Isaac's Storm (36 page)

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,
appeared
to
be
vantage
points."

The
battering
continued.
By
now
all
four
galleries
had
been
torn
from
Isaac's
house,
all
slate
stripped
from
its
roof.

The
trestle
was
a
yard
away.

IN
DALLAS,
THREE
hundred
miles
north,
the
telegraph
operator
at
the
Dallas
News,
sister
to
the
Galveston
News,
realized
the
steady
flow
of
cables
from
the
Galveston
paper
had
ceased.
The
two
newspapers
maintained
a
leased
telegraph
line
that
ran
directly
between
their
editorial
offices.
The
telegrapher
at
the
Dallas
paper
keyed
off
an
inquiry,
but
got
no
response.
He
tried
again.
Again
nothing.
He
then
tried
raising
Galveston
over
public
lines
by
relay
through
Beaumont,
and
next
by
sending
a
message
to
Vera
Cruz,
Mexico,
for
relay
to
Galveston
via
the
Mexican
Cable
Company
(whose
Galveston
agent
had
only
a
few
hours
to
live).

Again
he
failed.

At
that
moment,
City
Editor
William
O'Leary
was
in
the
office
of
the
Dallas
paper's
manager,
G.
B.
Dealey,
showing
Dealey
a
passage
in
Matthew
Fontaine
Maury's
best-selling
Physical
Geography
of
the
Sea
that
seemed
to
show
"that
destruction
of
Galveston
by
tropical
storm
could
not
happen."

The
wires
remained
dead.

SATURDAY
EVENING,
JOHN
Blagden,
the
new
man
temporarily
assigned
to
Galveston,
found
himself
alone
in
the
office.
He
had
been
in
the
city
all
of
two
weeks
and
here
he
was
alone
in
the
dark,
facing
a
storm
whose
intensity
seemed
to
place
it
in
the
realm
of
the
supernatural.

The
Levy
Building
was
four
stories
tall
and
made
of
brick
but
in
some
gusts,
Blagden
said,
it
"rocked
frightfully."
Bornkessell,
the
station's
printer,
had
left
for
home
first
thing
in
the
morning.
Isaac
had
gone
home
next,
followed
by
Joseph.
Ernest
Kuhnel,
a
clerk,
was
supposed
to
be
in
the
office
but
had
fled
the
building
in
terror.

The
storm
flag
was
gone,
as
were
the
anemometer,
rain
gauge,
and
sunshine
recorder.
The
telephone
had
stopped
ringing.
There
was
nothing
for
Blagden
to
do
but
watch
the
barometer
and
try
to
keep
himself
sane.
He
estimated
the
wind
at
110
miles
an
hour.

The
hurricane
had
set
a
course
toward
Galveston
soon
after
leaving
Cuba,
and
had
stayed
on
that
course
ever
since,
as
if
it
had
chosen
Galveston
as
its
target.
It
had
a
different
target,
however.
The
great
low-pressure
zone
that
had
formed
over
the
Pacific
Coast
earlier
in
the
week
had
progressed
to
where
it
now
covered
a
broad
slice
of
the
nation
from
Texas
to
Canada.
The
hurricane
saw
this
low-pressure
zone
as
a
giant
open
door
through
which
it
could
at
last
begin
its
northward
journey.

The
storm's
track
intersected
Galveston's
coastline
at
a
ninety-degree
angle,
with
the
eye
passing
about
forty
miles
west
of
the
city
somewhere
between
Galveston
and
the
Brazos
River.
Meteorologists
discovered
this
later
when
officers
aboard
an
Army
tug
stationed
at
the
mouth
of
the
Brazos
reported
a
pattern
of
winds
that
showed
the
eye
had
passed
somewhere
east
of
their
position.
The
pattern
in
Galveston
indicated
the
eye
had
passed
to
the
west
of
the
city.
This
was
the
worst-possible
angle
of
approach,
for
it
brought
the
hurricane's
most-powerful
right
flank
directly
into
the
city.

Blagden
knew
nothing
of
the
storm's
track.
What
he
did
know
was
that
the
first
shift
in
wind
direction,
from
north
to
northeast,
had
brought
a
sudden
acceleration
in
wind
speed.
And
now
he
sensed
the
wind
beginning
to
shift
again,
toward
the
east.
Impossibly,
the
change
seemed
to
bring
another
increase
in
velocity.
Gusts
struck
the
building
like
cannonballs.

Barometric
pressure
had
fallen
all
day,
but
at
five
o'clock
Galveston
time
it
began
to
fall
as
if
someone
had
punched
a
leak
into
the
instrument's
mercury
basin.
At
five,
the
barometer
read
29.05
inches.

Nineteen
minutes
later,
28.95.

At
6:40
P.M.,
28.73
inches.

Eight
minutes
later,
28.70.

An
hour
later,
the
barometer
read
28.53
inches,
and
continued
falling.
It
bottomed
at
28.48.

Blagden
had
never
seen
it
that
low.
Few
people
had.
At
the
time,
it
was
the
lowest
reading
ever
recorded
by
a
station
of
the
U.S.
Weather
Bureau.

In
fact,
the
storm
drove
the
pressure
even
lower,
although
just
how
far
will
always
be
a
mystery.
The
bureau's
instruments
in
the
Levy
Building
captured
pressures
well
away
from
the
center
of
the
eye,
where
the
pressure
would
have
been
lowest.

Barometers
elsewhere
in
the
city
got
widely
varied
readings.
In
Galveston
harbor,
the
first
mate
of
the
English
steamer
Comino,
moored
at
Pier
14,
recorded
in
the
ship's
log
a
pressure
of
28.30
inches,
and
noted:
"Wind
blowing
terrific,
and
steamer
bombarded
with
large
pieces
of
timber,
shells,
and
all
manner
of
flying
debris
from
the
surrounding
buildings."
At
one
point
the
wind
picked
up
a
board
measuring
four
feet
by
six
inches
and
hurled
it
with
such
velocity
it
pierced
the
Comino's
hull.
The
hull
was
built
of
iron
plates
one
inch
thick.
In
the
train
station,
the
scientist
with
the
barometer
—
apparently
unaware
of
his
fast-eroding
popularity
—
called
out
a
pressure
of
27.50
inches,
and
announced
that
against
such
impossibly
low
pressures
"nothing
could
endure."

Years
later,
scientists
with
NOAA
put
the
lowest
pressure
of
the
storm
a
notch
lower,
at
27.49.

In
1900,
however,
even
Blagden's
reading
of
28.48
stretched
credibility.
"Assuming
that
the
reading
of
the
barometer
reported
at
Galveston
the
evening
of
the
8th
was
approximately
correct,"
wrote
one
of
Moore's
professors,
carefully
hedging
for
error,
"the
hurricane
at
that
point
was
of
almost
unparalleled
severity."

The
highest
speed
recorded
by
the
Galveston
station's
anemometer
before
it
blew
away
was
100
miles
per
hour.
The
bureau
later
estimated
that
between
5:15
P.M.
and
7
P.M.
Galveston
time,
the
wind
reached
a
sustained
velocity
of
"at
least"
120
miles
per
hour.

Most
likely
the
true
velocity
was
far
greater,
especially
within
the
eye-wall
itself.
Gusts
of
two
hundred
miles
an
hour
may
have
raked
Galveston.
Each
would
generate
pressure
of
152
pounds
per
square
foot,
or
more
than
sixty
thousand
pounds
against
a
house
wall.
Thirty
tons.

As
John
Blagden
sat
in
his
office,
powerful
bursts
of
wind
tore
off
the
fourth
floor
of
a
nearby
building,
the
Moody
Bank
at
the
Strand
and
22nd,
as
neatly
as
if
it
had
been
sliced
off
with
a
delicatessen
meat
shaver.
Captain
Storms
of
the
Roma
had
practically
bolted
his
ship
to
its
pier,
but
the
wind
tore
the
ship
loose
and
sent
it
on
a
wild
journey
through
Galveston's
harbor,
during
which
it
destroyed
all
three
railroad
causeways
over
the
bay.
The
wind
hurtled
grown
men
across
streets
and
knocked
horses
onto
their
sides
as
if
they
were
targets
in
a
shooting
gallery.
Slate
shingles
became
whirling
scimitars
that
eviscerated
men
and
horses.
Decapitations
occurred.
Long
splinters
of
wood
pierced
limbs
and
eyes.
One
man
tied
his
shoes
to
his
head
as
a
kind
of
helmet,
then
struggled
home.
The
wind
threw
bricks
with
such
force
they
traveled
parallel
to
the
ground,
A
survivor
identified
only
as
Charlie
saw
bricks
blown
from
the
Tremont
Hotel
"like
they
were
little