"The sky seemed to be made of mother of pearl; gloriously pink, yet containing a fish-scale effect which reflected all the colors of the rainbow. Never had I seen such a beautiful sky." -real estate agent Buford T. Morris, who happened to look out his bedroom window at first morning light in Galveston on September 8, 1900- the day before the hurricane turned the city into an "Atlantis," leaving over 6,000 dead. "Informal estimates placed the toll at 8,000, even 10,000, not including the several thousand deaths that occurred in low-lying towns in the mainland," wrote Erik Larson, author of Isaac's Storm, who called the Galveston Hurricane "the deadliest hurricane in history."
Addition- I just learned that there is a 1900 Thomas Edison film of the clean up after the great Galveston Flood of 1900, with music by folkie Tom Rush. There are also interviews from some of the survivors who had seen and experienced the hurricane.