Reactions and Rebuilding
The disaster gained attention from the national media. Offers of assistance came in from all over the country. Several funds were established to handle donations, particularly the Texas City Relief Fund, created by the city's mayor Curtis Trahan. One of the largest fundraising efforts for the city and the victims of the disaster was organized by Sam Maceo, one of the two brothers who ran organized crime in Galveston at the time. Maceo organized a large-scale benefit on the island featuring some of the most famous entertainers of the time including Phil Harris, Frank Sinatra, and Ann Sheridan. In the end, the Texas City Relief Fund raised more than $1 million ($11.1 million in today's terms). Payouts for fire insurance claims reached nearly $4 million ($41.2 million in today's terms).
Within days after the disaster, major companies that had lost facilities in the explosions announced plans to rebuild in Texas City and even expand their operations. Some companies implemented policies of retaining all of the hourly workers who had previously worked at destroyed facilities with plans to utilize them in the rebuilding. In all, the expenditures for industrial reconstruction were estimated to have been approximately $100 million ($1.04 billion in today's terms).
Read more about this topic: Texas City Disaster
Famous quotes containing the words reactions and, reactions and/or rebuilding:
“We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)