You know, after the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, officials tried to bury the victims at sea....
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As severe as the damage to the city’s buildings was the human toll was even greater. Due to the destruction of the bridges to the mainland and the telegraph lines no word of the city’s destruction was able to reach the mainland. At 11 a.m. on September 9, one of the few ships at the Galveston wharfs to survive the storm, the Pherabe, arrived in Texas City on the western side of Galveston Bay. It carried six messengers from the city. When they reached the telegraph office in Houston at 3 a.m. on September 10, a short message was sent to Texas Governor Joseph D. Sayers and U.S. President William McKinley: “I have been deputized by the mayor and Citizen’s Committee of Galveston to inform you that the city of Galveston is in ruins.”
The messengers reported an estimated five hundred dead; this was considered to be an exaggeration at the time.The citizens of Houston knew a powerful storm had blown through and had made ready to provide assistance. Workers set out by rail and ship for the island almost immediately. Rescuers arrived to find the city completely destroyed.
It is believed 8,000 people—20% of the island’s population—had lost their lives. Estimates range from 6,000 to 12,000. Most had drowned or been crushed as the waves pounded the debris that had been their homes hours earlier. Many survived the storm itself but died after several days trapped under the wreckage of the city, with rescuers unable to reach them. The rescuers could hear the screams of the survivors as they walked on the debris trying to rescue those they could. A further 30,000 were left homeless.
So many died that corpses were piled onto carts for burial at sea.The bodies were so numerous that burying them all was not possible.
The dead were initially dumped at sea; the gulf currents washed the bodies back onto the beach so a new solution was needed. Funeral pyres were set up wherever the dead were found and burned for weeks after the storm. Authorities passed out free whiskey to work crews that were having to throw the bodies of their wives and children on the burn piles. More people were killed in this single storm than the total of those killed in all the tropical cyclones that have struck the United States since. This count is greater than 300 cyclones, as of 2006. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_Hurricane_of_1900But I guess gulf currents and the nature of the human body has changed since 1900.
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