1935 Labor Day Hurricane 1935 storm swept away all but memories Bernard Russell felt his sister's grip on his hand pull away in the darkness as the 200 mph wind whipped his body and waves crashed over him for what seemed like an eternity. "You went wherever the waves pushed you and wherever the winds pushed you," he said. "It was so dark, you couldn't see what was going on and maybe that was good." A 15-foot-high wall of water washed over Matecumbe Key. Russell's mother and three sisters perished, but that was just the beginning. "There were 61 in the Russell family and 50 of them died that night," Russell, 78, recalled in a recent telephone interview. The day was even more terrifying. What became known as the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 cleared every tree and every building off Matecumbe Key, and destroyed the railroad that connected the Florida Keys to the mainland. The official death toll was 423 - 164 civilians and 259 World War I veterans living in three federal rehabilitation camps. "There were so many dead people and no place to take them," said Russell, who was 17 when the hurricane hit. "They stacked them up and burned them." The National Hurricane Center says that storm was the strongest to hit the United States in this century and was the first of two Category 5 hurricanes to hit the United States since record-keeping began. Category 5 hurricanes pack sustained wind greater than 155 mph, generate a storm surge higher than 18 feet and cause catastrophic damage. Camille, the other Category 5 hurricane, devastated the Mississippi coast in 1969, leaving 256 dead. The 1935 storm may have been the strongest, but it was far from the deadliest. The hurricane that flattened Galveston, Texas, in 1900 killed 6,000 to 8,000 people. After the 1935 storm, Ernest Hemingway visited the Keys and wrote about the destruction in a scathing article titled "Who Killed the Vets" for New Masses magazine and in a letter to his editor, Max Perkins. "We located 69 bodies where no one had been able to get in. Indian Key was absolutely swept clean, not a blade of grass," he wrote to Perkins. "We made five trips with provisions for survivors to different places but nothing but dead men to eat the grub." Many of the victims drowned, some swept into the Gulf of Mexico, others sucked back into the Atlantic after the 15-foot wave passed. Some people were literally sandblasted to death. Russell ended up on top of a trash pile of trees and other debris. He still doesn't understand how or why he survived. "Only the good Lord knows that," he said. Below are Reviews on 2 popular books on this Hurricane

Storm of the Century : The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 by Willie Drye Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly On Labor Day in 1935, a hurricane that produced the record low barometric pressure reading of 26.35 inches hit Florida's upper Keys, destroying virtually everything in its path. In his meticulously researched work, Drye gives a vivid, detailed account of the storm's approach and impact when it made landfall. Drye was drawn to the story of the unnamed hurricane not only because of its intensity, but also because it killed nearly 260 World War I veterans who were building a highway as part of a federal construction program. Living in flimsy huts built in low-lying areas, the veterans' only chance to survive the storm was evacuation, a move officials were too slow to order. The first two-thirds of the book, which includes a terrific description of the Keys around the turn of the century (when Key West was Florida's largest city), is especially gripping, punctuated with first-hand survivor accounts of the storm's fury. Responsibility for the deaths of the veterans became a political football, and the blatantly partisan investigation that ensued will have a timeless resonance for followers of American politics. But Drye overreaches when he suggests that full disclosure about the disaster could have caused problems for FDR's reelection bid; the author is on far safer ground as a weather historian than as a political commentator. From Booklist The Labor Day hurricane of 1935, which ravaged the Florida Keys, was the most devastating hurricane to ever hit the U.S. In the Keys at the time were hundreds of World War I veterans, sent to build bridges as part of Roosevelt's New Deal program to provide government-funded work for those left destitute by the Depression. The makeshift work camps were totally destroyed by the winds and storm surge, killing hundreds of workers who, through miscommunication or carelessness, were not evacuated by. Book Description The most powerful hurricane in United States history assaulted the Florida Keys in 1935, one of the darkest years of the Great Depression. With winds surpassing 200 miles an hour and a storm surge topping 20 feet, the “Storm of the Century” killed more than 400 people in a two-day span, devastating small villages and killing hundreds of World War I veterans working on a federally sponsored project—and kicking up a far-reaching political storm of acrimony and controversy in its wake. Told from the alternating viewpoints of veterans and local residents who survived the storm, Federal Emergency Relief Administration employees, and governmental officials, Storm of the Century is an ambitious work of investigative journalism and historical research, panoramic in scope and haunting in its emotional immediacy. Featuring previously undisclosed documents from the original government investigation, noted journalist Willie Drye’s vivid account of the storm’s rampage is accompanied by fascinating revelations about how federal administrators ignored early hurricane warningsãand why supporters of Franklin Delano Roosevelt were deeply concerned about its effect on the election of 1936. Drye’s bracing narrative expertly evokes the Florida Keys of the 1930s and delivers the first comprehensive explanation of how the economic crises of the Depression and the cruel mandates of political expediency collided full-force with the might of the hurricane itself and ultimately exploded into a national tragedy.

Hemingway's Hurricane: The Great Florida Keys Storm of 1935 by Phil Scott George Hill was heading for the supply building on Lower Matacumbe Key when a hurricane-driven wave caught him and carried him 120 feet before his clothing caught on a pole. From there he watched the supposedly stormproof structure disintegrate and wash away with men still inside. In an America still stunned by the devastation recent hurricanes have wreaked upon New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, few people recall the 1935 storm that swept the Florida Keys. Phil Scott does a favor with his new book, Hemingway's Hurricane: The Great Florida Keys Storm of 1935, reminding readers that deadly storms aren't a new event but present a real human tragedy when they occur. By the time the storm ended, more than 400 people were dead, many of them World War I veterans employed in government work during the Great Depression. The book begins with a look at Ernest Hemingway's life in Key West and comes back to him, recording that he sailed up to the Keys after the storm to view the damage and wrote an essay decrying the way the victims were treated. But, despite its title, it's not a book about Hemingway. It's a book about a tempest that claimed hundreds of lives; about how officials' overconfidence and delays in making a decision prevented a train from arriving in time to save the veterans; and about how they battled the storm, how they died or were hurt, and how some survived. Scott goes to many sources of the time to relate individual stories that can be frightening to read, but which are also engrossing: "The wind knocked James Lindley into a banister and he fell to the ground; three times he got up and three times the wind blew him back down. Finally he stayed down and tried to crawl." "Seventy to 100 men sought shelter on the tank car. ... A wall of water at least 25 feet high slammed into them and washed some off, and the wind blew more off, and then the car began tipping over and the others leaped rather than be squashed under its weight." "The mangroves held the majority of the dead suspended in their branches, twisted in grotesque, unnatural ways. A few of the bodies hung high, lifted there by the crest of the storm surge."

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