Comments on: Isaac’s Storm http://zeppox.net/weblog/2005/06/isaacs-storm Doing the things a web geek does Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:07:39 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Andrea Lawrence-Stuart http://zeppox.net/weblog/2005/06/isaacs-storm/comment-page-1#comment-1374 Andrea Lawrence-Stuart Mon, 04 Sep 2006 19:26:01 +0000 http://zeppox.net/weblog/2005/06/isaacs-storm#comment-1374 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. 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.

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