A look back at the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the deadliest natural diaster in U.S. history, by way of Wikipedia. (If you click nothing else, don't miss this post at the Edge of the American West.) Stay safe, Houston.

UPDATE: This is looking very bad.

* As many as 24,000 people on Galveston Island, and 250,000 in the greater Houston area, chose not to evacuate. Emergency crews will not be able to offer help until after the storm has passed at the earliest—and with a predicted storm surge of 19-20 feet (or more) over a 15-to-17-foot wall (reports vary), Galveston Island may be underwater for days.

* Galveston County Jail was not evacuated; one thousand prisoners remained locked in their cells.

* KPRC is Houston is broadcasting their storm coverage over the Internet.

* It's not just you: hurricane activity in the Atlantic has increased since 1970.

Just out over the wires: People sheltering at ground level at Galveston Bay when Hurricane Ike hits face "certain death," the weather service warns.

A sober tone is struck at the 40th annual conference on planetary emergencies.

Put aside anthropogenic climate change; human action can trigger any number of natural disasters, including earthquakes.

Tremors in the crust beneath the North Sea have become more frequent since oil drilling operations began there, and mining operations are also known to increase the frequency of tremors.

Both drilling and mining redistribute the normal stresses present in rocks, but they are not the biggest cause of man-made earthquakes.

"Dams are the most dangerous man-made structure likely to cause quake," says David Booth of the British Geological Survey.

By artificially holding a large volume of water in one place, dams increase pressure on fractures beneath the surface of the earth. What's more, water has a lubricating effect, making it easier for the fractures – or faults – to slip.