Isaac’s Storm: The Drowning of Galveston

Isaac’s Storm: The Drowning of Galveston by Erik Larson

Larson, E., 1999, Isaac’s Storm: The Drowning of Galveston, Fourth Estate Limited, London.

Several years ago, a strange quirk of fate found me reading Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm in the same period as delivering lectures on atmospheric modelling (with an emphasis on weather prediction) to third year students on the Ocean Science course and the concepts of wave dispersion and shoreline set-up to second year students on the same course. These two areas of scientific work are central to the events that unfold as Larson recounts the chilling story of how, on the 8th of September 1900, the city of Galveston, Texas was all but destroyed by the unexpected arrival of “the worst natural disaster ever to strike the United States”. Such was my involvement with Larson’s story, and the force with which his words grabbed at me, that in the space of a few days over one hundred students had to listen to me waxing lyrical about Isaac’s Storm and recommending it as the best book I had ever read.

Isaac’s Storm is the story of the destruction of much of the thriving city of Galveston, the highest point of which was just nine feet above sea level, by one hundred and fifty mile per hour winds, a massive storm surge and the storm waves that this surge transported onto the coastal land.

In tracing the story of the great storm of 1900, Larson skillfully interweaves easily approachable descriptions of the generation, development and effects of hurricane systems, with a multitude of sub-plots that include the development of the US Weather Bureau, the rivalry between the city of Galveston and its near neighbour Houston, the denigration and deliberate neglect of weather predictions from Cuba by central figures in the Weather Bureau, and the smouldering tension between Isaac Cline, the head of the Galveston Office of the US Weather Bureau and his younger brother Joseph, also a meteorologist working at the Galveston Office. Along the way, numerous personal tales, including the life history of Isaac Cline himself, provide a fascinating glimpse of life in 1900 and allow the reader almost to smell the smells of the city of Galveston at the turn of the century.

Larson’s research into his subject appears to have been exhaustive almost to the point of obsessive. Interviews with scientists, US Weather Bureau memoranda, eye-witness accounts and articles in contemporary newspapers all serve to provide the fact from which Larson spins his story. It is revealing to note that in addition to the 300 or so pages of the main text, Larson provides 55 pages of notes on his sources and references, some of which are as interesting and as readable as the main text itself. For example, I was fascinated to learn that in certain hurricane disasters the majority of the people who drowned in flood waters did so after falling out of trees into which they had climbed for safety only to be bitten by venomous snakes that shared the same survival strategy! (the characteristic snake-bite puncture marks on their bodies being the tell-tale sign of their demise).

If I have one criticism of Larson’s book, and I am being picky here, it is that no photographs are included, despite the fact that explicit reference is made to many in the text. However, even here I am not convinced that the power of the story would have been enhanced if photographs had been incorporated. Such is the clarity of Larson’s writing that perhaps it is more effective for the reader to form their own images – certainly it seems likely that such “minds-eye” images will be a little less harrowing than the real sights that met the eyes of the first people to enter Galveston after the storm had passed.

With the passage of time, I’m not sure that I now agree with my assertion that Isaac’s Storm is the best book I have ever read, but it is certainly up there with the best. On a human level, Isaac’s Storm provides an extremely challenging read and on a scientific level it is highly accessible. Isaac’s Storm has certainly left a lasting impression in my mind and it’s relevance to the modern day was brought sharply into focus by the destruction suffered by New Orleans at the hands of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.