"People who get hurt and killed by a hurricane are either stuck
or stupid."
That was the judgment of a police officer friend of mine who'd
spent a career in South Florida. I thought about it while I watched
TV coverage of the slow, ponderous approach of Hurricane Ivan
to the Florida coast.
First there were the scenes of boarding up, then gassing up.
Then there were long lines of traffic choking the evacuation routes
north.
After the back-to-back disasters of Hurricanes Charley and Frances,
hardly anyone seemed willing to be stuck in Ivan's path. That
was short term memory. Longer term there were Hurricane Andrew
and the Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.
Ernest Hemingway was living in Key West then. He kept his own
storm charts, with tracks of hurricanes going back decades. He
figured the storm would hit on Labor Day. He figured it would
be bad.
Hemingway spent his time before the storm making his boat, Pilar,
as safe as he could. He was stuck because he didn't have enough
warning and he didn't have a good way out. He settled down to
wait.
Eighty miles north, on Matecumbe Key, there was a work camp for
World War I veterans who were there under the Federal Emergency
Relief Act. They were building a highway to connect the Keys to
Miami, paralleling the track of the Key West Extension of Henry
Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway. No one told them to evacuate.
They were as stuck as stuck could be. When the hurricane hit
it shredded the tents in the work camps, destroyed every building
on Matecumbe Key, and wrecked the railway. 250 of the workers
and over 150 civilians were killed.
The Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 was one of the most powerful
to ever hit the US. Powerful as it was, though, it wasn't the
deadliest. That was the 1900 Galveston Hurricane.
The Weather Bureau station manager on Galveston, Dr. Isaac M.
Cline, was pretty well stuck with what observations he could make
locally and telegrams from Washington. The story goes that they
convinced him that there was a major storm coming. On September
7, he raised the hurricane warning flags on the roof of the Weather
Bureau building.
Galveston residents and tourists were out on the beaches. Cline
went there, moving up and down the beaches, warning folks to move
to higher ground. By his own account, he convinced thousands to
leave the beach and nearby neighborhoods. He later took credit
for saving thousands of lives.
Some later researchers have questioned Cline's story and the
statistics of the Galveston Hurricane. But the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration still lists it as the largest US
weather disaster of all time.
The category 4 hurricane, destroyed produced 15 foot waves and
massive flooding. It destroyed thousands of buildings and killed
over 8000 people.
People used to be stuck in the paths of hurricanes because they
didn't get the kind of information they needed about what storms
were coming. No more.
Today satellites and radars of all kinds begin tracking hurricanes
when they are still off the coast of Africa. Today computerized
forecasting models project storm tracks a week in advance. Today
big storms are covered by 24 hour media like a giant real-world
sporting event, complete with play-by-play.
Yet, some folks stay in the path of an oncoming storm that bodes
them nothing but ill. Why?
Some are truly stuck. Police officers and fire fighters and utility
workers and many others stay because that's their job. Others
stay because they don't have the means or the health to go.
Most of those who stay in the path of a hurricane could go but
choose not to. Some underestimate the power of the storm. They
haven't lived long in hurricane country or they've never experienced
a major storm. They have not had the experience of a friend of
mine after Hurricane Opal, walking down the beach and finding
pieces of his house.
Some choose not to go. Many of them are old. Everything they
have is in their home and they are unwilling to face life with
only their memories, unwilling to start over one more time..
While we can ask those questions, there are some things we know
for sure. However powerful and impressive our technology, it is
nothing next to the roaring power of the great storms. However
good we get at forecasting, the storms can always surprise us.
However much the media cover the storm, when they move on the
damage remains.
Top of page
National
Weather Service & National Hurricane Center
The Weather Channel
National Weather Association
Storm
of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 by Willie
Drye
Last
Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and
Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford
and Henry Morrison Flagler
Sudden
Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938 by R.A. Scotti
Isaac's
Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
by Erik Larson and Isaac Monroe Cline
The
Windows of Heaven: A Novel of Galveston's Great Storm of 1900
by Ron Rozelle
The Official NOAA
Site on the Galveston Storm
21 September 2004
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