On the night of September 7, 1900, the residents of Galveston, Texas, then a coastal city of 37,000 located near Houston, went to sleep thinking it was a night like any other. The next morning, they woke up to the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States: the Great Galveston Hurricane.1 Galveston residents received no warning of the impending calamity. A 15-foot-high storm surge, driven by winds exceeding 130 miles per hour, inundated the city. More than 8,000 lives were lost.