City officials had already decided against building a seawall to protect their 27 mile long x 3 mile wide island. Catastrophic choice. For on Sept. 7th, 1900, despite the strong warning of the federal government, the residents of Galveston, TX, went to bed like every other night expecting a restful repose. But while the people slept, a hurricane awoke – and with a nightmarish ferocity. A Category 4 with estimated winds topping out at 145 mph slammed the city in the early morning hours. 15-foot-high surges pounded and leveled houses, businesses, the railroad yard and everything else on the island.
A panoramic shot of the island showing receeding floodwaters and scattered debris
As people awoke to the terror, they sped to the one iron causeway that would serve as their life support, connecting them to the much safer mainland. But dread gripped everyone when their eyes lit upon the location where the bridge used to be. Winds had snapped it like a match stick and waves dispersed it all over the place. Their one and only way of escape was forever snatched away. An estimated 8,000 people perished on that single day, making it then, and still, our nation’s worst natural disaster in terms of lost lives. Because the populace spurned the government’s warning, nothing remained as a means for escape. All that awaited the residents was whether or not they would become one of the statistics.
How tragic, yet how fitting, For the Galveston Flood illustrates another, yet even more catastrophic “flood” that is yet coming; one that threatens everyone on the face of the globe. It too is avoidable, if one heeds the warning. Please visit this Sunday as we bring our current sermon series on the Great Questions of the Bible to a climactic close: “How shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?”
