With winds in excess of 200 mph, the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 was the most intense storm ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere and the first known Category 5 storm. Its full force slammed into Islamorada at 8:23 P.M. on September 2, 1935, as winds roared to 200 mph and the barometer fell to 26.35 inches. Ships in the Atlantic had reported a large storm, but its exact location was unclear. A relief train dispatched from Miami on September 2 to pick up veterans and others traveled backwards for a quick escape but arrived too late and was washed off the track in Islamorada by a 17-foot tidal surge. The U.S. Government was criticized for sending veterans to the Keys during hurricane season and for not evacuating them quickly, and a Congressional investigation followed, though no single agency accepted blame. Survivors found a devastated landscape: all but two of Upper Matecumbe's 61 buildings were gone, most train tracks had disappeared, the remaining rails were twisted, and Flagler's $27-million railroad was destroyed. The storm's human toll was horrific, with bodies scattered widely and recovered as far west as Cape Sable across Florida Bay. On September 3, 107 survivors remained. On September 6, 1935, Governor David Sholtz ordered the remaining unburied bodies cremated, while more than 100 other bodies were taken to Woodlawn Park Cemetery in Miami for a mass burial. A September 8, 1935, telegram to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reported a tentative total of 684 dead and missing and called for an investigation into possible negligence in failing to evacuate veterans working on the Key West railroad.