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Hurricane 1, Galveston 0Galveston gets smashed by the hurricane of the century in 1900. Weather Bureau screws up: Cuba saw it coming. |
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The burg of Galveston, Texas, bustled on Saturday, September 8, 1900. It was a busy place, rivaling New Orleans in shipping and culture: the city was to be Texas' bright, bold future. It had an opera house and 37,000 productive, happy citizens. And sitting in his carriage on the beach that morning was bumbling meteorologist Isaac Cline, firmly convincing himself that the city wasn't going to be obliterated that week. He did a pretty good job at that for just less than week. Isaac thought he knew it all, and he honestly believed there was nothing left to learn about the weather. He had various gizmos and an overly healthy ego with which to combat any nagging doubts anybody else had. In 1891, after Galveston had survived a moderately nasty storm, he wrote for the Galveston News: The opinion held by some[1] who are unacquainted with the actual conditions of things, that Galveston will at some time be seriously damaged by some such disturbance, is simply an absurd delusion. In short, he was a perfect example of a US Bureau of Meteorology man. The Bureau, run by director Willis Moore, suffered a deservedly dismal reputation because it did things like ban the use of the word "tornado" in order not to ruff the feathers of the natives. The men in charge decided that natural disasters made them look bad and figured the best way around the PR problem was to understate the severity of inclement weather. They also banned the terms "cyclone" and "hurricane". We presume that a major storm forecast could now be termed as "light choppy seas" or "possible showers". Cuba Good, US LazyThe US Weather Bureau also hated the Cubans. This was mainly because the Cubans were extremely good at predicting cyclones -- way better than the US could hope to be. As early as 1870 they had set up a network of hundreds of observers and runners that were well trained and dedicated to the job. Their director, Father Benito Vines, had dedicated his life to cyclone prediction and enjoyed great success.
By contrast, the US Bureau was notoriously inaccurate. Their observers had been known to fabricate meteorological measurements to allow them more free time to indulge their preferred pastimes of smoking, drinking and carousing. This habit met with disastrous results, particularly for the town of Indianola, which was struck by two storms in 1875 and 1886. The first wiped out one fifth of the city's population; the second wiped out the city. The Bureau described both as "freaks" with "relatively minor damage". Looking like a chump, the Bureau decided to work on its public relations. So, in an effort to derail the successful reputation of their Cuban comrades, the Bureau banned Cuba from transmitting weather messages via the US military telegraph. The Cubans were outraged. After all, they had pioneered cyclone prediction and felt the US was thumbing its nose at their expertise. Predictably, the angered Cubans protested in the vigorous fashion we're all accustomed to. Against this backdrop of meteorological intrigue, there was a major tropical cyclone gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico that April. The Cubans wanted to shout about it from the rooftops but couldn't transmit warnings directly. Thanks to the Bureau's anal policy regarding descriptive words, even if Isaac had been able to predict the forthcoming nightmare he wouldn't have been able to call it anything other than a "bad storm" or a "really shockingly bad storm". Heavy Cloud, But No RainIn Galveston, the residents were getting nervous. The weather was turning nasty, the seas were rising, and the wind was picking up alarmingly. According to all accounts (except for one, see below), Isaac was unperturbed. He wandered the streets, assuring the townsfolk that everything was going to be just fine. A little wind, a little rain perhaps, but no cause for alarm. The official forecast reported in the Galveston News read For western Texas: local rains Saturday and Sunday; variable winds. For eastern Texas: rain Saturday, with high northerly winds; Sunday rain, followed by clearing. A more accurate report might have been Extreme flooding, pelting rain and winds of up to 150 miles per hour Saturday night and Sunday, followed by floating debris, corpses of loved ones and mass destruction for the remainder of the month. When the storm finally peaked on Saturday evening, it blew the instruments off the roof of the weather station. At the Galveston Tribune the editor had optimistically written, "there have been high waters before, when the effect was mainly discomfort and the destruction of fences". Destruction of fences, indeed. The island doesn't reach higher than 30 feet above sea level (most of it less than 10), and storm swells went up to 15 feet.[2] No one had a chance to read the brilliant Tribune feature anyway -- the rising waters had already flooded the presses before the paper was finished. Rain o' TerrorNow the party really got into full swing. People started smashing holes in the floors of their houses in an effort to stop the tide from taking their homes with it. Bricks flew off buildings like playing cards in the wind. Water rushed into and past houses, carrying with it the debris of many lives -- furniture, photographs, and bodies aplenty. By Sunday night Galveston was devastated. The Houston Manager of Western Union sent this message to Willis Moore, the Bureau director: First news from Galveston just received by train which could get no closer to the bay shore than six miles, where Prairie was strewn with debris and dead bodies. About two hundred corpses counted from train. Large Steamship stranded two miles inland. Nothing could be seen of Galveston, loss of life and property undoubtedly most appalling. Weather clear and bright here with gentle southeast wind.
Just how appalling was all too apparent in town. People walking through the mud discovered a foundation of their friends and colleagues beneath the surface. In an effort to rid the town of its new community of the recently deceased, the authorities piled the bodies onto barges and ferried them to sea. There they were weighted and tossed overboard.[3] This was disgusting work, and the crewmen disposed of their malodorous cargo hastily. Actually, it was a little too hasty, as the sea returned the stinking bodies to the shores the following morning. Clearly, something else had to be done, and it was nasty. EwFires were lit on the streets to burn bodies where they lay -- traumatizing a whole generation of children who watched in horror as aunties and uncles, teachers and playmates were consumed by the flames. The burning continued for over a week, and local shipping gave the area a wide berth as the stench of burning hair and flesh put them off their dinners. Back at the bureau, there was hell to pay. The papers were having a field day, and the Bureau's director, Willis Moore, was desperately trying to defend an indefensible position. His tactics were simple and effective: he lied. Moore told the papers he'd instructed Isaac to raise hurricane warnings on Friday. He hadn't. Moore said that Isaac had lost his wife and daughter in an effort to save the people of Galveston. He hadn't.[4] One cheeky editor wrote to Isaac to say he'd be happy to publish anything the Bureau sent him, as "we would all rather believe that the weather service was valuable than that is was of no use to the public." For Galveston the storm was ruinous in more ways than one. For years Galveston and Houston had been fighting it out to win pole position as cotton port of the south. The storm sealed Galveston's fate. Faced with this dismal result, and trying to avoid an unruly mob with torches and pitchforks, Isaac went into damage control. He put a spin on his own activities just before the storm. Rather than issuing assurances that day, he instead claimed that I warned the people that great danger threatened them, and advised some 6,000 persons, from the interior of the State, who were summering along the beach to go home immediately. I warned persons residing within three blocks of the beach to move to the higher portions of the city, that their houses would be undermined by the ebb and flow of the increasing storm tide and would be washed away. Summer visitors went home, and residents moved out in accordance with the advice given them. Some 6,000 lives were saved by my advice and warnings. Isaac himself lived three blocks from the beach, but, tellingly, didn't evacuate his own family. Other accounts of his actions that afternoon also differ: not one of them mentions Isaac's gallant warnings. Galveston lost 6,000 of its inhabitants, nearly half of the town had been completely destroyed, with the remainder so badly damaged it needed to be bulldozed. Isaac survived and was transferred to New Orleans, which was, he said, "a dumping ground for observers who were guilty of drunkenness and neglect of duty, and whom it was necessary to discipline", where he could not "render conspicuous service." Sounds like a good move to us. Footnotes
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 ©1996-2006 History House Inc.All Rights Reserved. |
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