Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [76]
Moments later, he saw houses on the south side of P½ between 25th and 26th—half a block north of Isaac’s house—collapse into the water, among them the pretty one-story home of a man named Alexander Coddou, the father of five children whose wife happened to be off the island. The houses fell gracefully at first. One witness, watching the same thing happen in his neighborhood, said houses fell into the Gulf “as gently as a mother would lay her infant in the cradle.” It was when the current caught them and swept them away that the violence occurred, with bedrooms erupting in a tumult of flying glass and wood, rooftops soaring through the air like monstrous kites.
Dr. Cline’s house, Young saw, was still standing, although floating debris had torn away his first and second-floor galleries.
SOON THE WATER on Isaac’s first floor was over nine feet deep. The wind tore at the house like an immense crowbar. The ridge of debris came closer and closer, destroying homes south and east of Isaac’s house and casting them against his walls. Isaac’s house rocked and trembled, but remained firmly footed on its pilings. Isaac at this point still believed the house strong enough to survive the assault. He did not know, however, that the ridge of debris was now pushing before it a segment of streetcar trestle a quarter-mile long, consisting of tons of cross-ties and timbers held together by rails.
Joseph knew nothing of this either. He believed the house would fail simply because the storm was too powerful.
“Strangely enough,” Joseph wrote, “amid the seething turmoil, I did not feel unduly excited. In fact, I was almost calm. I was convinced that, in some way or another, I should come out of it alive. I kept thinking of an uncle of ours, who, alone of all those aboard a sinking ship, saved himself by getting on a plank when the vessel went under and [by] drifting upon this frail support five miles to shore.”
Joseph may have been calm, but he was not helping anyone else achieve such peace. “Again, as strongly as I could, I warned my relatives and friends that the house was about to collapse.”
Imagine it, the atmosphere in this house. Fifty terrified men, women, and children packed into one room, Isaac’s wife in bed, his three daughters petrified but snuggling close to their mother for comfort. The room is insufferably hot and moist. The walls drip condensation. Now and then rain spits through the ceiling; a pocket in the wallpaper explodes. Beside the bed stands Dr. Isaac Monroe Cline, thirty-eight years old, bearded, confident the house can endure anything mere nature can muster, but even more certain that to venture outside would be like stepping in front of a locomotive. Nearby, perhaps at the other side of the bed, stands Joseph, the earnest younger brother, apprentice-for-life, who has always always always resented Isaac’s insufferable pose—that he, not Joseph, was the man who knew weather, he knew when the rain would fall, he knew when true danger loomed. The conversation starts quietly but soon, partly because their tempers rise, partly just to be heard over the wind, rain, and barrage of debris, they start shouting. “Are you deaf, Isaac?” Joseph perhaps cries. “What do you think that is, for God’s sake? An evening breeze? This house will not stand. Out there at least we have a chance.”
Isaac prevailed. Joseph, frustrated, began offering advice for how best to survive the coming collapse. “I urged them, if possible, to get on top of the drift and float upon it when the dangerous moment came. As the peril became greater, so did the crowd’s excitement. Most of them began to sing; some of them were weeping, even wailing; while, again, others knelt in panic-stricken prayer. Many of them were scrambling aimlessly about, seeking what, in their fright,