“Many of the bodies have decayed so rapidly that they could not be handled for burial.
“Some of the most conservative men on the island place the loss of human beings at not less than 7,500 and possibly 10,000, while others say it will not exceed 5,000.”
COAST CITIES NOT PROPERLY CONSTRUCTED.
Chief Willis L. Moore, of the United States Weather Bureau at Washington, being asked his opinion of the idea of rebuilding Galveston on some other site, replied as follows:
“Weather Bureau, U. S., Washington, D. C., September 13, 1900.
“I should not advise the abandonment of the city of Galveston. It is true that tropical hurricanes sometimes move westward across the gulf and strike the Texas coast, but such movement is infrequent. Within the last thirty years no storm of like severity has touched any part of the coast of the United States. There are many points on both the Atlantic and gulf coasts, some of them occupied by cities the size of Galveston, that are equally exposed to the force of both wind and water, should a hurricane move in from the ocean or gulf and obtain the proper position relative to them. It would not be advisable to abandon these towns and cities merely because there is a remote probability that at some future time a hurricane may be the cause of great loss of life and property.
“We have just passed through a summer that for sustained high temperature has no parallel within the last thirty years. Records of low temperature, torrential rains, and other meteorological phenomena that have stood for twenty and thirty years are not infrequently broken. There does not appear to be, so far as we know, any law governing the occurrence or recurrence of storms. The vortex of a hurricane is comparatively narrow, at most not more than twenty or thirty miles in width. It is only within the vortex that such a great calamity as has befallen Galveston can occur.
“It would seem that, rather than abandon the city, means should be adopted at Galveston and other similarly exposed cities on the Atlantic and gulf coasts to erect buildings only on heavy stone foundations that should have solid interiors of masonry to a height of ten feet above mean sea level. Rigid building regulations should allow no other structures erected for habitations in the future in any city located at sea level and that is exposed to the direct sweep of the sea.
“But Galveston should take heart, as the chances are that not once in a thousand years would she be so terribly stricken, and high, solid foundations would doubtless make her impregnable to loss of life by all future storms.
“WILLIS L. MOORE,
“Chief U. S. Weather Bureau.”