The waters quickly receded after carving new channels connecting the bay with the ocean; however, gale-force winds and rough seas persisted into Tuesday, disrupting rescue efforts.

The hurricane caused catastrophic damage in the upper Florida Keys, as a storm surge of approximately 18 to 20 feet (5.5 to 6.1 m) swept over the low-lying islands.

The storm sped up and rapidly weakened over the Mid-Atlantic states, causing heavy rainfall, with the highest total being 16.7 inches (420 mm) in Easton, Maryland.

The Weather Bureau's 1:30 PM advisory[6] placed the center of the hurricane at north latitude 23° 20', west longitude 80° 15', moving slowly westward.

Flying a Curtis Hawk II, Captain Povey, an American expatriate, who was the Aviation Corps' chief training officer, observed the storm north of its reported position.

This coincided with an abrupt wind shift from the northeast (Florida Bay) to southeast (Atlantic Ocean) and the arrival on the coast of the storm surge.

[22] The American tanker Pueblo lost control near 24°40′N 80°25′W / 24.667°N 80.417°W / 24.667; -80.417 around 2 pm on September 2 and was pushed around the storm's center, ending up in Molasses Reef nearly eight hours later.

[2][23] On Upper Matecumbe Key, near Islamorada, an eleven-car evacuation train encountered a powerful storm surge topped by cresting waves.

Public health officials ordered plain wood coffins holding the dead to be stacked and burned in several locations.

The camps, including seven in Florida and four in South Carolina, were established by Harry L. Hopkins, director of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA).

[35][36] President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Mr. Hopkins and Robert Fechner, director of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to discuss solutions.

On September 5 at a meeting of all public and private agencies involved Governor David Sholtz placed the sheriffs of Monroe and Dade Counties in overall control.

[47] On the evening of September 4, 1935, Brigadier General Frank T. Hines, VA Administrator, received a phone call from Hyde Park, New York.

At a news conference on September 5, Hopkins asserted that there was no negligence traceable to FERA in the failed evacuation of the camps as the Weather Bureau advisories had given insufficient warning.

State and local health officials demanded a ban on all movement of bodies and their immediate burial or cremation in place; the next day Governor Sholtz so ordered.

[55] This was reluctantly agreed to by Hines with the understanding that those buried would be later disinterred and shipped home or to Arlington when permitted by the State health authorities.

[62] Ernest Hemingway visited the veteran's camp by boat after weathering the hurricane at his home in Key West; he wrote about the devastation in a critical article titled "Who Killed the Vets?"

Hemingway implied that the FERA workers and families, unfamiliar with the risks of Florida hurricane season, were unwitting victims of a system that appeared to lack concern for their welfare.

[63] In the same issue of The New Masses appeared an editorial charging criminal negligence and a cartoon by Russell T. Limbach, captioned An Act of God, depicting burning corpses.

Most of these veterans are drifters, psychopathic cases or habitual troublemakers ... Those who are nor physically or mentally handicapped have no claim whatsoever to special rewards in return for bonus agitation.

He finished on Sunday, September 8, the day an elaborate memorial service and mass burial of hurricane victims (both coordinated by Ijams) were held in Miami.

[68] The report exonerated everyone involved and concluded: "To our mind the catastrophe must be characterized as an act of God and was by its very nature beyond the power of man or instruments at his disposal to foresee sufficiently far enough in advance to permit the taking of adequate precautions capable of preventing the death and desolation which occurred.

In a telegram to his colleague, assistant Presidential secretary Marvin H. McIntyre, Early wrote that he had authorized Hines to proceed with a "complete and exhaustive" joint investigation with Hopkins.

Such an internal dispute would embarrass the Roosevelt administration at the time a vote on the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act ("Bonus Bill") was upcoming (it passed on Jan. 27, 1936, over the President's veto).

[81]Williams prepared a response for the President stating: "A final report, based upon the facts obtained in this investigation [by the VA and FERA], will be submitted to me shortly.

[84] President Roosevelt sent a telegram to the dedication in which he expressed "heartfelt sympathy" and said, "the disaster which made desolate the hearts of so many of our people brought a personal sorrow to me because some years ago I knew many residents of the keys.

In front of the sculpture a ceramic-tile mural of the Keys covers a stone crypt, which holds victims' ashes from the makeshift funeral pyres, commingled with the skeletons.

The VA has chosen not to memorialize them, despite current Federal law and President Roosevelt's order that Hines provides a burial with full military honors for every veteran not claimed by his family.

The monument is composed of native keystone, and its striking frieze depicts coconut palm trees bending before the force of hurricane winds while the waters from an angry sea lap at the bottom of their trunks.

Four bodies were, however, exhumed from Woodlawn cemetery by the families: Brady C. Lewis (November 12, 1936), Benjamin B. Jakeman (December 12, 1936), Thomas K. Moore (January 20, 1937), and Frank De Albar (September 26, 2016).