ROBERT MYKLE

On the afternoon of September 16, 1928 after a murderous journey through the Carribean and the Bahamas a Category Four hurricane made landfall in Palm Beach, Florida and would leave in its wake nearly 2,400 people dead.

Beginning as a tropical storm off the Cape Verde Islands the Great Florida Hurricane of 1928 reached hurricane status by the time it encountered the SS Commack 1,000 east of Guadalupe Island. At the time it was the eastern most report of an Atlantic hurricane. Four days later it struck the Leeward Islands of Guadalupe, Montserrat leaving hundreds dead. Now a Category Five hurricane or catastrophic hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, it skirted the Virgin Islands destroying the harbor at Christiansted St Croix then turned to the north and struck the underbelly of Puerto Rico. Over three hundred people were killed out right and the storm left such destruction that it was given the saint’s day name of San Felipe, a Spanish custom reserved for only the most destructive storms.

Because most of the communications were wiped out in Puerto Rico the US Weather Bureau had ‘lost’ the hurricane as it made its way through the Bahamas. Again forecasting the storm was difficult as radio and telephone communications were destroyed in the Bahamas. Until the hurricane struck the mainland there were erroneous news reports that the storm had moved out to sea or even south into the Gulf of Mexico.

Striking Palm Beach at dusk the storm destroyed large swaths of West Palm Beach where nearly 8,000 homes were destroyed or damaged.

Around Florida’s seven hundred square mile Lake Okeechobee, a mud and sand dike had been built to keep flood waters out of reclaimed farm lands. The 150 plus miles per hour winds from the hurricane blew in from the northwest, piled up water against the dike, and drove the water up and over the muck dike. The dike was breached in many places by a 17 foot storm surge that sent a wall of black muddy water through the towns of Chosen, Belle Glade, South Bay. Of the estimate 6,000 people who lived in the Everglades over one third perished.

At the farming village of Sebring Farms near South Bay 63 people sough refuge in Victor Thirst’s house. Rising water forced the people into the attic when the house was floated off its foundations and smashed against a raised road bed. Only six people survived. In South Bay two hundred people, half the town’s population crammed on a large sinking work barge. Pumping and buckets saved the people on the barge as they listened to the cries of others being swept down the canal. They all survived. Three quarters of the dead around Lake Okeechobee were black migrant farm hands who for the most part lived in tar paper chanties on isolated farms and along drainage canals

With communications gone the two roads out of the Everglades flooded and the canals clogged with debris it was not until the next day that any one knew of the extent of the disaster. The governor of Florida was not informed until Wednesday morning. It is generally accepted that the official body count of 1,836 was woefully undercounted. A more realistic estimate is 2,400. The search for bodies was stopped due to lack of funds. For years after farmers plowed up people’s bones. The body count plus the missing and presumed dead was surpassed only by the Great Galveston hurricane of 1900.

The author, Robert Mykle, robertmykle@worldnet.att.net is currently writing a book about the Florida Hurricane of 1928.

Last Updated: December 15, 1999