Hurricane Alicia

Southern United States, August 14–19, 1983 This moderately powerful Category 3 hurricane’s 115-MPH (185-km/h) winds and 12-foot (4-m) storm tide lashed large portions of south Texas on August 18, 1983. With a central pressure at landfall of 28.41 inches (962 mb), Alicia was the first storm of hurricane intensity to strike mainland United States since Hurricane Allen came ashore near Brownsville, Texas, on nearly the same date in August 1980.

A midseason hurricane that formed over the warm waters of the eastern Gulf of Mexico on August 14, Alicia leisurely intensified before striking the port city of Galveston with diligent fury in the early morning hours of August 18. Damage in the hurricane-prone city of 60,000 was severe. Alicia’s sixfoot (2 m) storm surge, coupled with above-average tides, broke over Galveston’s famed seawall, flooding several low-lying areas of the island city. All electricity and telephone service was cut, and downpours made driving exceptionally hazardous. There were several incidents of looting. Six people were killed, and another 30 were injured in Galveston, but Alicia could have been much worse: The ferocious Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people, while a lesser hurricane in 1915 breached the newly built seawall and drowned 275 people. The lifesaving benefits of modern construction techniques and hurricane awareness programs were made readily apparent by Alicia’s spirited assault on the one-time “New York of the South.”

Its wind and rain virtually undiminished, Alicia spiraled inland, hammering Houston and its surrounding communities just before midday on August 18. Already reeling from an economic recession brought on by a collapse in oil prices, Houston sustained close to $1 billion in property damage as Alicia’s winds knocked out power lines, uprooted trees, and overturned cars. In downtown Houston, Alicia spawned small tornadoes that pried glass curtain walls away from some of the city’s tallest buildings. Deadly shards of glass and torn aluminum crashed to the street as the wind and rain shattered the glittering facades of the 71-story Allied Bank Plaza building (now the Wells Fargo Bank Plaza) and the 33-story Hyatt Regency Hotel. Forty-two thousand people fled as flash floods invaded their homes; nearly 50 people were arrested for looting. Even though Alicia was downgraded to a tropical storm by three o’clock that afternoon, its damage was so extensive that several days passed before telephone and water services was fully restored. Fifteen people in the Houston area were killed.

On August 19, then President Ronald Reagan

declared both Galveston and Houston disaster areas

and made available several hundred million dollars

in federal funds for emergency relief. The American

Insurance Association later set the total insured property

damage from Alicia at $675 million, although

this figure was eventually adjusted higher. At the

time, Alicia’s $1 billion price tag made it the thirdmost-

costly hurricane in U.S. history. Owing to the

extensive damage wrought by the hurricane, the

name Alicia was retired from the revolving list of

hurricane names the following year.