Isaac's Storm

It was Isaac Cline, the chief weatherman in Texas, who fervently denied the belief that a major hurricane could ever hit Galveston. He denied it as a storm formed in the Atlantic. He denied it as the storm moved through Cuba. He denied it as ships in the Gulf fought their way through the storm. He denied it hours before the storm began to make its presence known in Galveston, and he even denied it as the storm blew down his house, took the lives of his wife and unborn child, destroyed most of the city, killed what is believed to be over 10,000 people.

Isaac was wrong.

The Great 1900 Storm is considered to be one of the worst hurricanes to ever hit the United States.

Isaac's Storm is the story of an amazing city, a city with a massive amount of new development, a port city that seemed destined to become the biggest in Texas, a city filled with rich and ambitious people, a city ruined by the arrival of a tremendous and unexpected storm one day in September of 1900.

The stories author Erik Larson shares in this book, stories of death and destruction, are horrifying. I drive along the seventeen-foot seawall in Galveston, built after the storm in the hope that all could say never-again. I think about the orphanage and the lives lost there as I pass the place where Wal-Mart stands today. I drive down P 1/2 and 25th and think about Isaac's home which once stood, knocked down by the force of the storm, his wife lost. I see the Galvez Hotel, built after the storm, boldly outside the reach of the seawall, almost daring a storm to strike. I think about Galveston, as it was before the storm, as it was during the storm, and what it is like now, 123 years after the storm.

And I wonder when the next Great Storm will hit.