The Great Storm of 1900

A Review: AMan, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

On September 8, 1900 an unanticipated, category 4 hurricane hit the shores of Galveston Island, and was and still is to this date the deadliest natural disaster in the history of The United States, with a death toll at about 8,000. The storm devastated the emerging city, which at the time was a bustling city of 42,000 and one of the fastest growing ports in the South with a bright and promising future. A lack of technology, little understanding of how storms worked, the climate and geography of Galveston Island at the time, in part with the inflated hubris of The United States Weather Bureau, who refused to accept any foreign meteorological intelligence, all were major reasons of the significant death toll and devastation of the 1900 storm.
The film tells the story of Isaac Cline, the chief meteorologist at the Galveston U.S. Weather Bureau office from 1889-1901, who was an integral figure in the storm of 1900. Cline was born 1861 in Tennessee, and had a passion for nature and the emerging science and technologies of the time. He excelled in college and was well versed in a variety of topics and held two degrees and a doctorate. After that, he joined the newly formed U.S. Weather Bureau, and rose in the ranks through hard work and diligent observations. Later he was assigned to head the U.S. Weather Bureau office in Galveston. He believed that Galveston was impervious to any storm, and stood firm in this belief, even building his home near the beach. This belief would be his downfall in preparing for the Great Storm of 1900.
The technology of predicting storms at the time was not very precise, and the predictions of the Weather Bureau were notoriously wrong. Cline had no idea what was causing the peculiar weather prior to the storm, but seemed to just brush it off. Also the refusal to accept any intelligence from the experienced Cuban observers during the middle of hurricane season was a grave mistake for the Bureau. Little concern was placed on the tropical storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Weather Bureau predicted it to make a turn northward. The Cuban observers thought otherwise, predicting that it would slam into the Texas coast, and sadly they were proved right. The extremely warm waters of the gulf facilitated the increasing power of the storm. Galveston being a barrier island was only 8.5 ft. above sea level at the highest point of the town. There was no kind of wall or barrier to the sea at the time of the storm. Since the storm was building in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, they had no idea of the ferocity of the rising storm since there was no technology for communication from ship to land.
When the storm made landfall, the townspeople were very unprepared, mostly due to the delayed reaction of Cline and the Weather Bureau office. Evacuation was impossible due to the bridge being inoperable at the time of the storm. Ironically, many townspeople gathered at Cline’s house, thinking it was a safe place since he was a weatherman. They were completely wrong, his house was devastated by the storm surge which drown the whole city and took the house off it’s foundation. In the aftermath of the storm, a moving picture camera surveyed the devastation, while workers searched through the wreckage to find survivors, while nothing was able to record the stench of death reported to be smelt from miles away. Cline claimed to have rode along the beach, like Paul Revere, warning of the approaching storm. This is assumed to be false, but maybe it was his way of trying to cope with the fact that he lost his wife and many fellow citizens due to his failure to warn of the hurricane. Galveston would never fully recover to the vigor it once had prior to the storm.
Since then, Galveston has built a sea wall and raised the whole island higher above sea level, but will never forget the devastation of the Great Storm of 1900. A combination of factors made this storm the worst in American history, and many lessons are to be learned from it. Even now, though we have better technologies to monitor and prepare for storms, we are still at the mercy of Mother Nature.