Lindsay Graham

So, of course, without any protection from a hurricane, it was inevitable that one would come, and it sure did.

The consequences were devastating.

From your research, once people realized that this was no ordinary storm, what are some of the ways they tried to ride it out?

Now, this disaster was late enough so that there is photo documentation of the devastation, and your book includes some of these.

When you look at the photos, what would we see?

Well, one of the issues of the cleanup after the storm is the task of handling the corpses.

What was the effort of clearing like?

So in the wake of this devastation, all the bodies, debris, just wrecked lives and businesses everywhere, how did Galveston organize its disaster response?

There was no federal agency.

So what did recovery look like in the first days after the hurricane?

I'm glad you mentioned Clara Barton and the Red Cross.

She was head of the Red Cross and went to Galveston to organize relief.

Tell us about her efforts, because she ended up being kind of a mix between a booster and then also a reporter of the facts on the ground.

You mentioned that Clara Barton had a reputation which engendered trust in her assessment of the disaster.

That got me thinking about the press coverage of this disaster at the time.

It remains the largest natural disaster in American history.

So how was it received throughout the country?

So let's stay on the ground here during the relief effort.

Clara Barton and the Red Cross are operating as fast as they can.

How are they distributing relief to survivors of the hurricane?