Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson #NonfictionNovember

Isaac's Storm details the events leading up to and following the infamous 1900 Galveston hurricane. At the time, Galveston was a bustling port in Texas, a rival of Houston in its importance to the area’s economy. Isaac Cline was the chief meteorologist at Galveston’s office of the US Weather Bureau from 1889 to 1901 and warned about the hurricane too late for residents to evacuate, so thousands were drowned. By total coincidence, I checked this out of the library and started listening to this at exactly the same time Hurricane Helene was causing terrible damage to North Carolina and Florida, adding to the poignancy of the narrative.

Larson describes how the advent of a new century was accompanied by global aspirations:

There was fabulous talk of a great American-built canal that would link the Atlantic to the Pacific, a task at which Vicomte de Lesseps and the French had so catastrophically failed. The nation in 1900 was swollen with price and technological confidence. It was a time, wrote Sen. Chauncey Depew, one of the most prominent politicians of the age, when the average American felt “four hundred percent bigger” than the year before.

There was talk even of controlling the weather – of subduing hail with cannon blasts and igniting forest fires to bring rain.

In this new age, nature itself seemed no great obstacle.

Isaac Cline was the chief meteorologist at the Galveston, Texas, office of the U.S. Weather Bureau from 1889 to 1901.  He is one of the villains of this story, due to his assumption he understood storms more than he actually did, which caused him to underestimate the danger to Galveston residents (and his own family). At first, I had some sympathy for him because I wondered how anyone could accurately predict the weather without modern equipment. However, meteorology also relies on observation and one of the most interesting things about this book is how storm experts in Cuba at this time were more advanced than those in the United States. Father Benito Viñes was a Jesuit who came to Cuba from Spain in 1870 to become head of the Meteorological Observatory in Havana and dedicated his life to studying hurricanes.  He was able to record and recognize the meteorological signs that warned a hurricane was coming.

In 1875, Father Viñes accurately predicted the arrival of a hurricane that would pass through Cuba. It was made the day before a major hurricane hit the southern coast of Cuba and his prediction saved many lives, so he became known as “Father Hurricane.” He founded a network of meteorological stations in the Caribbean that shared information on weather phenomena. He was succeeded by another Jesuit, Father Lorenzo Gangoite, who recognized a storm was coming on September 3. After observing it for two days, he predicted it would hit the Texas Gulf Coast. However, the US Weather Bureau did not value the Cuban expertise and wanted to avoid any warnings that might trigger panic. The Director blocked Cuba from sending weather updates to the field, requiring such missives to go to Washington DC, where they could be filtered. Warnings ignored for misplaced political reasons prevented Isaac from getting a warning from hurricane experts that he might have taken seriously and possibly have scared Galveston residents into evacuating.

I had given books by Erik Larson as gifts but when I read The Splendid and the Vile and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania myself, I became a huge fan. I did not think Isaac’s Storm was as good as those, perhaps because the weather details and the players were portrayed somewhat dryly. As you can tell, I found the Jesuit scientists in Cuba more interesting than Isaac and his colleagues. Where Larson excels is telling the stories of the ordinary people caught up in the storm – those who died and those who survived, including people fortunate enough to be out of town when the hurricane hit. The most poignant (of many tragic stories) is from a local orphanage. The Mother Superior tied lengths of clothesline connecting six to eight children together for their safety, then to one of the sisters, but when the hurricane hit the building it collapsed. Ninety of the 93 children and all the nuns died:

Later, a rescuer found one toddler’s corpse on the beach. He tried lifting the child. A length of clothesline leaped from the sand, then tightened. He pulled the line. Another child emerged. The line continued into the sand. He uncovered eight children and a nun.

Sister Camillus had hoped the clothesline would save the children, but it was the clothesline, rescuers saw, that caused so many to die, tangling them in submerged wreckage.

When the storm ended and casualties were counted, insofar as it was possible, over 6,000 had died. Galveston was rebuilt but it never regained its position as a vibrant and prosperous coastal city.

As I was listening to this audiobook, I became struck by the familiarity of the narrator’s voice. At first, I thought I must simply have listened to some other book he had narrated. Then I realized it was Richard Gilmore, Lorelei’s father! I did not know he recorded many audiobooks and voiceovers for the History Channel.  He died in 2014.

Title: Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
Author: Erik Larson
Narrator: Edward Herrmann
Publication: Recorded Books, audiobook, 1999
Genre: Nonfiction/History
Source: Library

Nonfiction November