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Chapter’s 5 & dealt with the aftermath of the Galveston Hurricane.  As relief groups are making making their way into Galveston or at least trying to make their way into Galveston, people who left before the hurricane immediately take notice on how different Galveston looks post hurricane.  The account of Captain Simmons and his crew is given as they enter Galveston to give us readers an understanding of just how bad the hurricane had hit Galveston. The book says “nothing was as it had been when the ship left.” (Larson pg.224) Different rumors go around about the number of dead, but one thing that is the same is that “a powerful storm had struck Galveston without warning and done the city great damage.” (Larson pg.227)  I found this quote very interesting because as readers we know that there were several warnings given to the Weather Bureau, but ignored.  Unlike to the reader, to the people of Galveston the hurricane did come without warning because they weren’t informed until it was to late unfortunately.  This resulted to the great number of deaths.  The number of deaths was so large that corpses had to be burned because there was no more room to bury the dead.  After reading I noticed that the hurricane caused a divide among the people of Galveston, especially against people of color.  There were claims that “black men were said to have begun looting bodies, chewing off fingers to gain access to diamond rings.” (Larson pg.242)  The book states that these claims turned out to be true, but among whites and blacks alike not just blacks.  This to me reaffirmed that there was racism towards people of color during this time, because black families were failed to be identified when they took refuge at homes during the hurricane.  Not only that, but on page 239 the book mentions how “the city’s racial harmony began to erode” during the hurricane.  This is in contrast to what occurred during the Chicago Fire in which Smith claims in her book came a unity among Chicago’s people.  In their post “Faith and Doubt, Identity and Diversity” by Zhedrick my classmate states that “With this understanding, it is possible to take the accounts of the individuals and create an image of Chicago as a center of diversity that can overcome adversity in its ranging forms.”  It seems to me that compared to Chicago where unity flourished during a tough time, in Galveston it was the opposite because “soldiers rounded up fifty black men at gunpoint and forced them onto the barge, promising whiskey to help make the task of loading, weighting, and dumping the bodies more tolerable.(Larson pg.239)