Isaac’s Storm
Living in North Carolina has given me a new perspective on hurricanes (I was waiting for the bus when out first hit), which probably made this book all the more engrossing. When I first started reading Isaac’s Storm, I was mostly annoyed by the author’s constant recriminations against the hubris of the era (ca. 1900) and heavy handed foreshadowing (this seems to be a common failing in books about natural disasters). As I progressed, I began to realize that this was a fascinating look at an age when radar didn’t make tracking hurricanes as easy as it is now, and when our understanding of the weather seemed so close to perfections but was in truth deeply flawed. The story of Isaac Cline is tragic, but he is largely a product of his age. The real story here is about the US Weather Bureau and late 19th century meteorology. My major complaint at the end is that there are only two graphics to help illustrate the hurricane, and none to help us understand much of the hurricane science discussed in detail throughout the book.
Interestingly, as I write this tropical storm Arlene is heading towards Florida (the first named storm of the 2005 season). Meanwhile, Sen. Rick Santorum is trying to stop the National Weather from issuing public forecasts and thereby stop “competing” with commercial forecasters.
I read Isaac’s Storm and found it was essentially truthful, realistic. At the turn of thre 20th Century there WAS hubris but naivete as well, and a dearth of knowledge about hurricanes, how they form, and there was no technology or media as we know it, of course. It no more filled with recriminations than any other book. Larsen states the conditions and they weren’t good. Also, he was writing a book whose time had come. First, I’d read The Perfect Storm, which led me to Isaac’s Stiorm, which got me to buying “Against the Tide” about the dangers of overbuilding right on beaches, which got me reading “Bayou Farewell” by Mike Tidwell, about the vanishing Louisiana coast. Against the Tide’s author Cornelia Dean stated that Cline did a Revere-ride up and down the Galveston beach warning others, but that book was published the same year as Isaac’s Storm and Dean probably didn’t know the truth. Kline was a human, a man, with two sides to his nature, mostly arrogant, and self-aggrandizing. I also watched the History Channel’s presentation which also straightened us out. Cline had a house he thought was invincible, his brother Joseph said Evacuate and Cline said Stay here, and he lost his wife because of it. Erik Larson’s writing featuring the beginning of the hurricane (”Somewhere, a butterfly…”) was so fascinating that I’m buying Zebrowski’s Perils of A Restless Planet, which brings up the butterfly effect. Imagine now, our human population, six billion strong, and the hundreds of billions of other species crowding the earth, breathing, cooking, eliminating, burning forests down, burning fuels, driving, smoking, etc.
As for knowlege about weather, it was predicted that Hurricane Katrina would hit New Orleans, yet there are thousands dead because of negligence about the levees, not to mention the destruction of the natural bastions against hurricanes–the grasses, bayous, and it is a pity. And it is 106 years later. so if recriminations are in order,as they were back then, then recriminations are certainly in order now. Slogans such as “Got FEMA?” “Fix Everything, My Ass” “Bush Fly-by” are recriminations as well, but we needed them then and we need them now.