Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [69]
The operator refused. She had four thousand calls ahead of his, she told him. He tried to convince her this was urgent government business. She stood her ground.
Joseph asked for the manager, Tom Powell, whom he knew. Joseph explained the situation and its urgency. But why, if Isaac had so widely sounded the alarm, did Joseph have to explain anything at all? And why did the operator refuse his request?
Powell came through. Joseph got his direct connection to Western Union in Houston. He dictated the telegram. It was truly a transitional moment: There he was, at the cusp of the twentieth century, using the telephone to send a telegram.
He told Western Union the message was to be kept absolutely confidential. “The two cities,” Joseph explained, “were traditional rivals.” He did not want Houston to learn yet that its arch-rival in the race for deep-water dominance now lay under the converging waters of the Gulf and bay. “I explained that the facts in the message were the property of the Weather Bureau and of the Government, and were not for public release except from Washington.”
Isaac, meanwhile, was on his way home. Along the way he encountered Anthony Credo, who lived near the beach in a big two-story house with his wife and nine children.
Credo had eleven children in all, but two daughters now had families of their own and lived elsewhere. Neither was at the Credo house on Saturday. A son, William, was also absent, spending the day at the home of his fiancée.
Credo was headed for his own home, and walked part of the way alongside Isaac.
Isaac seemed worried. He told Credo he was afraid he had underestimated the storm. “Dr. Cline told Papa that this storm would be more dangerous than any of the others we had had before,” said Credo’s daughter Ruby. “Dr. Cline didn’t like the way the water was rising; the winds from the northeast had increased in a matter of minutes.”
Credo walked quickly to his house and gathered his family together. His conversation with Isaac had left him deeply troubled. He told his family to get ready to leave as quickly as possible. Then he and his wife did something that to Ruby’s young eyes was positively extraordinary: They began chopping holes into the parlor floor.
SOON ISAAC’S ROUTE took him past the home of Judson Palmer, the YMCA secretary. Just then Palmer happened to be looking out the door to see how much higher the waters had risen.
Palmer hailed Isaac, who waded toward him. Apparently Palmer was having second thoughts about staying in the house. He asked Isaac his opinion as to the safest course—move downtown, or stay?
Stay put, Isaac said. He told Palmer his house seemed well built and sturdy and would do fine and that his family would be safer there than anywhere else. Isaac said he was on his way to his own house, and planned to stay there until the storm was over.
For Palmer, this must have been especially reassuring.
Later, with mournful clarity, Isaac wrote in his official report, “Those who lived in large strong buildings, a few blocks from the beach, one of whom was the writer of this report, thought they could weather the wind and tide.”
But Isaac wasn’t alone in seeing his own house as a fortress. Apparently the Cline house was considered among the staunchest in the neighborhood. “Many went to his house for safety as it was the strongest-built of any in that part of town,” John Blagden said.
By the time Isaac got home, the water in his yard was waist deep. And wherever an object protruded from the water, there were toads. Tiny ones. Dozens. “Every little board, every little splinter, had about twenty or fifty toad-frogs on it,” one witness remembered. “I never seen so many toad-frogs in all the days of my life.”
JOSEPH LEFT FOR the house an hour or so after Isaac, and arrived about 5:30 P.M. The water was by then waist deep, Joseph said.
Neck deep, Isaac said.
Joseph was amazed to find that fifty people from the neighborhood had taken shelter in the house, including whole familes and the contractor