Isaac's Storm

Whenever my mother-in-law is in town, she always comes up with field trips for us. This year, she took us to the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, a vacation mansion built in 1902 by Henry Flagler, the man who helped pioneer Florida with his railroad and hotels. Visiting these old homes does make you feel like you are going back in time, and we did learn about "The Gilded Age" and the hubris of that era. While we were there, she graciously bought us books, and the one she got me was a winner. The minute I started it, I wanted to go lock myself in some room and read undisturbed until I was finished. (I tried, but my conscience made me come out.)

Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson was thrilling reading. The book is a well-written, extremely well-researched account of the deadly hurricane that caught Galveston, Texas, by surprise in 1900, killing more than 8,000 people. Larson describes the bland indifference of so many to the pending storm, and contrasts that with the terror, awe and absolute devastation its arrival actually brings.

The story focuses on meteorologist Isaac Cline, arrogant but still a sympathetic character because of his diligence and devotion to principles. From the start, Larson uses minute details to capture the imagination. He describes Isaac as "loyal, a believer in dignity, honor and effort. He taught Sunday School. He paid cash, a fact noted in a ... small red book... [which] listed nearly all Galveston's established citizens..., basing this appraisal on secret reports filed anonymously by friends and enemies."

These tidbits of information, delivered on the first page of the first chapter, let the reader know what he will be getting in this book: as detailed and honest an account as the author could dig up from a variety of often unusual sources. To tell his story, Larson went to the actual telegrams sent from and to the Weather Bureau chief; letters and drafts written by Red Cross founder Clara Barton; personal accounts from storm survivors; and photographs of the nonchalant Texas city before and the indescribable horror after the storm struck.

This thorough research is the strength of this book, yielding so many stories one feels deluged by them. Larson has found startling personal accounts of one of the most deadly hurricanes ever to hit the United States. He tells of stout buildings whose walls slowly wrench apart before horrified eyes, rescuers moving aside bodies of men, women and children with oars to allow their boats to pass, nuns linking orphan children by tying bedsheets to each little arm, only to have the tethers pull the children to their deaths as storm wreckage catches on them.

Central to this story, and well-documented by Larson, is the overblown pride in technology and man's accomplishments that pervaded this era. Isaac Cline, the meteorologist at the heart of this book, fails to recognize the pending storm, largely because he believes firmly in his own opinion that hurricanes are not a real danger for the city of Galveston. He views all the data received through this lens.

The U.S. Weather Bureau has its own expectations, which exacerbate Cline's propensity to underplay the storm. Just before the 1900 hurricane, the U.S. Weather Bureau had banned telegrams from Cuban meterologists because they believed the U.S. forecasts to be superior. They refused to take seriously any of the information that came out of Cuba about this storm, which had hit that country before heading for Texas. U.S. officials even refused to call it a hurricane, labeling the Cuban reports "alarmist". Basing their reports solely on their expectations, the U.S. Weather Bureau stated without qualification that the storm was headed to the Florida Keys and then out to the Atlantic. This "guess, armored in the certainty of the age, provided a framework into which ... forecasters eagerly fitted other incoming observations," Larson writes.

Later, these prideful man who had created their own reality, could not see the truth even after Galveston was under water and thousands of bodies floated through the streets. Rather than believe that the confidently worded reports had been, in fact, wrong, they simply assumed that the hurricane that hit Galveston was a second storm, that had formed quickly somehow in the Gulf. "That cyclone is the same one which passed over Cuba," a Cuban forecaster slowly told a U.S. Weather official in a confrontation shortly after the event. "No, sir," [the U.S. weather official] snapped. "It cannot be; no cyclone ever can move from Florida to Galveston."

This book rings with the warning to be humble and teachable, especially in the face of great storms (which seem to be approaching our family.) But more than that, the mighty power of this hurricane, so underestimated by men, reminds me to both reverence and hope in the Lord who controls all of that power and more. All of that might is working for our good in everything that happens. He promises that.


The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love. (Psalm 147:11)