1928 Letters from a Florida citrus grower recounting his survival from the second worst hurricane to ever strike the United States Charles L. Warren Disasters,Food & Drink

Six letters, which contain entries for eight different days, sent by citrus grower Charles L. Warren of Fellsmere, Florida to two of his sisters, one named Olive, between 4 March and 23 September 1928. Five of the entries describe living through the Great Okeechobee Hurricane and its aftermath. A twig from Warren s destroyed fruit crop accompanies one of the letters. Based on the letter s content Warren must have misdated two of them; the letter dated 9 August was probably written on 19 September and the letter dated 20 August was probably written on 20 September. No mailing envelopes. In nice shape. The Okeechobee hurricane of 1928 ("Florida's Forgotten Storm") was one of the deadliest hurricanes in the recorded history of the North Atlantic and the second deadliest hurricane to strike the United States; only the Galveston hurricane of 1900 killed more people than the 2,500, mostly Floridians, who died in this storm. To this day, it remains Florida s most deadly disaster. Around noon on 17 September, the hurricane made landfall not far from West Palm Beach with winds approaching 150 mph almost immediately destroying over 1,700 homes. Worse, the storm surge overloaded Lake Okeechobee flooding hundreds of square miles with water up to 20 feet deep, drowning well over 2,500 people, and causing $25 million of damage (over $450 million in today s money). It briefly returned to the ocean before making a second landfall near Edisto Island, South Carolina and then traveling over North Carolina. Overall, it caused more than $100 million of damage ($1.8 billion in today s money) and killed more than 4,000 people. Warren s recounting of the storm and its aftermath reads in part: "I am alive and not harmed bodily, but badly hurt other wise. I had the largest crop of fruit on my trees that was ever on them, Now I have about $500 worth on the ground and the trees stripped bare of leaves. Look about like the trees do in the north in winter. My buildings stood the wind in very good shape. "The first building to go down was the R Rail oil house, the fire, Big 8 car garage full of cars, the car sheds, freight house, 100 ft. hotel annex blowed off the foundation. Every building here was more or less damaged. A lot of them turned off their foundations. . . They will have to be torn down. . . The hurrycane did a tremendouse lot of damage ever where it struck. About 90 or 95% of our crop of fruit is a dead loss. Three families were mad homeless by the house blowing down. We had over a foot of rain fall in less than a day. . . The wind blew hard enough, to strip the bark off . . . the trees. . . Some of the leaves are left [but they] are turning yellow now. "One man estimates his loss on fruit alone at over $100,000.00 besides the damage to his trees. . . It will take three years to bring the trees back. . . "It blowed all the telegraph and telephone wires down, poles and all. We got about 15 inches of rain. . . Okeechobee got 18 inches in a day. . . I just went over the Kissimmee rive Sat. before the storm . . .not more than 80-90 feet wide, [now] a raging torrent more than 37 miles across . . . 8 inches of water to 5 feet [deep]. "R. Road grades gone, so that two roads stopped the sale of tickets. The papers here seldom print any thing that might be a damage to getting people here [but the damage to everything] will amount to more than a million dollars in this locality. "We are having the worst time with mosquitos . . . that I have ever seen. Roads in awful shape [only] about 240 miles of good road in Fla. "I can walk better than I have been able too for more than 5 years. During the storm, I took 25 grains of aspirin a day [for] two days. Then the doctor changed the medicine [and] I felt different. . . I went to bed [on] the 13th . . . but the wind howled so that no sleep. Saturday night and Sunday night sat in a chair all night without and light and a lone [because] if the house blew down . . . and no light . . . it would not burn up. .