GALVESTON, Texas—We’re heading toward the peak of the 2016 hurricane season, and Galveston is the place to view two diametrically different responses to two of America’s worst disasters.

In 1900 a hurricane slammed into the city, turned houses into sticks, and created the worst butcher’s bill of any disaster in U.S. history: At least 6,000 residents died. Survivors quickly agreed to build a seawall that still stands and has kept Galveston from suffering that many deaths again.

In 2008 another powerful hurricane, Ike, hit Galveston and became the third-costliest storm in U.S. history. With the seawall and ample warning, few city residents died. About $30 billion in property damage left some devastated but the well-insured readily able to rebuild—and await, without investing in further protection, the next disaster.

What can we learn from the two different reactions that will help us respond better to the flood next time?

Galveston Island is about 27 miles long and 3 miles wide at its widest point. Pirates and early settlers considered the east end of the island the best natural port between New Orleans and Veracruz, Mexico. The port shipped 82,000 bales of cotton in 1854 and more than 2 million in 1900, by which time Galveston, Texas’ largest city in 1880, had 36,000 residents and was slightly behind San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas.

Galveston was also vulnerable. The city survived at least 11 hurricanes during the 19th century. Following one in 1875, city leaders asked the state government to create a breakwater, but officials in Austin said no and Galveston decided not to invest in itself. Many regretted that decision on Sept. 8, 1900, when a hurricane destroyed hundreds of frame houses and covered the island with up to 16 feet of water.

The water and debris drowned, crushed, and trapped thousands. Rescuers heard their screams but could not reach them. Relief workers could not bury all the dead bodies, so they set up funeral pyres on the beaches. Officials handed out free whiskey to those tasked with burning the dead. The flames burned for days.

A week after the disaster Clara Barton, 78, founder of the American Red Cross, arrived with a group of workers and took charge of distributing food and clothing for the next two months. Donations provided by individuals, churches, and fundraisers (including a baseball game in Anaconda, Mont.) went for cleanup and shelter, along with the building of 483 new houses and the repair or rebuilding of 1,114.

Local government became part of the solution. Galveston Mayor Walter Jones called an emergency City Council meeting at 10 a.m. the day after the hurricane. By the end of the day a Central Relief Committee was taking the lead in rebuilding. One of the appointees, Isaac Kempner, used his good line of credit to underwrite initial recovery measures. He also had tight relations with Texas politicians, who pushed the legislature to allow Galveston to withhold for 20 years property taxes it would have paid to the state.

Local officials then used in two creative ways the money that did not have to go to the state. They secured bonds for the construction of a 15.6-foot concrete seawall to break the force of the waves. Pilings 4 feet apart and sunk 40-50 feet deep, with concrete poured over the pilings and reinforced by steel rods, made up the 3.5-mile-long seawall, which was 15 feet thick at the base and 5 feet thick at the top. They also secured a bond issue to raise the level of the city by picking up 2,000 buildings, ranging from small houses to the 3,000-ton St. Patrick Catholic Church, and raising them by jacks as much as 17 feet.

Galveston: A City on Stilts documents with old photographs the remarkable results. Pipes and pumps pushed a mix of sand and water beneath the raised houses. When the water drained away, new building bases, fastened to the new foundations, went on top of the fill.

The changes worked for the protected area. In 1915 a hurricane pushed the tide 3 inches higher than in 1900, but the 500 raised city blocks were safe. Only eight people died. The sea destroyed 90 percent of houses beyond the seawall, so over the years builders lengthened it: It’s now 10.4 miles long and a pleasure to walk along.

Hurricane Ike in 2008 showed the seawall’s strength and limits. Most of the 48,000 Galvestonians fled the city, but at least one-fourth stayed. With the seawall’s protection, few died, but no wall protected low-lying Bolivar Peninsula, just east of Galveston. Probably 140 people died there, and those who survived had to float for hours and manage to avoid being hit by planks.

The seawall worked; but, as with France’s Maginot Line in 1940, enemy forces brought havoc by going around it. In Infinite Monster, Leigh Jones (then a Galveston reporter, now WORLD Digital’s managing editor) and Rhiannon Meyers describe how the waves that went around both ends of the seawall ended up pushing water from Galveston Bay and several bayous into the city, flooding the first floors of thousands of homes.

Property damage within the city was huge: Officials for weeks did not allow back into the city most residents who had left. By then, as Jones and Meyers write, “when they opened the door, the stench punched them in the nose and then the stomach.”

The good news: Volunteer relief for residents who had remained came quickly. Two days after Ike, five Salvation Army red-and-white mobile kitchens were open in Galveston and handing out Styrofoam plates heaped with rice and bits of chicken. Three of them went around the island with loudspeakers sending out ballpark-vendor-style invitations: “Hot foooood. … Cool water.” Salvation Army volunteers made good use of pre-positioned brooms, mops, buckets, bleach, rubber gloves, and first-aid provisions. Red Cross helpers also contributed.

The bad news: National government help came slowly. Some Galveston residents expected an outpouring of sympathy like that buoying Katrina victims three years earlier; but the death toll wasn’t as high, government culpability wasn’t as great, and most deaths came on Bolivar Peninsula away from cameras. When Lehman Brothers and the stock market collapsed one week after Ike, television networks concentrated on the national catastrophe. Good Morning America host Robin Roberts had planned to take a helicopter tour over the city with cameras rolling, but ABC canceled it.

More good news: Many volunteers with church-affiliated groups came to help Galveston residents rebuild. Ten thousand college students spent their 2009 spring breaks helping with repairs.

More bad news: In Washington, post-Ike problems in a small Texas city were specks on the priority list. Since federal staffers had passed out FEMA debit cards indiscriminately after Katrina and seen them widely abused, Ike victims did not receive them: As Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas, granddaughter of Isaac Kempner, acknowledged, FEMA cards “had a bad reputation.” So did FEMA trailers. Federal officials did not want lambasting like they received after Katrina, so they toughened the rules and only 29 families qualified for the 54 trailers FEMA set up on a soccer field. (That field is now empty, except for four fire hydrants.)

Galveston in 2008 was a richer city than in 1900, but many residents were not self-reliant. Officially, one-third of Galveston Island’s 2008 population lived in poverty, with over half earning less than $10,000 annually. Many lived in housing projects, but post-Ike four of the six were condemned, exiling 569 families. Many small children were in day care, but one month after Ike only three of the island’s 50 day care centers had opened.

Class and racial tensions emerged as officials and residents battled over whether to create new public housing for poor residents. More than 2,000 residents fought any rebuilding, with some saying public housing occupants would be better off inland, away from hurricanes and close to job opportunities: Was that a compassionate suggestion, or a racist one? Other critics said the poor should be dispersed throughout the city, not stuck in small ghettos.

Local officials who advised trust in Washington were happy when Galveston eventually received $267 million in a first round of federal funding that gave the city completely new sewage and water systems. A second round of funding for patient individuals included $190 million for 25,381 recipients.

Jones and Meyers in Infinite Monster (which refers to the storm, not the U.S. government) describe how some residents gamed the system to get more federal money: City building inspectors estimated rebuilding costs, but those could be changed if contractors projected different amounts. Everyone knew “the system allowed people to manipulate the numbers. But it was a federal requirement.”

Even the best-informed residents did what federal rules allowed, even if it didn’t make sense: “Sitting in his newly remodeled living room, the sunlight glinting off Lake Madeline reflecting on the ceiling, [City Manager Steve] LeBlanc acknowledged his home was no safer from future damage than it had been before Ike. … What about next time? He just shrugged.”

In 1900, Galvestonians assessed the disaster and did what made sense to defang the next one: Build a seawall. Raise the city. In 2008 resident John Giovannini, a psychiatric social worker, thought rebuilding that would do nothing to mitigate future hazard was crazy. He said the 75 percent of Galveston that flooded in 2008 should be required to elevate: Homeowners should certainly not be lured to rebuild in harm’s way by the availability of federal dollars. But, as Jones and Meyers report, “In many cases, the houses most likely to flood again were rebuilt.”

Now, on the hard-hit Bolivar Peninsula, signs for new housing emphasize security: “Concrete Homes. Fast. Affordable. Forever.” Some wooden homes sit 25 feet high on 12 concrete pillars. But some of the preparations seem akin to shaking a fist at the ocean: Residents have tried to enhance naturally occurring dunes by throwing their Christmas trees onto them.

After Hurricane Ike, some residents proposed construction of “Ike dikes,” a coastal barrier with floodgates at the opening to Galveston Bay to block storm surges. The barrier would protect Bolivar and extend the seawall down the length of Galveston Island, but the price tag—at least $8 billion—has stopped the conversation.

How much should we invest now to protect against long-term-likely, short-term-improbable occurrences? That’s a difficult question. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has worked hard over the past decade to protect 900,000 residents of southern Louisiana against a Katrina reoccurrence, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of $14.5 billion. “The numbers are mind-boggling,” Steve Estopinal, former president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority–East, told NPR: “It’s in Corps dollars, so it’s like Monopoly money.”

Singer Irma Thomas, the “Soul Queen of New Orleans,” said, “When you move to New Orleans, you know it’s below sea level, you know it’s like a fishbowl.” New Orleans is now an armored fishbowl, but Galveston residents are apparently not numerous enough to warrant similar treatment.

This lack of action means Galveston differs from the American cities with subdivisions named Oak Park that show what builders cut down. Galveston has a hotel that may point to the future: Driftwood Inn. The owner of the Galveston convention center wants to turn his property into a casino. But the whole Galveston area is already a home for gamblers.

Preparations and providence

Galveston is small, but Houston, an hour’s drive north, is huge—and The Texas Tribune (with ProPublica) in March said a terrible Houston hurricane is “not a matter of if but when. The city has dodged it for decades, but the likelihood it will happen in any given year is nothing to scoff at; it’s much higher than your chance of dying in a car crash or in a firearm assault, and 2,400 times as high as your chance of being struck by lightning.”

Such a hurricane could kill thousands of people and hamstring America’s economy: The Houston Ship Channel is a crucial transportation route for crude oil and other products. The Tribune asked, “Why isn’t Texas ready?” The reason is clear: The megabillion cost of defense against hurricanes outweighs in officials’ minds the unlikely possibility that an infinite monster will devastate Houston on their watch.

The Tribune, concluding that “public officials seem content to play the odds and hope for the best,” contrasted that approach with engineers’ moans that “we’re sitting ducks.”

Galveston and Houston are not the only cities at risk. Last fall a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory co-authored a paper contending that the likelihood of a magnitude 5 earthquake hitting L.A. during the next three years is 99.9 percent. The U.S. Geological Survey took the unusual step of publicly criticizing the paper and saying, in essence, be not afraid, for the probability is only 85 percent.

Such an earthquake would knock some people to the floor and crumble brick walls, but it would not be a massive killer. That kind is likely along the San Andreas Fault sometime, but unlikely over the next decade.

How to avoid the extremes of blithe unconcern and panicky paranoia? Presbyterian minister Robert L. Dabney, while a Civil War officer in 1862, preached a sermon on God’s “special providence” and noted that in a recent battle “every shot and shell and bullet was directed by the God of battles.”

Later, when Dabney found himself under fire and took cover behind a large gatepost, a nearby officer kidded him: “If the God of battles directs every shot, why do you want to put a gatepost between you and a special providence?” Dabney replied, “Here the gatepost is the special providence.” –M.O.