The Labor Day Hurricane

The hurricane that struck the Florida Keys on September 2, 1935, was the strongest hurricane ever to hit the United States. The storm produced record lows in barometric pressure as it approached the Keys, but officials were slow to announce the impending disaster or order an evacuation. When the 200 mile per hour winds arrived, they tore up houses and trees in their path, leaving a wasteland behind. The hardest hit were a group of several hundred WWI veterans who were building a road between Miami and the Keys. Unlike long-term residents, they had no experience of dealing with the intense storms of the Keys, and the flimsy houses thay had been assigned were no protection. 260 of them died. The evacuation train, moving at a crawl, was caught in the storm and blown off its tracks, killing 150 people. Overall the Labor Day Hurricane killed over 500 people and devastated the Florida Keys.