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Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History Spiral-bound
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Product details
- ASIN : B09GCFS9NH
- Language : English
- Spiral-bound : 323 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,022,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Isaac Monroe Cline (October 13, 1861 - August 3, 1955) was the chief meteorologist at the Galveston, Texas office of the U.S. Weather Bureau from 1889 to 1901. In that role, he became an integral figure in the devastating Galveston hurricane of 1900.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Photo by unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Erik Larson is the author of five national bestsellers: Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm, which have collectively sold more than nine million copies. His books have been published in nearly twenty countries.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2016
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While Isaac Cline serves as Larson's main source, the book is more of a story about the hurricane than about Isaac himself. Still, Isaac Cline was a fascinating character and Larson gives a detailed history of his early life and education background. It quickly becomes apparent that Cline was a good man trying to do his best to understand and predict the weather despite working for the incompetent US Weather Bureau. Isaac Cline's shortcomings were not directly his fault, as he lived in a time of limited technology and scientific understanding of the weather and a career dependent upon keeping his superiors appeased.
The Weather Bureau's Washington officials, headed by Willis Moore, were more interested in raising their own stature than improving their department. The Bureau's forecasts took on an aura of supreme confidence, characterized by a "complete absence of doubt or qualification." (Larson 114). Ignoring evidence to the contrary, they predicted the incoming disturbance to recurve northward before reaching Texas, since that's what all West Indies hurricanes did. In reality, the disturbance was a powerful storm guided westward by high pressure over the eastern US.
The Bureau also clashed with Cuban weather forecasters, who were decades ahead of their time due to the warning system established by Fr. Bernito Vines in the late 1800s. Larson's analysis of the romantic nature of Cuban forecasters may contain some hyperbole, but the primary theme is that the Cubans took the cautious approach due to the uncertainty of forecasting, while the optimistic US Weather Bureau would not even mention the word "hurricane" in its forecasts in order not to agitate the public. The decision by Moore to block weather cables from Cuba would be considered criminal by today's standards.
Since the Weather Bureau's leadership was counterproductive, the reader may hope that Isaac Cline will step up as the hero and save the residents of Galveston from impending doom. Isaac, the loyal servant, was not up to the task. He gave lectures and wrote editorials supporting the idea that the island was safe from a major disaster. One of the biggest strengths of Isaac's Storm is Larson's analysis of Galveson islands' attitude, corroborated by Cline, toward the island's vulnerability. At the turn of the century, Americans began to feel invincible to natural disasters. The iron, steel, and steam age was at its peak and people were rushing to western boomtowns with promises of wealth and success. Galveston was also in direct competition with Houston as Texas' port city, so it certainly could not show any sign of weakness.
Any natural disaster of this magnitude requires a perfect hit and a long list of contributing factors. But above all, the science and technology had not yet reached the level needed to prevent a disaster. In the 21st Century, people still live dangerously close to the coast, track forecasts can still go wrong, and people still are reluctant to evacuate. The difference is that there is an advanced communication and rescue network to relay the latest information and advise people to leave, or save them if they are trapped. As Larson notes, even a minor upgrade such as ship radios would have allowed the Louisiana to radio ahead and warn Galveston that a hurricane was coming. As Larson's map shows, not all of Galveston Island was covered in water, so the death toll could have been mitigated with any sort of definite warning about the hazard that was approaching.
Larson focuses mostly on the human and societal causes and impacts, but also includes a brief but dramatic elucidation of the hurricane's inception from an easterly wave into a dangerous cyclone. The account was well researched and is meteorologically correct, but the power of the storm is much better described by firsthand observations than by the combination of scientific definitions and vivid imagery of water vapor condensing, rising, and mixing while African children observe the clouds (Larson 22).
As a reporter and historian, Larson is charged with uncovering the "whys" and "hows" of the Galveston Hurricane and connecting them with the broader themes of US History. To an extent it is necessary to describe the basic laws of nature that govern the hurricane and the prevailing wind patterns that guided it straight to Galveston. Hurricanes are ferocious and extremely powerful, but their purpose is to redistribute heat in the atmosphere and ocean, not to punish the ignorant humans that dared build a city on its coastline.
The above is not necessarily intended as a critique of Larson, as his descriptions of the developing hurricane are pithy and limited to early in the book. Still, Larson's third-person storm narratives, specifically pages 26-27, are too melodramatic. Larson introduces Chaos Theory as the cause of the hurricane's formation and then quotes William Jennings Bryan's famous refute of manifest destiny spoken merely a month before the Galveston Hurricane:
Destiny is the subterfuge of the invertebrate, who, lacking the courage to oppose error, seeks some plausible excuse for supporting it.
The quote does sum up the errors of the Weather Bureau, Galveston residents, and Isaac, but the quote is out of place without a deeper explanation of the political and cultural feuds ongoing at the time. It would have been interesting and pertinent to add more about the prevailing culture instead of the mechanics of hurricane formation. Considering the number of mistakes leading up to the hurricane, one might have expected some redemption or admission of failure in Isaac's Storm's closing chapters. Unfortunately, Larson finds that little was learned. Galveston constructed a sea wall that has since held, but it was impossible to save the city's once booming economy. Willis Moore of the Weather Bureau fabricated Isaac Cline's account into folklore, suggesting that thousands of lives were saved by the Bureau and that hurricane warnings had been issued in advance. Neither was true. Moore wrote the storm off as an anomaly, a freak of nature (Larson 272). Larson notes that a few editorials were critical of the Bureau, but Moore covered up the injustices for the most part. We now know that the Galveston storm did not precipitate reform and history repeated itself in the 1928 Lake Okeechobee Hurricane.
Considering the book's title, the most surprising conclusion is that Isaac Cline is not the hero of the Galveston Hurricane. Cline did his best, but his weather knowledge and instincts were simply not enough with the technology of the time and conflicting bureau instincts. Haunted by the storm, Isaac went on to become a leading hurricane expert, especially in the area of storm surge, which was the primary killer in Galveston. Isaac never forgot that his decisions cost many lives, including some of his family members. A storm of this caliber changes history forever and most of it is not for the better.
To aid understanding visually, Isaac's Storm could have benefited from some pictures of the devastation and a map of Galveston Bay. While describing the aftermath, Larson quotes several residents and visitors who explain they were left speechless or that words could not describe the devastation. Although the book omits pictures, it is easy to look a few up on the internet (see Wikipedia)
A map of the Galveston Bay area from the time would also have been helpful. Galveston Island's geographic location explains how storm surge battered the island from both directions, but it was hard to envision Larson's descriptions without seeing how the long fetch from a northerly wind could create a surge on the backside of the island. In addition, the locations of various railroads and the large bridge were left to the readers' imagination.
The 1900 Galveston Hurricane goes down in the record books as the deadliest hurricane in US History by far, with an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 dead. Considering the devastation and the wealth of available primary sources, it is surprising that it took until the 100th anniversary for an historian to write a full account of the storm. With hurricane science finally advancing significantly in the 1940s, a death toll of this magnitude will almost certainly never be seen again in the US. Unfortunately, science and advance warnings cannot protect property, and we have seen Miami (1926) and New Orleans (2005) both suffer long term economic damage. Future hurricanes will undoubtedly wipe out coastal development again.
Those who follow recent US Hurricanes may also be left wondering why the Galveston Hurricane was an impressive Category 4 at landfall, while other recent hurricanes such as Rita (2005) and Ike (2008) weakened before landfall in the western Gulf. The most likely explanation is that a warm eddy broke off from the loop current and drifted westward until it was in shallow water off the Texas coast. With no cold water below to mix upward, the storm was able to intensify in a region that is generally incapable of maintaining a Category 4 hurricane. Since Larson took the time to describe how hurricanes form, he should have gone into more detail about the loop current eddies.
Isaac's Storm is a well researched book that is enlightening and informative for both the weather enthusiast and the average reader. The chronicles of the weather bureau's failures are especially stunning. Where historical details were not available, Larson constructs a reasonable story to help the reader envision life at the end of the nineteenth century. The accounts of the storm are as vivid and terrifying as a horror novel. What is most interesting about Isaac's Storm is not just Isaac Cline's personal beliefs, but the defiant attitude of technological superiority that permeated through all levels of society from common citizens up to the US government officials. Galveston in 1900 was extremely vulnerable to any kind of storm surge and there was precedent from the 1886 Indianola Hurricane. Ignorance and overconfidence were a deadly combination.
Issac is a rigid obsessive compulsive hard working and dedicated meteorologist working within the brittle confines of the U.S. weather bureau. He was militaristic in his loyalty, adherence to weather service culture, order and steadfast routine. Due to male egos including that of Willis Moore head of the U.S. weather service many more lives were lost than necessary. This was the single largest national disaster in U.S. history. First due to jealousy and competition with the Cuban weather service and the famous Belen Observatory Willis Moore forbade any communication over Western Union or AT&T Lines from Cuba with the U.S. weather stations. Therefore, the earliest warning about this storm as it approached Cuba never arrived at the New Orlean's weather station. The Cuban station first observed its potential danger to the Carribean and the U.S. gulf coast on August 31st when it would have sent a first wire had it been allowed to do so. By Wed.September 5th Jover in Cuba called the storm a "hurricane." There would have been time to evacuate the city before the storm hit on September 8th. Still no U.S. weather service received any news from Cuba, because they were precluded from using either the U.S. telegraph or phone lines. The Cubans according to Moore were alarmists and too ready to label a storm a hurricane. There was also the patronistic view that calling a storm a "hurricane" would frighten the women and children. Added to that horrendous bias and error, the business interests in Galveston chose a pollyanna view of the island's geography. The weather service acknowledged storm damage to Indianola twice from hurricanes that made landfall to the north and west of Galveston but downplayed the fact that the city was decimated and finally destroyed from the damage. The weather service and important business men of Galveston claimed that Galveston's unique geography protected it from hurricane damage when nothing could have been further from the truth. Even when the beginnings of the storm struck the coast and high winds and flooding began, Issac failed to become alarmed. Trains set out from Houston and New Orleans in the morning filled with tourists and business people only to become stranded after arriving. It would have been a simple precaution to telegraph the station masters and advise them to stop all departures to Galveston at the point of embarkation on Sept. 8th. This was not done, and at least 85 people drowned in the trains which bore them before the storm was over. Trains had to bridge the bay from Houston or points east on train trestles. These were particularly vulnerable.
Even after the hurricane wreaked such havoc in the city where it was responsible for at least 6000 deaths only the Houston Post properly criticized the U.S. weather service. The Post editorial stated that the weather service reports for the day represented a total failure of the U.S weather bureau. Even after the storm began to cause damage, Issac Cline failed to realize its danger and did not take proper precautions either for himself or his family.
Issac Cline paid dearly in personal loses for his failure. He lost his wife Cora and was transferred to the New Orleans station but with a salary bump and promotion. Still wearing his wife's diamond ring hanging from a chain around his neck, he never forgave himself. His younger brother, Josef, also a weather service employee became alarmed earlier than Issac and urged him to sound the alarm in the city. Issac did not do so and his relationship with Josef was forever marred. Josef for his conduct received a demotion and a salary reduction and was sent to the weather service station in Puerto Rico. Because Josef was right, but the service didn't like the fact that he was right, he was penalized. Josef was more accurate than Issac and the brothers barely spoke thereafter. Issac lost many friends and colleagues and realized he underestimated the danger of the storm. He had to walk the streets filled with funeral pyres daily, but the citizens never blamed him. They probably should have, but meteorological science was in its infancy.
Issac's Storm is rather dry until the hurricane hits and we watch his futile efforts to save his wife and children. There is little in the way of a rounding out of his character. His business like behavior which divorced emotion from his science may be partly to blame, because the research documents were rather skimpy. However, he did write a memoir from which some information could have been gleaned. There was a great deal of scientific data about storm systems, prevailing winds, and weather patterns that were hard to envision. I read and understand scientific data rather easily, but here I have to agree with other reviewers. This book would have been much improved with diagrams, charts, maps, and photos. All of these things exist especially the photos. We could have had a photo of Issac and his family for one. There were and are numerous photos of Galveston both before and after the storm, but none of them found their way into the book. Further, there could have been an internet interactive site with demonstration of the moving storm. The technology is there. When are we going to see this tool used in this way to coordinate with books. The author has seen the reviews but there has been no attempt to bring out a new edition amended with these items.
Top reviews from other countries

A gripping narrative from the first page to the final crescendo, an inspiring true story.



