Dr. Patricia Bixel

And they did that immediately.

The bridge to the mainland, because Galveston is an island, the bridge to the mainland had been destroyed.

So initially, two of the CRC members got on a boat and went to the mainland and picked up a rail car, one of the kinds that you pumped, and got to Houston and told people about the storm.

And at that point, ships, boats began to come to the island.

They evacuated a lot of women and children.

No able-bodied men were allowed to leave because they needed help with the cleanup.

Eventually, martial law is declared to provide for safety of the people remaining on the island.

And they put out a call to Clara Barton and the Red Cross.

There is no FEMA, as we are used to seeing and hearing about with disasters now.

So it was a completely private relief effort.

And the people of Houston were very helpful.

The people in the region were helpful.

But the bulk of the effort and the help came from the Red Cross.

Clara Barton and the Red Cross were central and absolutely essential to the recovery of Galveston for a number of different reasons.

It's the last disaster that she attends in person.

She has a special train that is put together for her to come to Galveston.

And once she's there, she is really moved by what she's seeing and what the situation is on the island.

And she writes back to one of her correspondents, The churches, the great business houses, the elegant residences of the cultured and opulent, the modest little homes of laborers of a city of nearly 40,000 people, the center of foreign shipping and railroad traffic lay in splinters.

Her reports went national."

Later on, she writes, Clara Barton, with her connections to the Red Cross, had an entire network of