b'o u rh i s t o r yHISTORIC RESILIENCE had gained strength as it approached its final landfall A CENTURY OF SURVIVAL & COMEBACKSover North Beach and downtown Corpus Christi, where sustained winds of 120 mph were recorded by noon on Sunday, September 14, 1919. With the causeway to FROM NATURES DESTRUCTIVE FORCE Portland washed out, thousands of tourists and a U.S. Army regiment were stranded on North Beach, where the brunt of the storm tore buildings off their founda-Almost anywhere you live, there are risks of natural disasters. California has earthquakes and big forest fires; thetions, ripped off roofs and walls of hotels and homes Midwest has tornadoes and derechos (which many of us Texans had not heard of until recently), the northeast hasand flooded streets, sending cars, carriages, horses and debilitating blizzardsand we have hurricanes. They used to be a big deal to us on the Texas coast in the yearspeople off the peninsula in the storm surge.after the turn of the 20th Century: the 1900 Galveston Hurricane was the most deadly natural disaster in AmericanIn the end, almost 900 people were confirmed killed, and history, and the 1919 Florida Keys Hurricane, which became Corpus Christis 1919 Hurricane, was the worst in thedozens of others went missing and were never found. An history of the Coastal Bend. air of complacency regarding hurricane risk had taken Saturday, September 13, 1919, started off as a perfect summer day in Corpus Christi, sunny and warm, hitting 92Fhold in Corpus Christi, fed by the fact that the city had by mid-afternoon on North Beach. The storm that had been reported by shipping interests in the Gulf of Mexicosustained only modest damage from the 1916 hurricane had tracked from the Florida Keys, westward across the gulf and south of New Orleans and Galveston. By Saturdaythat had flattened Port Aransas. The city would still see evening, the warm south-easterlies in Corpus Christi markedly shifted to the north, as the storm that was pre- its greatest days after rebuilding from the 1919 Hurri-dicted to make landfall near Houston thundered over Matagorda Island and Aransas Bay, and was soon floodingcane, including protection for downtown by the bayfront Aransas Pass with a six foot storm surge. By the time the great storm crossed westward over Corpus Christi Bay, itseawall that was completed in 1941.Robert Homer Simpson was a six-year-old survivor of the 1919 Hurricane 1919 hurricane and, motivated by his childhood experi-ence, would go into meteorological research, co-invent-ing the Saffir-Simpson Scale by which hurricane strength is categorized according to wind speed. More than 50 years went by before Corpus Christi would take a direct strike from another major hurricane, and it Hurricane Celia, 1970Hurricane Harvey, 2017 happened on August 3,1970, when Hurricane Celia made landfall just south of the city, where a record wind gust of 180 mph was recorded. Celia did almost $500 million in damage in Texas, the most destructive hurricane on record at the time, and fifteen people perished.On Friday, August 25, 2017, business owners and resi-dents in Port Aransas scrambled to do what they could to save their property from a looming Hurricane Harvey, which had rapidly strengthened into a major threat in just two days since crossing the Yucatan Peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico. As dusk descended into a moonless midnight hour on Mustang Island, Harvey slammed the seaside village with its peak wind gust of 132 mph and six foot storm surge. Harrowing tales of survival would be told by those who lived them, including a couple and their dogs who rode out the storm in their truck, after it was swept up in the storm surge and struck by a boat on Cotter Avenue. Almost four years later, the rebuild effort in Port Aransas is still not fully complete.44 THE COASTAL BEND TOUR+RELO+BUILD GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'