1935 — Aug 31–Sep 10, Labor Day Hurricane, Florida Keys, esp. Upper FL Keys –408-500

–408-500 Blanchard estimated range.*
–400-600 Norcross. Hurricane Almanac. 2007, p. 51.
–400-500 Dunn. Atlantic Hurricanes. 1964, p. 339.
— 423 Ferguson. Hurricane Threat to Florida. 2007, p. 18.
— 409 McDonald. “The Hurricane of August 31 to September 6, 1935.” MWR, Sep. 1935.
— 409 Rappaport & Fernandez-Partagas. The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994. 1995.
— 408 Bedient and Sebastian. “An Introduction to Gulf Coast Severe Storms…” 2012, p. 8.
— 408 Blake, et al. The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense US Cyclones…, April 2007.
— 408 Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. EM DAT Database.
— 408 Drye. Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. 2002, p. 214.
— 408 Hebert. The Deadliest, Costliest…Most Intense [US] Hurricanes…This Century 1983.
— 408 Hebert/Jarrell/Mayfield. The Deadliest, Costliest…[US] Hurricanes… 1993, p. 80.
— 408 Jarrell. The Deadliest, Costliest…Most Intense [US] Hurricanes…1900 to 2000. 2001.
— 408 Rappaport and Fernandez-Partagas. 1995
— 408 Sav. Natural Disasters. 1974, p. 8.
— 405 Rappaport and Partagas 1995.
— 400 Elsner and Kara. Hurricanes of the North Atlantic: Climate…Society. 1999, p. 382.
— <400 Gunn. Encyclopedia of Disasters. (Vol.1). 2007, chapter 96. -- >400 NOAA. “NOAA’s Top US Weather, Water and Climate Events of the 20th Century.”
— 400 Douglas. Hurricane. 1958.
— 400 Dunn. Atlantic Hurricanes (Revised Edition). 1964, p. 339.
— 400 Roth, David and Hugh Cobb. Virginia Hurricane History.

* Have seen no source citing less than 400 deaths. McDonald writes that the American Red Cross placed the death toll at 409, and Drye writes that the official death toll was 408, though “the actual number of deaths could easily be higher.” For the high end of the range we rely on Dunn while noting that Norcross used a range of 400-600. In that this is the only source noting more than 500 deaths, we choose not to use in our own estimated range.

Narrative Information

Douglas: “There were…only about four hundred Key people…” and 716 army veterans “…forlorn stragglers from the bonus army that had marched on Washington….They had been rounded up by the government by the FERA and sent down to the Keys… Quartered in three shack-and-barrack camps in the sun-blasted scrub between Snake Creek and the south end of Lower Matecumbe. They were supposed to be building a road but in nearly a year only two hundred feet were done.” (Douglas 1958, p. 272)

“The Chief of the Key camps was ordered by his boss, the commander of the state veterans’ corps in Jacksonville, to keep in constant touch with the Weather Bureau in Miami, and when it was necessary, order an F.E.C. train down from Homestead, the last mainland town, to take the men to an emergency camp north of Miami….

On the first of September northeast storm warnings were posted from Fort Pierce to Fort Myers, across the state. Caution was advised for the Florida Keys….By the holiday of Labor Day, the second of September, Miami streets resounded with hammering, as people boarded up.” (Douglas 1958, p. 273.)

At around noon on September 2, a camp administrator on the Keys called for the train. It was in Miami, not Homestead, and was not prepared to move out. “A train was made up and left Miami at 4:25 P.M., arriving in Homestead after five…. “There it began to slowly back down the tracks toward the Keys. “Sometime the train crew had to stop and clear the tracks of broken trees. A few Key people with their children, on signal, boarded the train and went south with it into the storm darkness…” (Douglas 1958, p. 274.)

At the Alligator Reef Lighthouse the light keeper reported that just after eight a ninety foot wave crashed over him. “The mounded wave reared across The Hawk Channel. The hurricane smashed down on a narrow ten miles of Keys from Tavernier to Key Vaca. The wind was flung like knives, 150 to 200 miles an hour with unbelievable gusts at nearly 250 miles that took everything….” (Douglas 1958, p. 275.)

“At 8:30 the ten cars of the train had been shoved backward as far as the Islamorada water tank. When the great wave struck, they were flung on their sides by the uprooted track. Only the engine was left standing….All the buildings at Camp Five were smashed up and washed away….The barometer reading, corrected to 26.35 inches, was the lowest yet recorded in the histories of West Indian and Atlantic hurricanes. By daylight, in that ten miles, there were only a very few people left alive. Everything was gone – roads, buildings, docks, viaducts, trees, the railroad and the bridges.” (Douglas 1958, p. 275.)

“One hundred and twenty-one veterans were killed, 100 seriously injured and ninety were missing. One hundred and sixty-five Key people were killed and hardly any survivors were without injury….The total death list mounted, in weeks of dreadful search, to 400.” (Douglas 1958, p.276.)

Drye: “…the most powerful hurricane ever to strike the United States.” (Drye 2002, p. 1.)

On the Rescue Train: The train consisted of “six passenger cars, three baggage cars, and a pair of boxcars” pulled by a 160-ton fuel oil/steam locomotive number 447. The crew were called in “from their holidays to operate the train.” (Drye 2002, 122)

On the Aftermath: “Corpses were scattered everywhere. They were dangling from palm trees, floating in the surf, entangled in the mangroves. High overhead a corpse clung tenaciously to a telephone pole.” (Drye 2002, p. 172.)

“The raging winds and water had killed the ex-servicemen in droves. In one place the storm swept the bodies of 39 veterans into a windrow like so much windblown sand….Dozens of veterans died at each of the camps, but Camp 5 – only a couple feet above sea level, so close to the ocean that normal high tides had sometimes invaded the kitchen – had been turned into a slaughterhouse. Fewer than a dozen men of the 125 or so who’d been in the camp when the storm began were still alive Tuesday morning.” (Drye 2002, p. 173)

“Hundreds of corpses were strewn for miles along the islands.” (Drye 2002, p. 187)

[An American Legion sponsored report placed blame for the veterans’ deaths] “…on the ‘inefficiency and ignorance’ of the people in charge of the work camps and said the veterans’ deaths in the Keys amounted to ‘murder at Matecumbe’.” (Drye, 2002, p. 275)

NOAA: “Florida Keys Hurricane, 1935. The 1935 “Labor Day Hurricane,” which struck the Florida Keys was the first of only two Category 5 hurricanes to make landfall in the U. S. A relief train was sent from Miami to rescue Keys residents and several hundred World War I veterans workings in the area. On its return trip, a storm surge—estimated at 15 to 20 feet—swept all the cars of the train from the tracks, drowning hundreds. All told, more than 400 people died as a result of this hurricane.” (NOAA. “NOAA’s Top U.S. Weather, Water and Climate Events of the 20th Century.”)

Roth and Cobb: “September 4-6, 1935 (Labor Day Hurricane): The most powerful hurricane ever known to strike the United States, this storm of small diameter moved across the Florida Keys, killing 400 people on its way into the Gulf of Mexico. Its pressure of 26.35″, as it passed over the north end of Long Key, became a record low for a land based station in the Western Hemisphere. The system recurved into Tampa Bay and crossed through Georgia and the Carolinas before emerging back into the Atlantic near the North Carolina/Virginia border.

“Southeast Virginia saw winds gusting between 40 and 50 mph. Several tornadoes touched down in eastern sections of the state. The most significant tornado tore its way from Portsmouth across Craney Island, western sections of Norfolk, and Willoughby Spit. The oil screw vessel Co burned off Chesterton, Maryland. The steamship Fannie Mae foundered in the storm one mile east of Windmill Point lighthouse. Three died due to the storm. One million in damages was exacted from Virginia.” (Roth, David and Hugh Cobb. Virginia Hurricane History.)

Sources

Bedient, Philip B. and Antonia Sebastian. “An Introduction to Gulf Coast Severe Storms and Hurricanes,” pp. 1-15 in: Bedient, Philip B. (Ed.) Lessons From Hurricane Ike. Texas A&M University Press, 2012. Google preview accessed at: http://books.google.com/books?id=gelBBDRUjCcC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Blake, Eric S., Edward N. Rappaport, and Christopher W. Landsea. The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Cyclones From 1851 to 2006. Miami, FL: National Weather Service, National Hurricane Center, April 15, 2007 update, 45 pages. Accessed at: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/Deadliest_Costliest.shtml

Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. EM DAT Database. Louvain, Belgium: Universite Catholique do Louvain. Accessed at: http://www.emdat.be/

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Drye, Willie. Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. National Geographic, 2002.

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Ferguson, Robert. Hurricane Threat to Florida: Climate Change or Demographics. Science & Public Policy Institute, October 2007, p. 26. Accessed at: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/papers/hurricanethreat.pdf

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Hebert, Paul J., J.D. Jarrell, Max Mayfield. The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Hurricanes of This Century (NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS-NHC-31). Miami, FL: National Hurricane Center, National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce 1993, 41 pages.

Jarrell, Jerry D., Max Mayfield, Edward N. Rappaport, Christopher W. Landsea. The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Hurricanes From 1900 to 2000 (And Other Frequently Requested Hurricane Facts) (NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS TPC-1). Miami, FL: NOAA NWS and Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Oct 2001 Update. Accessed at: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/deadly/index.html

McDonald, W.F. “The Hurricane of August 31 to September 6, 1935.” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. 63, Issue 9, September 1935, pp. 269-271. Excerpts accessed at: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Storm_pages/labor_day/labor_article.html

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