Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [100]
There was more he wanted to say, but did not. Years later, in a personal memoir, he wrote that the only warning given the people of Galveston came from him and his station, in defiance of Moore’s “strict orders” against unauthorized storm warnings. “If I had taken the time on the morning of the 8th to ask for approval from the forecaster in Washington and waited for his reply the people could not have been warned of the disaster.” Loss of life, he wrote, “would have been twice as great.”
But he conceded he too had underestimated the storm. “I did not foresee the magnitude of the damage it would do.”
MOORE CONTINUED TO portray the bureau as having expertly forecast and tracked the hurricane, and credited in particular the West Indies Service. In an article in the October issue of Collier’s Weekly, one of the most influential magazines of the day, he wrote, “It is a remarkable testimonial to the foresight of the present Secretary of Agriculture, Honorable James Wilson, that the meteorological service inaugurated by him during the Spanish-American war as a protection to the American fleet was, by the last Congress, permanently adopted as a part of our National Weather Bureau, on account of its beneficent application to the peaceful ways of trade and commerce. Without the reporting stations of the new service the Weather Bureau would have been unable to detect the inception of the Galveston hurricane when it was only a harmless storm, and, when it reached the intensity of a hurricane, to issue timely warnings in advance of its coming.” He repeated his distorted account of Isaac’s ordeal.
Most U.S. newspapers, unaware of the nuances of the bureau’s performance and inclined in those days to be more accepting of official dogma, adopted Moore’s view. The Boston Herald applauded the bureau for its “excellent service.” The Buffalo, New York, Courier said the bureau’s forecasts testified to its “advanced efficiency.” The Inter-Ocean of Chicago, Illinois, wrote, “Simple justice demands public recognition of the efficiency of the Chief of the Meteorological Bureau and his staff.”
Few asked the obvious question: If the bureau had done such a great job, why did so many people die? More people perished in Galveston than in any previous U.S. natural disaster—at least three times as many as in the Johnstown Flood.
SOON AFTER THE storm, Father Gangoite of the Belen Observatory discovered William Stockman’s patronizing remarks about how the poor ignorant natives of the islands had become accustomed to learning of storms “only when they were nearly past.” Gangoite brought them to the attention of the Cuban press. In the wake of the Galveston storm, Gangoite and Cuba’s editors saw the remarks as highly ironic. The Diario de la Marina noted that the Cuban public always gave “greater credence” to Gangoite’s forecasts, and that the facts justified this attitude.
“An example?” the editors asked. “Here is a recent one. The same day that the Weather Bureau published in the newspapers of Havana that the last hurricane had reached the Atlantic, the Belen Observatory said in the same papers that the center had crossed the eastern portion of the island and that it would undoubtedly reach Texas. A few hours later the first telegraphic announcement of the ravages of the cyclone in Galveston was received.”
The editorial concluded: “As this occurrence is very recent it affords a most delightful opportunity for the verification of what has just been published in the U.S., that until the establishment of the Weather Bureau in Havana, forecasts relating to hurricanes were unknown by the people of Cuba.”
Six days after the storm, the War Department, apparently fed up with Stockman and Colonel