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

by Erik Larson

Within the next twenty-four hours, eight thousand men, women, and children in the city of Galveston would lose their lives. The city itself would lose its future. Isaac would suffer an unbearable loss. And he would wonder always if some of the blame did not belong to him. This is the story of Isaac and his time in America, the last turning of the centuries, when the hubris of men led them to believe they could disregard even nature itself.

“I first studied to be a preacher, but decided that I was too prone to tell big stories,” he later explained. “Then I studied Blackstone for a while and soon learned that I was not adept enough at prevarication to make a successful lawyer. I then made up my mind that I would seek some field where I could tell big stories and tell the truth.” He chose the weather.

it's funny because it's true

Isaac, in his 1891 talk to the Galveston YMCA, gave a cruelly detailed explanation of the Coriolis effect. The crowd listened with iron concentration. “… At latitude 30 degrees the velocity of the earth eastward is 897 miles per hour, and at 45 degrees it is 732 miles per hour, or 165 miles less. Now, if a mass of air in a quiescent state were transferred instantly from the thirtieth parallel to the forty-fifth parallel it would be found to have a relative motion eastward of 165 miles per hour greater than that of the parallel arrived at, and if it had been transferred from 45 degrees to 30 degrees, with the motion which it had at 45, it would be 165 miles slower than the earth at the thirtieth parallel, and this would give a relative velocity westward of 165 miles per hour.” A twentieth-century audience would have shot Isaac dead.

Thinking his family safe in San Antonio, he prepared for the storm’s arrival—prepared, that is, to enjoy it, and savor every destructive impulse. Young was a member of that class of mostly landlocked men who believed God put storms on earth expressly for their entertainment.

hey, that's me

As Galveston grieved and struggled to regain the world’s confidence, Houston dredged Buffalo Bayou. Houston was inland, therefore safer, and it was closer to the big cross-country rail corridors. Oil eclipsed cotton. Great ships in black, red, and white glided quietly past Galveston, bound for the wharves of Buffalo Bayou. A silence settled over Galveston. Its population stopped growing. It acquired all the sorrows of modern urban life, but none of the density and vibrance. It became a beach town for Houston.

Whenever a tropical storm threatened, residents converged on the city’s gleaming Wal-Mart to buy batteries and flashlights and bottled water. Once, in a time long past when men believed they could part mountains, a very different building stood in the Wal-Mart’s place, and behind its mist-clouded windows ninety-three children who did not know better happily awaited the coming of the sea.