In Issac’s Storm,
Erik Larson details the deadliest weather-related disaster in the history of
the United States: the 1900 Galveston hurricane. The storm killed between six and eight
thousand people, and the death toll was largely due to the lack of wisdom and
preparation on the part of the United States Weather Bureau and its senior
Galveston meteorologist, Isaac Cline.
Larson explores the catastrophic storm from many angles:
the science behind hurricanes, the state of meteorology in the late nineteenth
century, American meteorologists’ attitudes toward their science, and the
personal stories of those residing in Galveston at the time of the
hurricane. A key focus of the book is
the hubris of the age, especially in regards to such a young and undeveloped
science. Cline and his American peers had
an astonishing level of confidence in their knowledge of weather and
atmospheric science despite their inexperience and lack of empirical evidence
for their claims.
This excessive pride led the U.S. Weather Bureau to
ignore the warnings of Cuban meteorologists – who had been studying hurricanes
for over 30 years – that the storm was headed for the Texas coast, and its
impact would be devastating. Cline and
his superiors were sure that storms followed a specific pattern, and that a
hurricane out of the Caribbean would curve up the Atlantic coast. That the hurricane would deviate from the
designated path was absurd.
The lack of warning from the Weather Bureau kept Galveston
residents from preparing for the storm, which resulted in the total devastation
of the city. Larson gives a detailed
account of the residents’ horrific experience and the desolation that the
hurricane left in its wake.
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| Relief party working at Ave P and Tremont St. |
For more information on the Galveston Hurricane, visit: http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/magazine/galv_hurricane/welcome.html
If you are interested in reading Issac’s Storm, place a
request from the library catalog: https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/999930902302121