Disaster.

On 7 September 1900 hurricane-force winds and rain whipped the states on the western end of the Gulf of Mexico. A storm surge smashed into the city of Galveston, Texas, on the north end of Galveston Island. The four bridges connecting it to the mainland were swept away; most of the city's buildings were destroyed; and five thousand of its forty thousand residents died. Survivors waited through the night on rooftops. The rest of the world waited days for news of Galveston's fate, so cut off was the city and the region by severed telegraph lines, flooded roads, and impassable railroad tracks. Militiamen with bayonets patrolled the streets to keep scavengers and newspaper reporters away.

Annie Laurie to the Rescue.

Winifred Black, a reporter for the Denver Post and special contributor to the Hearst papers who wrote under the name Annie Laurie, was the...