Hurricane Killed Over a Thousand at Each Landfall

[Berwick Bay]

For Hurricane affecionados. Of course I'm speaking of 1928. What a tremendous hurricane. In Puerto Rico its simply called the "San Felipe" hurricane. In Florida for a later landfall its known as the "Lake Okeechobee". It also killed over a thousand in Guadeloupe in the Windward Islands (its first landfall). Every hurricane is different. But this hurricane's calling card was death. Wherever this hurricane went, people died. A very brief write up of the storm in the Carribean.

It was the first recorded hurricane to reach Category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale in the Atlantic basin; as of 2006, it remains the only recorded hurricane to strike Puerto Rico at Category 5 strength, and one of the ten most intense ever recorded to make landfall in the United States.

The hurricane caused devastation throughout its path. As many as 1,200 people were killed in Guadeloupe. Puerto Rico was struck directly by the storm at peak strength, killing at least 300 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. In south Florida at least 2,500 were killed when storm surge from Lake Okeechobee breached the dike surrounding the lake, flooding an area covering hundreds of square miles. In total, the hurricane killed at least 4,078 people and caused around $100 million ($800 million in 2005 US dollars) in damages over the course of its path.

[Berwick Bay]

The path of this "noble beast", the 1928 Hurricane. Look at it. I think we can safely call this one a "Cape Verde Hurricane", don't you think?

http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at1928.asp

[Frank2]

By the way, speaking of the 1928 (Lake Okeechobee) hurricane, the current record low Lake levels have helped historians find some debris left over from that disaster - amazing...

[Berwick Bay]

Yeah, I heard that Frank. Speaking of those thousands killed at Okeechobee, were they migrant farm workers? for the most part? The poor who seemed to have never really had a chance, taken up by the '28 storm. Seems like I heard that before.

[Frank2]

Berwick,

Yes - several years ago, TWC ran a Storm Stories that updated the efforts by some in West Palm Beach to include the names of migrant farm workers, many being first-generation children of freed slaves (they would have been about 60 in 1928), who lived in the Lake region at that time and were killed during the hurricane and subsequent flood, but, were never included in official documents.

As far as the hurricane lists of victims, it was discovered that the long-time accepted number of 1,800 only accounted for whites killed in the flood - as was "customary" in Florida at that time (and continued in many ways until just 5 years before I arrived), separate lists were kept for white and "non-white" residents (which included various racial and ethnic groups, including Native Americans), and, according to witness reports, the actual death toll was closer to 3,000, since it was known that when the levee failed, the surge of water "carried many far out into the interior Everglades", as it was described at that time, into today's sugarcane growing area southwest of South Bay and Okeelanta (about a 30 minute drive from here).

Frank

P.S. Guess some in Heaven must agree - I mentioned Okeelanta a minute ago, and, just now the phone rang, and, it was the folks at Okeelanta in South Bay, asking for me to send them one of our many publications - as Goober would say, "Makes you think"...