Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
Natural disasters are an occurrence that is part of living on this planet, they are powerful and uncontrollable, but that doesn’t mean people can not take precautions to make these natural disasters least devasting. For example, Johnstown tried to keep the flow of water controlled in their lake by creating a dam to block the water, but as CLUNA3 says in their article Johnstown Flood of 1889, “This flood occurred because the dam had been poorly patched with straw and horse manure.” If the town would have built a well-developed dam and made sure it was patched up correctly thousands of lives would have been saved. In the next two chapters, Larson starts off by blaming more people than just the Cubans. He first blamed the Weather Bureau saying it was their fault for not predicting this storm was actually a hurricane and that they were trying to keep their status by covering up their mistake of not being able to predict like the Cubans. They then blame the newspaper and editors of Galvenstien and uses the newspaper of Saturday (the day the storm hit) as proof seeing that the weather reports were all scattered throughout the newspaper with the most important report of the storm located in the middle of the paper where many readers would not look to find it.
The rest of te section is about different people’s stories at the beginning parts of the storm as it reached Galvenstien. Through reading these sections Larson is pointing out that people had many warning signs to know to evacuate their homes and the city altogether, but people choose to wait until the last minute resulting in many people’s deaths. For example, the business men in downtown ignored the strong winds and continued to their favorite lunch spot, Ritter’s Cafe, the windows would shake every few moments, but no one questioned it until the roof flew off the restaurant and killing five people in the process. We were asked why this book was written during class and after reading this sections I believe Larson wrote this to bring people’s unpreparedness when it comes to natural disasters and their common sense when it comes to trying to survive them.
Leave a Reply