that arctoday, what kind of damage it
would be?
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Well, let me throw out a question here, and I don't
know the answer to this, butyou know, the government went
back and forth between Houstonand Lamar.
Lamar wants to move the capitalinland, deep inland, to Austin
(09:08):
right, and Houston wants it toremain in Houston.
I wonder how much Storms had todo with that debate.
We don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I don't, because I'm not real privy to
them.
There's got to be somecommunication about it, of
course.
You know.
I mean mean a lot of it was egoalso.
Lamar didn't want to, didn'twant to be in a city named after
houston and houston didn't wantto leave the city named after
him.
So yeah, we don't know anythingabout ego and politics.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
That hasn't happened, that's right.
Yeah, well, let me talk about ahurricane.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonnaactually talk about a hurricane
.
I'm going to actually talkabout a hurricane that wasn't a
hurricane.
Now, we talked about this lasttime, but just I looked it up.
What does a hurricane make?
It is essentially a rotatinglow-pressure system.
(10:00):
Now, what does that mean?
I don't know.
I once read a meteor.
I was interested in meteorologyfor a while I mean never, I was
.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I did.
I took meteorology class, didyou really?
Yeah, that was actually mysciences for meteorology.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
So you know, maybe that substitutes, but it's a
low-pressure system and I washeard once that it's like the
atmosphere is rivers of air andyou get, if you look at a river,
you get these swirling areasfrom time to time.
(10:40):
And it's the same principle asI was instructed.
I don't know, people maydisagree with me, but it's these
low pressure systems rotating,so, unlike a storm system that
normally comes with a front,hurricanes don't have that.
And if the wind is less than 40miles an hour, if it is less
(11:00):
than 40 miles an hour, it's atropical depression.
If it's more than 39 miles perhour, it's a tropical storm.
Once it gets to 74 miles perhour it becomes a hurricane.
And you know it varies.
(11:22):
We talked last time about howintense those winds can blow,
but I wasn't aware of the, Iguess, the growth history.
It's just like watching yourchild and here's the benchmark
on the wall where you're growingup 39 miles per hour, 74 miles
per hour.
Are these demarcation lines?
This was not a hurricane, butit was a tropical storm that
(11:52):
wreaked tremendous havoc becauseit would come in and go out and
went back and forth and wetalked about this last time and
that is Allison in 2001.
And the amount of rainfall thatit dumped in places like
Houston.
40 inches of rainfall in Texaswas where it peaked.
(12:12):
That is a tremendous amount ofwater over an area.
30,000 people became homeless,70,000 houses destroyed, so it
(12:32):
caused a tremendous amount ofrelocation of people and just
misery.
And, of course, you know whenis hurricane season During the
Labor Day, during September andAugust, when it's hot and you
think about all those peoplebeing without homes, being
(12:52):
without electricity, beingwithout means of communication,
so flooding.
We've got the in the downtownarea of Houston.
We've got the well, not thedowntown, but we've got the in
the downtown area of houston.
We've got the well, not thedowntown, but we've got the
business district.
And then, a little bit furthersouth from there, we've got the
hospital district.
23 people died in texas, almost10 billion dollars of damage
(13:18):
here in texas, 13 billion, $13billion in money today, 2020.
So talk about inflation.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It's still the most right, the costliest tropical
storm ever in American history.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, so it's not a hurricane, but it wreaked a
bunch of damage?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
It sure did, and so I will riff on that, I suppose,
because I guess we can sayhouston didn't learn its lesson,
uh, from allison in 1983, orperhaps forgot when allison?
Uh, when allison came, therewas much discussion about
renovating the uh, thereservoirs, like attics and
(14:04):
things that reservoirs in hou,houston that are supposed to
catch the flood water and doingsome flood improvement projects
on Buffalo Bayou to keep thisfrom happening again, and there
was much, much talk.
Well, like a lot of things thatget political and everything
else, there was a lot of talkingand not a whole lot of doing.
That happened in Houston andthen, as the years went, nothing
(14:26):
ever happened again.
Texas had other hurricanes thatcame through that didn't seem
to cause that much trouble inHouston, so I think they forgot
about it.
But then, of course, came onealmost everybody in our audience
remembers because it was sorecent, but that's Harvey.
In 2017.
That happened and it's a biggerstorm.
(14:47):
Harvey was a huge storm when itcame ashore, but it did kind of
like you were talking aboutAllison did.
It would go out and come back,go out and come back.
You mentioned hurricanes andlow-pressure systems and things.
Hurricanes are like a massive,massive concentrated storage of
energy is what they are, are asthey do, and that energy feeds
(15:08):
off of warm, warm seawater iswhat they feel and that's, and
the Gulf has an abundance ofwarm seawater and that's what
Harvey did.
Harvey first came ashore nearRockport with devastating winds.
It was a, it was a categoryfour hurricane and a big storm
surge.
And then, but what it did?
(15:28):
It kind of went inland, kind ofabout Victoria and then the
cause of a high pressure systemthat was influencing it.
It went back out into the Gulfand then set there and just
swirled for a long time anddidn't move and then came back
up and, essentially as a system,came inland and then, as it
(15:49):
downgraded from a hurricane,stalled right over the
metropolitan area of houston anddumped copious amounts of rain
all over the area.
And we all remember the pictures, the devastation.
Almost every, every sector ofHouston was flooded.
Almost hardly anybody in ametropolitan area of almost five
(16:12):
million people, hardly anybodywas not affected by Harvey.
It was a devastation.
For weeks People still werehomeless, couldn't go home,
homes were flooded.
You had all kinds of thisdislocation of people and
animals and everything else.
Totally devastating, just likeAllison was, and once again.
There was a big call we'regoing to have to do flood
(16:35):
abatement projects andeverything.
Gene, you're sitting there inHouston.
I'm not so sure we've actuallystill learned the lesson from
that.
As we just saw from thehurricane that came through,
yeah, barrel some of the barrelwith some of the same problems
it?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
uh, well, you know we're.
We talk about hurricanes andthose heading houston.
Um, you know what about ike,the thing about you you were
mentioning?
So ike was 10 years or beforethat, or nine years before that.
So harvey comes through talkingabout the devastation.
(17:13):
Look, when it was aroundvictoria, that thing was only
traveling five miles an hour.
It was moving five, that'swalking speed and it's just
walking speed for some of y'all.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You know I'll walk by mom.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, that's true, but you know it's just sitting
there, growing because it's notmoving very fast and it's
continuing to bring.
You know, you talk about thedry side and then the wet side
of a hurricane that, as it'sspinning and they spend
counterclockwise, it's justbringing in water and dumping it
.
And if it's, if it's if it'smoving, if they were moving like
(17:49):
30 miles an hour like a regularstorm, okay, it'll pass in an
hour or so, but this one juststayed there and that was what
increased the, the damage ofthat.
We'll go back to ike.
I was mentioning I, so I'lltalk a little bit about Ike.
So 2008.
And another gigantic stormsaround the same time At least.
(18:18):
Well, almost 200 deaths Now,not just in Texas but all over.
But it came in, killed about113 people, many were missing
for a while, and it everywhere,from around Kennedy, carn City,
(18:43):
in that area, you know, corpusChristi, all the way up through
the Mississippi region, maybeeven over to.
I think it crossed over to,well, it didn't, but it came in
around southern Florida.
It didn't hit.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Florida.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
But then it and then it went, you know, up north
towards the Great Lakes area.
But you know, talk aboutanother devastating hurricane.
I don't remember how much rainit dumped, but 140 mile-per-hour
winds, 145 mile-per-hour winds,category 4 hurricane.
(19:22):
It just wreaked a lot of heaven.
I'll tell you one thing aboutit that I hadn't thought about.
So that was what?
2008?
So the next year, mary and Iwent on a cruise and we went out
(19:42):
to Turk and Caicos.
And we went out to Turk andCaicos and out at Turk and
Caicos you know that's where,what was it?
John Glenn landed one of thefirst orbitals and they picked
it up out there and they've gota replica out there.
But we were going on thislittle tour of the island and
the guy was a taxi driver and hewas telling us there was a lot
(20:04):
of devastation, a lot ofconstruction going on.
And he said well, you know, ikecame over the island and hit it
, and I hadn't thought about howmuch damage those hurricanes do
to other parts of the world.
I mean other parts of theCaribbean.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Ike is my first experience ever with any sort of
a hurricane.
We had just moved toNacogdoches in 2006.
With any sort of a hurricane wehad just moved to Nacogdoches
in 2006, and Ike, when it cameaboard, hit Boulevard and it
kind of came in towards Houstonbut really it was North Houston
and came over to somewhere nearthe Conroe area and then
essentially turned and wentright straight up the path of
(20:40):
Highway 59, and it was still aCategory 1 when it came over
Nacogdoches and it you know Ican't listen to that it
literally scared us as we satthere in the dark because power
went out and we could hear thetrees snapping around us and the
massive amounts of wind andeverything.
(21:01):
And I remember telling Leslie,my wife, I said can you imagine
what it would be like livingthrough a category four or
category five hurricane withthis type of thing?
It was just unbelievable.
So you know, ike was a bad one.
Let's, you know, take a timeout.
You can edit this out.
I think we just keep going.
We're gonna run out.
We might can do this foranother show, because we got a
(21:22):
lot we could do.
So, don't?
I think we could probably getanother.
Just, keep yeah probably okay,uh, so yeah, so ike was a, ike
was a horrible one.
Well, I'm going to go back uhand talk about some historic
hurricanes, because one thingabout particularly I mean in the
20th century, 20th and 21stcentury you're generally not
(21:42):
going to have hurricanes thatyou can say wipe out a town and
cause it to cease to exist.
But in the 17th, 18th, 19thcenturies, storms literally
could inundate and destroy atown and cause it to cease to
exist.
And that's the case with thetown hit by two hurricanes in
(22:02):
the late 19th century, one in1875 and one in 1886.
And these were hurricanes thatcame to store, that essentially
ended the life of the Texas portcity of Indianola.
If you go down to Indianola nowin Calhoun County at certain
times when the tide is out, youcan see foundations of buildings
that are now out in the gulf ofwhat used to be Indianola,
(22:25):
foundations of buildings thatare now out in the goal of what
used to be Indianola.
Indianola was one of the primaryports of entry in Texas.
It was located on the westshore of Matagorda Bay,
established in 1844, and itbecame the primary point where
immigrants came in to thethen-Republican and then the
state of Texas, particularly alot of German immigrants that
(22:46):
were moving in.
The German built around NewBraunfels.
This is where they came Right.
Right, they landed in Indianola.
It was a great port, had over10,000 people living there at
one time.
It had had a few hurricanesbefore, but in September 15th
1875, a storm struck Indianolaon the night.
It began on the night of the15th with its eye passing over
(23:10):
San Jose Island, and then itraged.
It was another one of thosethat kind of stalled for a while
and just raged over Copano Bayand then into Indianola for all
day of the 16th before it movedinland.
The surge was estimated to be15 feet.
The storm surge at indianola270 people were killed.
(23:30):
Three-quarters parts of thetown were washed away.
Indianola, though, survived.
The survivors came back.
They did rebuild it.
They rebuilt it a littlefurther inland than it was
before, but they rebuilt itcompletely back up and it
continued to be a thriving portuntil August 20, 1886, when
(23:50):
another huge hurricane struckIndianola.
Wind, surge and rain made thetown, as one official that
surveyed it afterwards called ita universal wreck.
As he looked at it, not asingle dwelling in the city
survived.
They were all either blown downor washed away.
It left indianola in ruins andthe people, the survivors,
(24:13):
decided that's enough, we're notcoming back.
They picked up stakes, thoseare left and they mostly moved
to victoria and some to sanantonio.
The same storm swept away thisuh, the city, quintana, at the
mouth of the Brazos, which wasthe sister city of Velasco.
Both of those went away and theremnants moved inland and you
see it now around the LakeJackson Freeport area.
(24:34):
But those cities don't exist.
So a hurricane altered,actually altered, the physical
nature of Texas's infrastructurein those years and did away
with Indianola.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
One of the other things about the Indianola there
was a feud trial or there was atrial going on over a feud.
Yeah, the Sutton-Taylor feud.
The Sutton-Taylor feud, you know, and Chuck Parsons and Jimmy
Smallwood both wrote on thatfeud and we talk about the
(25:06):
history and I don't know if theymentioned that in those books,
um, but talk about just the, theeffect on history and that
indianola.
So, uh, I, I grew up in newbronfels and we've talked about,
uh, you know, christmas in newbronf, braunfels, last year or
so ago.
(25:27):
Tune into our episodes andlisten to the back episodes.
And in Texas, german-americanhistory, indianola was starting
off.
The big port town by PrinceCarl of Psalms, braunfels, and
the Adelsverein brought inimmigrants into Indianola.
(25:47):
That changed as a result ofthose hurricanes.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
That's where the US Army landed camels and brought
the camels in for the camelexperience at Indianola, the
West Texas camels right.
Some people claim they stillsee they're not out there.
People Quit saying that you seeit.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
The ghost of Campbell's past.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, that's a.
So that is another great stormlet's talk about.
I want to come up and talkabout Hurricane Carla.
Now this is a 20th century one.
This is 1961.
So Cold War era Texas rightcomes across 1961 around Corpus
(26:35):
Christi, port O'Connor, thatarea category four hurricane and
it goes up kind of straight upnorth towards Oklahoma before it
heads out towards the GreatLakes and then over Canada.
(26:57):
Almost 2,000 homes destroyedhere in Texas and Texas was very
rural at the time but itaffected farmers.
There were almost 6,000 farmbuildings destroyed.
It didn't just affect the coastbecause it kind of directly
(27:23):
went inland and just startedhitting north up through Dallas
and in that area.
An estimated 1 million head ofcattle killed during hurricane
carla 1 million head right andthen, in addition to 43 people,
died, million, 300 milliondollars in damage, and that was
(27:46):
61 dollars yeah, back whenthey're big.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
well, well, I did.
You know it destroyed so muchinfrastructure.
It was the first I like to callit kind of in Texas, the first
hurricane that hit modern Texasand destroyed modern
infrastructure, because thedevastation amongst those
petrochemical plants and thoseare from the Freeport area and
on up towards the Port Arthurarea was devastating, and what
(28:14):
was so monumental about thedamage at the time was a record.
There is no way Texas could payto rebuild after Carla.
The state of Texas's resourceswere completely stretched.
Governor Price Daniel was likehe was at a complete loss about
what to do, as he was on a lotof issues, but that's a whole
other episode.
If we want to talk about PriceDaniel, we'll get Chuck Wade on
here to do as he was on a lot ofissues, but that's a whole
nother episode.
(28:34):
If we want to talk about pricedaniel, uh, we'll get chuck wade
on here to do that, right, uhto talk about that but and what
it also it?
it carla was one, along withaudrey, that had hit louisiana a
few years earlier and thenlater on, uh celia, which would
hit uh corporates, corpusChristi, and do terrible damage
(28:54):
down there and then on into someof the other 1970s hurricanes.
There was this how the federalresponse, and there was no
coordinated federal response.
Congress had to pass a seriesof bills appropriating money
that you were going to send to aplace if you're going to help
it rebuild.
As you know, anything comingout of of congress it's
(29:16):
cumbersome, it takes time, uh,and it's a long process.
And carla was people were, youknow like, say, homeless,
devastated.
This had to be done quickly andthere was no coordinated
federal response to do that.
Lyndon john, vice president ofthe United States at the time, a
creature of Congress.
He did a fantastic job of goingand talking to leaders of
(29:40):
Congress and getting those billsthrough to get rebuilding from
Carla May.
But it set a germ in him and hestarts it when he's president
talking about it.
He doesn't get it accomplishedbut Carla is, if you want to
talk about that little germ of agenesis, a genesis germ of a
seed of starting.
Carla is kind of consideredthat germ that starts and if we
(30:03):
go through other things in the70s, finally in 1979, under the
Jimmy Carter administration, wefinally see talk about how long
it takes federal government torespond.
The creation of the FederalEmergency Management
Administration, fema thatcoordinates federal responses to
these natural disasters.
Historic in that sense becauseit was so huge to do that, to do
(30:27):
this.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I think you also mentioned last discussion about
this.
This really launched thenational career of Dan Rather.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
That's true.
Yeah, before he becameAfghanistan Dan and dressed in
the garb of the Mujahideen andI'm not making fun of Dan, I'm a
fan of Dan Rather.
He gained a reputation.
He was a reporter for atelevision station in houston
and he stood out through all thewinds were blowing and he was
(30:59):
getting he was the early day,jim cantori, uh and getting
blown around and that.
That.
That caught the attention of uhcbs news and he was hired to
for the broadcast network cbsused and, of course, goes on to
distinguish career there andstill alive, right, dan reathers
in his 90s and still stillworking.
He still.
He has a podcast that youshould listen to that he does
(31:20):
and writes columns still still aworking journalist in over 90
years old.
We have these modern storms andI think we have to talk about
you mentioned it before but Ithink it plays into.
I'm gonna put them togetherbecause it happened like back to
back almost Beulah, celia atthe same time, because these
(31:42):
were both again modern,devastating storms that were
unbelievable.
Beulah was in September 22nd of1967.
Like Carla, it was a largestorm.
Carla, at the time it came in,was the largest hurricane on
record in terms of expanse ofthe mast Beulah was the third
largest hurricane.
It's since been passed by anumber.
At that time it hit Brownsville.
(32:04):
Beulah hit Brownsville area buthurricane force winds stretched
all the way to Corpus Christi.
It destroyed the citrus cropthat year.
Oranges were expensive thatyear.
Destroyed the citrus crop thatyear.
Oranges were expensive thatyear until the citrus crop was
destroyed.
And then it goes on inland andcauses terrible, terrible
flooding in Houston.
And it's the same problem aswith Carla.
There is no real mechanism forthe federal government to
(32:28):
respond.
And again it has to go throughall of these machinations.
And then, just two years later,in August 1970, celia hits
Corpus Christi on the 3rd ofAugust.
It was another one that hadcome across the Caribbean.
It had hit Florida before itcame in and hit Texas and came
(32:50):
through it's hurricane warnings.
That Corpus sounded early inthe morning that day, waking
people up out of bed.
It actually makes landfallbetween Corpus and Port Aransas.
Around 3 o'clock in theafternoon I was about North
Mathis, if you know where thatone is.
Wind gusts of over 150 miles anhour before it blew the
anemometer off at Aransas Pass.
(33:11):
An hour before it blew theanemometer off at Aransas Pass
they estimated those gusts couldhave reached as high as 160 to
180 miles an hour.
It hits Corpus at 530.
The seawall holds but Corpushas great wind damage, great
flooding damage.
It moves on inland and floodseven places as far away as Del
(33:34):
rio and del rio winds were stilldusting at 90 miles an hour.
Uh, from celia, storm surge ofreal near uh to 10 feet uh is
what it was.
And again awful damage fromcelia.
And again a federalgovernmental response was slow
in coming and tex, texas'sgovernment could not afford it.
(33:55):
He had to go through all thecongressional stuff and a lot of
people suffered because theycouldn't get rebuilding from
those.
Another one of these thatactually spurred, helped spur
FEMA in its development.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
You're talking about Celia, that storm tracked all
the way out towards El Paso, andtalk about a weird path and you
mentioned Beulah in connectionwith that.
So Beulah and this was 67,beulah was weird in that you
know many of the hurricaneswe've been talking about.
(34:27):
We say, you know they come intothe Gulf Coast that affect
Texas and they go up north outto the, uh, the great lakes or
up through new england orsomeplace like that, or
sometimes into florida.
Beulah came in aroundbrownsville and then, uh, went
through mexico, went south westthrough mexico, before coming
(34:54):
out again in the Gulf.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Oaxaca, not Oaxaca, but maybe around the capital
area of Mexico.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
So that's a weird yeah, and dumped rain.
Durango, I think it was Durango, mexico has a record amount of
rain, all kinds of flamesflooding from Beulah after it
already hit, so these storms arelong lasting.
That's one of these things thatwe don't think about.
I mean, we just had Beryl comethrough.
Beryl went all the way up andwas causing as a tropical system
(35:31):
or a sub-tropical system,causing massive amounts of
rainfall in Canada after havingbeen around in Texas.
I mean this is how powerfulthese storms are.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Scott, I hate to say this, but we didn't get nearly
as far as we thought we weregoing to get.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
No, we didn't.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
And we only were scratching the surface we may
have to do something again,right?
I think we're going to dosomething again and you know,
one of the things we need to doget somebody from Galveston talk
about the Galveston hurricanebecause they have a whole
culture built up down there onthat historical infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
And you know we may have hit on a vein here, gene,
we may have becomemeteorological historians here,
right, right, we're talkingabout hurricanes.
Texas is again, because of itssize, has more tornadoes than
any state in the United States,and tornadoes have shaped the
(36:39):
history of Texas a whole greatlot.
We haven't even talked abouttornadoes and then devastating
rain events and droughts andvarious other things.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
We've got it all here .
Speaker 1 (36:50):
We can talk about weather all summer and then into
the fall, probably right, andthat way we can do this and we
don't have to work at findingpeople to come in and talk to
and we can just pontificateourselves, right.
I like not having to work.
I base my whole body of work onnot having to work.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
That's our careers, that's right.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
A career of not working Well, so we will.
We'll get into this later, butthat's just some of the
hurricanes that we've beentalking about.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
as we said, just scratch the surface and that's
it well, once again, thanks forlistening, everybody and Scott,
we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yes, sir, bye, bye everybody bye, bye everybody,
bye bye.
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