Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History in The Dusty Bookshelf

Jan 10, 2012 Anne (Booklady) Molinarolo rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: winter-2011-12, nonfiction, permanent-library, historical

3.33 Stars

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History is really a precautionary tale of hubris. Before Katrina, Andrew, and Frederic, was the worst and deadliest hurricane this nation has ever seen: the 1900 Galveston Hurricane. At least 6,000 people drowned or were lost (later estimates indicated the death tally actually was more toward 10,000). Among the casualties were members of Isaac Cline’s own immediate family. We can feel his horror and guilt as he is forced to 3.33 Stars

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History is really a precautionary tale of hubris. Before Katrina, Andrew, and Frederic, was the worst and deadliest hurricane this nation has ever seen: the 1900 Galveston Hurricane. At least 6,000 people drowned or were lost (later estimates indicated the death tally actually was more toward 10,000). Among the casualties were members of Isaac Cline’s own immediate family. We can feel his horror and guilt as he is forced to step over his fellow Galvestonians, because he also believed no massive storm could ever devastate his beloved city, dubbed the New York of the Gulf. Erik Larson’s use of Cline’s own letters, reports, telegrams, and hundreds of eye-witness testimonies show Cline’s own hubris and debunks facts that Cline was the quick thinking hero he believed himself to be after the Storm hit. The rivalry with his brother, Joseph, is quite telling.

But to ignore the signs of the storm’s size and intensity by the fledgling National Weather Service was the ultimate sin of human arrogance, Cline’s especially. The NWS didn’t want to create fear, and the concerns of the Cuban meteorologists remained “a growing uneasiness” about the ominous signs in the Caribbean sky. They should have fretted since other parts of the United States experienced major oddities: Waco TX had been under siege by a grand locust plague and the Bering Glazier shrunk. There were no cries of “climate change,” only the mistakes of the government’s new Weather Bureau. Dismissive of the Cuban meteorologists, the NSW cut off all contact with them; because Washington, D.C. refused to believe that a major hurricane could cross the Gulf and hit the Island city of Galveston. Remember, these were the days that only Washington could declare a hurricane, not the local weatherman. The time in 1900 America was Golden. Progress and the discreet political climate downplaying the Clines’ sibling rivalry while emphasizing Galveston’s civic boosterism

My heart lurched as Larson weaves personal stories into the account of this strong storm, especially when the good sisters tied the little ones from St. Mary’s Orphanage together with clothesline. I wanted to scream at the gathering crowd on the shoreline to get out as they watched thee ever changing sky and the rapid rise of water as the Gulf begins its drowning invasion. The scenes on the Pensacola took my breath away. I know the destruction of hurricanes; I have lived through many. Frederic, September 11, 1979 being the worst; I literally shut down when a tree cut my “Aunt” Mary Jane’s house in two and landing less than 3 feet from where I was lying. Perhaps, this is why Larsen’s detailed account of the hurricane’s formation bored me to tears. I know how and where they formed, since my first exposure to hurricanes was in my freshman year in Mobile, AL Spring Hill College. But his pace did keep me interested, yet his writing was completely dry at times. A 3.33 Star read.
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Aug 03, 2011 Diana rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-read, read-in-2016, read-in-2011, history-disasters-diseases-read

This was a re-read for me, it is the story of a meteorologist when the science was new and the devastation that came from not being able to predict how bad the hurricane of 1900 that hit Galveston, TX was actually going to be. I enjoyed reading it more this time since I was able to take a trip to Galveston this year, my first one, and see the memorials to what happened that day.

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