4. The Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935
Hurricanes were not yet assigned names based on those of either gender when the first Category 5 hurricane to hit the United States in the twentieth century struck the Florida Keys and the west coast of the state on Labor Day, 1935. The first landfall of the storm was on Long Key, where the storm surge and its ebb created new channels between the bay and the Gulf of Mexico. On September 4, two days later, it made a second landfall at Cedar Key. The west coast of Florida was inundated by heavy rains, driven by strong winds. The town of Islamorada, spread across five islets in the Keys, was virtually eliminated by the storm surge and the high winds.
Preparations to evacuate the areas hit by the storm included an eleven car evacuation train which was struck by the storm surge, toppling all eleven cars, which were fully occupied. Miraculously, all of the passengers survived. The exact number of those killed by the storm has been disputed ever since, with some records listing 208 killed by the storm itself, and others up to 450 dying in the storm and in the events which occurred during its aftermath. The dispute over the number of deaths from the storm was based on discrepancies of the number of homeless veterans being housed in camps in the affected region when the storm struck, and the inadequate records kept by federal officials regarding the veterans, most of whom were transients.