History of hurricane death, destruction

Long before Michael made landfall over the Florida Panhandle, there was the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the deadliest storm in U.S history.

In oral histories archived in the city’s library, survivors recalled “a great gray wall about 50-feet high and moving slowly toward the island.”

It made landfall in Texas with wind speeds as high as 145 mph. By the time it was done, between 8,000 and 12,000 people were dead, and the once-thriving city of Galveston was all but destroyed.

Last September, nearly 5,000 people died after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. More than a year later, electricity still has not been restored to all of the island due to its power grid. And many Puerto Ricans have accused the U.S. government of failing to do enough to help those struggling to recover from the disaster.

Eighty-nine years before Maria, the Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928 hit Puerto Rico and then Palm Springs, Fla. In less than one day, more than 18 inches of rain fell, flooding Lake Okeechobee in southeastern Florida, washing away homes and killing as many as 3,000 people.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina attained Category 5 infamy while churning across the Gulf. It weakened to a Category 3 by the time it hit the coastlines of Louisiana and Mississippi, but more than 1,833 people did not survive her wrath.

The Cheniere Caminada Hurricane of 1893, also known as the Great October Storm, killed nearly as many people as Katrina — an estimated 1,400 people who died when the storm wiped out a Louisiana fishing community.