Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

ERIK LARSON. Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. Vintage Books, 2000. 323 pages. $13.00 (paperback).

In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed into the Miami, Florida, metropolitan area with winds up to 165 mph and a "storm surge" of ocean water more than fifteen feet high. The National Hurricane Center, directly in the path of Andrew, foresaw this calamity days in advance, using internationally shared weather data from satellites, radar, and airplanes. Andrew ravaged Miami, but the advance warning spared lives - only fifteen deaths occurred in Miami-Dade County as a direct result of the hurricane.

But what if ... what if a major U.S. metro area was caught unawares, and an Andrew snuck up on it, fooling everyone, even the meteorologists in its path? Thanks to modem science, it cannot happen today. But it did happen in Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900. The result was the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history - at least 6,000 dead, probably 10,000, perhaps more. And it is the subject of Erik Larson's gripping and revelatory historical page-turner, Isaac's Storm.

Larson's focal point is the legendary meteorologist Isaac Cline. As fate would have it, Cline was the U.S. Weather Bureau's top man in Galveston in 1900. Generations of meteorologists, me included, have grown up on stories of Cline's incredible adventure through the Galveston hurricane. By his own reckoning, Cline saved thousands of lives on the beach through his timely warnings, and he and his family rode out the storm in their house, a floating ark in the tempest.

The problem is that Cline's stories are not true. Larson reveals, gingerly but compellingly, that Cline did not forecast the hurricane's arrival. In fact, Cline had stated publicly that no hurricane could harm Galveston. Furthermore, on the day of the storm Cline did not warn anyone until it was far too late. Poignantly, Cline's pregnant wife died in their foolhardy attempt to ride out the hurricane's waters. His own brother apparently never forgave Cline for the events of that day, a bitter feud that followed them to their graves in the 1950s. Isaac Cline was a survivor, but not much of a hero, and Larson has admirably reclaimed some bracing truth from the debris of Galveston.

Isaac's Storm also vividly recreates the fin de siecle Galveston from archival memoirs and letters. Galveston in 1900 was the "New York of the Gulf," the busiest cotton port in the country and growing 30 percent a decade. The double flood of the hurricane - wind-whipped waters from the bay to the north, and then fifteen feet of Gulf water through the city - wiped Galveston off the map. Larson evokes this horrendous loss family by family, street by street, corpses stacked and burned or dumped at sea in the fetid aftermath: "Many people would not eat fish, shrimp or crabs for years." Galveston would rebuild, its buildings literally jacked up to a storm-surge-proof elevation. But Houston and oil would dominate the Texas Gulf Coast in the twentieth century.

The abominable conduct of the U.S. Weather Bureau chiefs also receives careful scrutiny by Larson. Isaac Cline was but a cog in the quasi-military meteorology hierarchy; he took his orders from the chiefs in Washington. Larson reveals Bureau chiefs bereft of ethics and scientific common sense, awash in condescension and prejudice. For example, Weather Bureau forecasts in the Indies could not use the word "hurricane" for fear of causing "unnecessary alarm among the natives." Official statements therefore trafficked in obscurant euphemisms that cost lives. Resentment of Cuban meteorologists, inflamed by Spanish-American War sentiments, caused a ban to be placed on all weather information coming out of Cuba. When the Galveston hurricane moved past Cuba toward the Texas coast, the Washington Weather Bureau confidently predicted that it was aiming toward Norfolk, Virginia! The Cuban meteorologists knew better, but their Cassandra-like warnings not only were not heeded, they were not even heard. Galveston perished. The ban on Cuban weather data was lifted - six days after Galveston was hit.

Isaac's Storm is ultimately about hubris: of a man, a city, and an infant science. Larson tells his tale with only a little overdoing of the dramatic, pregnant end-of-paragraph sentence. A minor weakness is the lack of detailed weather maps and photographs of Galveston, both of which are readily available from contemporary issues of National Geographic or even the World Wide Web. But the science is solid, and Larson has done more with limited archival material than Sebastian junger did with his celebrated The Perfect Storm. Amid a flurry of weather-related non-fiction, Isaac's Storm is one of the best.

John Knox has taught meteorology at the University of Georgia, Valparaiso University, and Barnard College of Columbia University. He is a former Science & Technology columnist for National Forum.

Copyright National Forum: Phi Kappa Phi Journal Winter 2001
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