GALVESTON: SEPT. 8, 1900

NOT EVERYONE KNOWS that 6,000 to 10,000 people died that day. Other disasters - the Great Chicago Fire, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake - loom larger in Americans' minds. Even now, Galveston itself is just beginning to talk about what for so long was unspeakable.

GALVESTON, Texas - The hurricane struck by surprise on a sultry afternoon, destroying this island city, killing untold thousands and sweeping away entire neighborhoods.

Linda MacDonald's late grandfather lived through the Great Storm a century ago today and told her unforgettable stories. Just 6 when the winds and water crashed through, he rode out the tempest in his father's bakery. Others were swept to sea.

"He could hear children calling for their mothers, women screaming for help and men begging for mercy from God," said MacDonald, a Galveston native and an amateur expert on the storm. "He said he could hear sounds that were very faint, then they grew louder and louder, then the sound abruptly cut off, and he knew someone's life had ended."

No one knows the toll for sure. Between 6,000 and 10,000 died on the island and nearby mainland. The lower figure is more than double the combined loss of life in Pennsylvania's Johnstown Flood, the Great Chicago Fire and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake - making the Great Storm of Sept. 8, 1900, the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

Many in Galveston say that the other disasters are better known because the people of Galveston were not eager to broadcast their plight.

Alice Wygant of the Galveston Historical Foundation says she believes the city didn't want the world to know the extent of what happened because "it's hard to promote a city as a resort when people know they could be blown away at a moment's notice."

Galveston will honor the victims with ceremonies this weekend. Plaques mark the buildings that survived.

"Galveston has recovered and can choose to remember," said the Rev. Charles Millikan of the Moody Memorial Church, who has organized an effort to list names of the dead on cards, to be signed by people at the vigil and placed in a safe box for future generations.

That deeply symbolic attempt to link the past with the future marks a turning point of sorts. For years, the terrors of the hurricane were simply not spoken of publicly by survivors: The memories of neighborhoods destroyed, of men, women and children lying dead among the ruins, were too overwhelming.

But recently, the storm has become the subject of an emotion-filled public outpouring.

After years of silence, people "are fighting to tell what happened to their families," said Wygant.

The storm descends

In 1900, Galveston was a commercial giant. Its streets led to imposing Greek Revival, Romanesque and Italianate mansions. A booming cotton export trade had made the city of 38,000 among the wealthiest per capita in the United States.

At least 10 times in the 19th century, hurricanes had struck the barrier island, which was inhabited first by Karankawa Indians, then pirate Jean Lafitte's band before American settlers arrived in 1838.

In early September 1900, U.S. Weather Bureau climatologist Isaac Cline knew a storm had raked Cuba. Noting Galveston's falling barometer, he suspected it would land near the 30-mile-long island.

By Sept. 8, Cline's frantic warnings and the threatening skies sent many to higher ground, although the city's highest point was only 9 feet.

But most residents had weathered storms and likely would not have fled to the mainland. In any case, they were hemmed in by 2 p.m. as floodwaters blocked trains or carriages from the four bridges over the bay.

Between 3 and 4 p.m., two walls of water - one from the Gulf of Mexico, one from the bay - met in the heart of the city. As one journalist wrote, "the waters joined in a bacchanalian dance through the streets."

Large brick buildings were flattened. Victims who weren't drowned were killed by debris rocketed by 150-mph winds.

Survivors later said they thought of their impending fate calmly and rationally. They planned to open their mouths and fill their lungs with water when death seemed imminent.

`I wonder what heaven will be like'

The Rev. Judson Palmer, secretary of the local YMCA, remembered his feelings as his home collapsed around him and water inched up his legs, to his neck and finally near his mouth. He clung to his son, Lee, with one arm, and to a shower pipe with the other.

"Just then, the whole north end of the house fell in; the roof settled on us, and we went into the water together," he recalled. "I thought, `It takes so long to die.' I was possibly unconscious for a time. Then I had another thought: `I wonder what heaven will be like.' "

Palmer's son and wife died. For three hours, he drifted atop a floating shed.

At St. Mary's Orphanage, 10 nuns from the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word tried to calm more than 90 orphans by singing an old French hymn, "Queen of the Waves."

As one dormitory collapsed under the pounding 15 1/2-foot storm surge, the sisters moved the children to the remaining dorm. Each nun lashed herself to orphans with clothesline in an effort to protect them.

The dormitory was lifted, floated a short time, then sank, killing everyone inside. Only three orphan boys survived by clinging to a tree.

Today, sisters of that order, wherever they are in the world, pause on Sept. 8 to sing "Queen of the Waves."

Awash with dead

Daring rescues continued into the darkness. Joseph Corthell and his brothers pulled more than 200 into their skiff. A nun at the Ursuline Convent tied a rope around her waist, swam into the surf and signaled her sisters to pull her in each time she grabbed a victim.

The worst of the storm was over by 10 p.m. The horror had only begun.

A mild Sunday morning revealed unspeakable destruction. Block upon block of beachfront was permanently submerged. At least one in six citizens was dead, mortally injured or hopelessly trapped. Tides had piled wreckage two stories high.

American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, who was 78, made organizing relief in Galveston her last mission of mercy. When she saw that black residents were being denied the same aid as whites, she set up a segregated system to ensure all were assisted.

The initial death toll was estimated at 1,000. It quickly multiplied as bodies were pulled from trees and wreckage and fished out of Galveston Bay.

There were too many to bury properly, and the September heat hastened the decay. Bodies could not be buried in the water-filled sand. In fact, the floods had caused many of the already-buried to be floated from their graves.

Burial at sea was considered the only possibility, and three barges were loaded with 700 bodies and towed 18 miles out in the Gulf. Many of the bodies were weighted with chains.

Most of them washed ashore.

Bodies had to be burned, many where they were found. They could not be buried. Nevertheless, people tried. The sight of loved ones being tossed onto funeral pyres along with island livestock was more than they could stand, and many stole the bodies of their kin and tried to place them at rest under the sodden sand.

Disposing of the dead, treating the injured, sheltering the homeless, clearing debris and replacing roughly 2,600 wrecked houses was a big enough job, but officials knew they had to do more.

The first task was to build a long-proposed seawall. It was three miles long, 16 feet thick at its base and 17 feet above mean low tide. The first phase took two years to build for a then-mindboggling $1.6 million.

Lengthened six times since, it protected Galveston against several 20th-century hurricanes. It remains the only barrier between the city and the gulf.

Raising Galveston's elevation from a glorified sandbar was tougher. Over six years, crews dredged sand from offshore, hauled it via temporary canals, jacked up thousands of homes and elevated 500 city blocks.

Compiled from The Associated Press, Knight Ridder Newspapers and the Chicago Tribune.