Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [65]
ABOUT NOON ON Saturday, two trains converged on Galveston, one from the north, the other from the east.
The first train belonged to the Galveston, Houston and Henderson railroad, and had left Houston earlier that morning with the usual crowd of sightseers, businessmen, and returning residents. It arrived at the entrance to one of the three cross-bay trestles more or less on schedule, but the crossing gave its passengers a few anxious moments.
“When we crossed the bridge over Galveston Bay, going into Galveston, the water had reached an elevation equal to the bottom caps of the pile bents, or two feet below the level of the track,” said A. V. Kellogg, a civil engineer.
Even in the best weather, the trestles looked fragile. In a storm, with water nearly washing over the track and gusts of wind jostling the cars, they looked deadly.
The train took it slowly. To the passengers, three miles had never seemed so long, and there was a good deal of relief when the train reached the Galveston side and clattered back onto land, although this relief was tempered by the fact that the bay was now washing over the lowlands adjacent to the railbed.
The train traveled another two miles, until a signalman stepped out of the gloom and flagged it down. Flooding had washed out a portion of the track.
Kellogg’s train stood broadside to the wind. Every now and then a strong gust rammed the car with sufficient force to bounce it on its springs. Rain coursed down the windows on the north side of the train; the south windows were nearly dry and provided passengers with a perfect if rather disconcerting view of huge breakers crashing onto the none-too-distant beach.
The conductor made an announcement: The railroad had cabled to Houston for a relief train, which would arrive on an adjacent set of tracks owned by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe railroad—but not for at least an hour.
It was an anxious, uncomfortable wait. The coach was hot and muggy. Passengers opened the south windows a few inches for ventilation. The rain was so loud against the train’s roof and north wall that passengers had to raise their voices to speak. All the while, they watched the water rise.
By the time the relief train arrived, Kellogg said, the water was over the rails.
The new train stopped half a mile back, where the track had not yet been submerged. Kellogg’s train backed up to meet it; then he and the other passengers ran across the soggy ground and climbed aboard. The relief cars, packed now with so many freshly drenched bodies, developed a climate even more tropical than that of the original train. But at least this train began to move.
Eight to ten inches of water now covered the tracks, by Kellogg’s estimate. This water was not stationary, however, like the in situ flooding that might accompany a heavy rain.
This water raced. When it passed over the rails the turbulence caused the surface of the water to undulate like the back of a fast-moving snake. The water moved, Kellogg said, “in a westward direction at terrific speed.”
The relief train eased into the water. Its crew put on heavy boots and walked ahead, testing for undermined track and shoving aside pieces of driftwood. The men looked like clam diggers probing the mud flats for dinner.
Houses soon appeared beside the tracks, but now they looked more like houseboats. Nearly all were on pilings or brick pillars, which held them well above the water, but it was clear to Kellogg that the water had gotten deeper just in the time since the relief train’s arrival.
The water got so deep it flooded the firebox of the locomotive. A geyser of steam and smoke hissed into the cab, but the engineer, already soaked and windsore, pulled down his goggles and kept the train moving, feeding it the steam left in the locomotive’s boiler.
The train stopped just shy of the Santa Fe Union depot, its engine a hulk of cold iron. Male passengers disembarked first and formed a human chain in the waist-deep water, and helped the children and women move through the swift current to the station platform.
Kellogg checked