When We Finally Learned

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As the first post for the week I am going to try and address the focus question posed on our syllabus and see if Isaac’s Storm relates to much of the things we have been discussing throughout the semester regarding the lack of awareness and preparedness in the historical disasters we have been analyzing. The work Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson ultimately discusses the meteorologist Isaac Cline and his role in predicting the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. The era that this event occurred in, the way people went about handling the situation and the eventual misjudged outcome, I believe explains a lot about where disaster preparedness was at the time and showed Americans what desperately needed to change. This was during a time where people believed that their technology had overcome the forces of nature and that their advancements superseded the dangers nature could throw at them. In their assessment, Galveston, Texas, a city on the calm waters of the gulf could not possibly be devastated by any storm as professional opinion generally agreed that the storm was not headed north. In the grand scheme of things, meteorology as a science was still controversial; differing opinions about the weather as god’s own will and forecasting were often debated.

Our preparedness was not where it should have been and where it went after this disaster. At the time, meteorologists did have modern weather instruments available to them and this technology was seen as enough. Isaac Cline worked for the weather bureau out of Galveston, and sent frequent telegrams to the headquarters in Washington, but official weather mapping wasn’t the struggle at the turn of the 20^th century, it was predicting the track of the storm. Weather preparedness may not have been the issue at hand, the issue was prediction preparedness. Scientists did not have an accurate means to predict the track of a hurricane and this enabled Hurricane Isaac to tear apart Galveston. I wont get into the distrust of Cuban meteorologists because that issue is rather evident and ultimately, shows the lack of research and awareness on the Americans part. The Weather Bureau’s misguided prediction of the storm in Cuba and their inability to trust their meteorologists is a factor of this event that I do not want to get into. All that needs to be mentioned is that the Cubans had predicted hurricanes far more accurately than the newly formed U.S. weather bureau which was soon realized by all involved.

What are to be discussed are the awareness, alertness and preparedness of the citizens in Galveston. Just like the Johnstown Flood people everywhere disregarded signs of danger, believed they were immune from harm, choose to carry on their daily lives and truly showed the unpreparedness and cockiness of our American ideas at the time. People in Galveston went to work and carried out their day on Saturday, despite Isaac Cline’s warning. By 12:30, most of the streets were flooded from the storm surge. Even unsupervised children played in this dangerous current for most of the day until their own bodies filled the water. Still and even at that point, men were determined to deny the storm’s existence, and made every effort to get to work. The book mentions restaurants opened at Midway, at lunch hour men went out to their favorite restaurants, men laughed and joked about “frightened women”, and some people continued to commute into Galveston by train.

This leads me to compare Price’s statements about the Johnstown Flood and their inability to stay prepared and the unconscionable decisions of the citizens of Galveston. He writes in a previous blog, “Nevertheless, the preparation process in case of this scenario was appallingly mismanaged. This issue of acknowledgment versus preparation is vitally significant in not only the Johnstown flood, but in innumerable disasters throughout history. How could so much risk be universally accepted, yet not be addressed directly and seriously?” He asks the right question in that situation and I am forced to ask the same one now.  The fact that people were completely willing to deny the forces nature and carry on their day is rather shocking. We now know that technology fails us at times, and that is what people at the turn of the 20th were about to learn. It is unfortunate that they had to learn this lesson with the sacrifice of 10,000 lives but it goes to show the level of preparedness in American ideas at the time. The shaping of this event towards our disaster awareness almost needs to go without mentioning that it is so drastic. Something needed to be done yet; it took this storm to make that happen. The country learned that nature is not tamable on that day. We understood we needed to switch our focus to preparedness and damage control.