Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [73]
Louise looked out an upstairs window and saw that water now covered the porch rail of the house next door. Until then, she had felt mostly excitement. The morning had been full of wonders: water racing down the street, toads all over the place, her mother chopping holes in the floor, and water even inside the house. But there was something about the water so deep around her neighbor’s house that took all the excitement away. “I thought of all the things that had to be left behind, and I was sad and afraid.”
Her mother watched for Mason.
AT PRECISELY 2:30 P.M. Galveston time a gust of wind lifted the Weather Bureau’s rain gauge from the roof of the Levy Building and carried it off toward the southwest. It had captured 1.27 inches of rain.
At 5:15, the wind destroyed the bureau’s anemometer. By then the instrument had registered a maximum velocity of one hundred miles an hour.
The wind continued to intensify.
A FIGURE APPROACHED the Hopkins home, moving against the current. The water was up to his underarms. He dodged pieces of lumber and boxes and telegraph poles. Now and then a square of slate smacked the water around him. Softer things bumped against his legs, then moved on with the current.
When Mason arrived, a lightness came over the Hopkins household. It was as if the house itself had been holding its breath awaiting his arrival. He was bruised and soaked, but smiling, and Mrs. Hopkins hugged him as she had never hugged anyone before. The storm raged and water burbled up through the holes in the floor and slid in a sheet under the front door, but everyone was home and the unspoken fear that had gripped the place was suddenly gone. “We had a warm feeling of all of us being together, safely, we believed. We went upstairs in the main part of our house … to wait out the storm.”
ALL OVER GALVESTON, there was a need for light. A craving. People needed light for themselves to ease their fears, but they also needed others to know they were still in their homes and alive. Throughout Galveston, lamps bloomed in a thousand second-floor windows. We’re here, they said. Come for us. Please.
The same idea came to Louise’s mother. She did not want to use a lamp, however. The house was shaking too badly. She feared the lamp would fall and set fire to the house, and then all would indeed be lost.
She dragged one of the big drums of lard to the center of the room. She found a carnival flag attached to a stick, and laid the stick across the top of the drum. She saturated a strip of cloth with lard, then draped this over the stick, one end in the lard, for a wick. “When it was lighted it gave off a dim and eerie light,” Louise said. “We sat and watched it flickering and listened to the banging and howling of the storm outside.”
It was oddly comfortable in the room. Almost cozy.
Until her sister, Lois, screamed.
Judson Palmer
IN THE BLOCKS behind Dr. Young’s house, several families began moving toward the home of Judson Palmer, at 2320 P½. Anyone could see it was one of the strongest houses around. Isaac Cline himself had gauged it a perfectly safe haven against the storm. A neighbor couple, Mr. and Mrs. Boecker, arrived with their two children. Garry Burnett followed with his wife and his two children. Soon afterward another Burnett, George, arrived with his wife, child, and mother. The last couple to arrive was an unidentified black man and his wife who asked if they too might come inside until the storm passed. Palmer now counted seventeen people in his house, including his own wife and his son, Lee. The boy’s dog, Youno, scampered wildly around the house, clearly delighted with the attention of so many big and small human beings.
At 6:00 P.M., Palmer and the other men rolled up the first-floor carpets and hauled them upstairs. They carried the furniture up next, an effort that caused them all to break a heavy sweat. With all the doors and windows shut and so many moist people inside, the house felt hot, humid, and stale. Once all the furniture was moved, everyone