Disasters: Essa v. Beulah

When hurricanes spin in to rake the land with their multimegatons of atmospheric energy, death tolls are often high. The great Galveston blow of 1900 took 7,000 lives; a "killer hurricane" that struck Florida and the West Indies in 1928 left 4,000 dead in its wake. In India, where the whirling warm-water storms are called "cyclones," 11,000 Bengalis perished in a 1942 assault. Last week, as Hurricane Beulah—the third most powerful blow ever to hit Texas—slammed into the populous Rio Grande Valley and coursed its crushing way inland, only ten deaths were reported—one of them a 15-year-old girl surfer...

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