On 8 September 1900, the deadliest hurricane in American history ploughed into the unprepared port of Galveston, Texas. One-hundred-and-fifty mile an hour winds shredded clapperboard houses with the force of dynamite. The sea followed, a solid wall of water twenty feet high. The city's highest point was nine feet above sea level. Overnight between six and ten thousand people lost their lives, houses were reduced to matchwood, and bodies were strewn miles inland across the prairie. It was, and still is, the worst natural disaster ever to strike the United States.
At the turn of the century the new US Weather Bureau had the finest forecasting technology at their disposal. With this "perfect science" they were confident they were in control of the world, that the new century would be the American century. And in Galveston, Texas, they had one of the most dependable meteorologists, Isaac Cline. Cline, like the rest of America, believed that man's ingenuity had tamed nature. He believed there was nothing to fear.
Fatally, Cline failed to read the signs until it was too late. By then, the bath-houses on the sea-front were being crushed by rolling breakers, children were playing unawares in the rising water, the railway line was underwater and ships in the bay were fighting for their lives.
Vividly recounted and filled with the testimony of characters who lived through the cataclysm, 'Isaac's Storm' is a compelling story of hubris, tragedy and, for some, remarkable and unlikely survival in the face of a vicious tempest, indifferent to human accomplishment and human life.
