Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

by Erik Larson

  Louise did not know what to think about the doctors. There were so many of them. Sometimes they made the dining room as crowded as the train station on Sunday morning. At times she counted as many as twenty of them at the breakfast table, including medical students who came just for the meals. They talked of such strange things and always looked at you like if you did something wrong you would end up in one of those little funny-smelling jars they kept in their rooms with those mushy red-and-pink things floating around like little dead frogs only without the skin. Some days the doctors smelled just like the bottles.

  Louise’s father had died when she was a baby and her mother had not remarried. Louise had two brothers, John and Mason, and a sister, Lois, who was one year older than she. Their mother had added a second floor to the house, full of rental rooms so that she could earn an income at home without leaving the children. The house was perfectly located, near the University of Texas Medical School and two hospitals. Mrs. Hopkins filled the kitchen with huge sacks of green coffee, which she roasted and ground herself. She kept great drums of lard. “Our home was not only a home,” Louise said, “but a living.”

  It was not insured.

  “Martha was as glad as I to enjoy the cool windy day,” Louise said. “We were not concerned the wind was stronger and the clouds darker than usual and as far as I knew neither was my mother, busy in the house as she always was.”

  They played in the yard for as long as the rain let them. It came in fits, and gave them fits. With each fresh squall, they leaped laughing onto the porch. When the rain stopped, they plunged back into the yard. Mud clotted their shoes. Their dresses were soaked. This was heaven.

  The high curbs along the street formed a shallow canyon through which the water ran like a broad brown river, full of all kinds of interesting things. Ragged squares of wood. Boards. Trinkets. A signboard with lettering. Even an occasional snake. Toads were everywhere, climbing into the yard to escape the water.

  “As we watched from the porch we were amazed and delighted to see the water from the Gulf flowing down the street. ‘Good,’ we thought, ‘there would be no need to walk the few blocks to play at the beach, it was right at our front gate.’ ”

  THE ENRAGED SEA drew adults by the hundreds. A great crowd gathered at the Midway, a ten-block stretch along the beach with cheap restaurants that sold beer and boiled clams, and with ramshackle stores that peddled souvenirs, candy, seashells, and stereoscopic postcards. The adults came by streetcar, hoping maybe to ride it out over the waves, but found the car had to stop well before the beach. They walked the rest of the way through pools of water. Many described the spectacle as “grand” and “beautiful.” The rain struck like pebbles. The wind flayed umbrellas to their metal spines. Men and women facing the sea found their backs soaked, their fronts mostly dry. One witness reported that a few people, “with abundant foresight, appeared on the scene in bathing suits and of course were right in it from the jump.”

  Walter W. Davis, who had come to town on business from Scranton, Pennsylvania, was in his hotel Saturday morning about eleven o’clock when he heard people talking about how the breakers in the Gulf had become so huge they were now destroying the small shops of the Midway.

  Davis did not see much of the ocean in Scranton. This he had to see for himself.

  He took one of the trolleys. The trestle, he saw, ran out over the wild surf, but no cars ran on it now. The waves crashed against the rails. Big combers rolled right into the Midway itself. “The sight was grand at the time. I watched the waves wash out and break all those shell houses, theaters and lunch rooms, until I saw that the waves were coming too close for comfort.”

  He turned around and headed back to his hotel. It was about 12:30 now. He discovered that the streetcars had stopped running altogether. He had to walk back, at times wading through water up to his knees. The rain “felt like hail when it struck my face.”

  But the storm still held a powerful attraction for him. When he reached his hotel, he did not change his clothes. He had lunch in the hotel dining room, then set out for the bay side of the island.

  Here too water flowed onto the city streets, but this water came from the bay. Blown by the north wind, it climbed over the piers and onto the Strand. Water raced in from the Gulf and from the bay, the former propelled by the sea, the latter by the powerful north wind. It seemed as if Galveston were a gigantic ship sinking beneath the sea.

  Davis stood on a high sidewalk. The water came in so fast he could actually see it rise. It flowed below him like a spring creek, and raised translucent fins of water behind the legs of horses. Clumps of horse excrement splashed into the current and spiraled down the block. The hulls of great ships elevated by the extreme tide now towered above the warehouses of the wharf. All the ships were tightly moored, many with anchors dropped and chains reinforcing the thick rope hawsers that tied them to the piers. All seemed to have started their boilers. Smoke blew from their funnels in jagged black clouds that tore south over the Strand.

  A crate drifted past. The wood paving began to float. A man fell, laughing, and let the current sweep him half a block.

  Davis watched, transfixed, until he realized the water had topped the sidewalk itself and was now rippling past the soles of his shoes. It was then, he wrote in his unschooled way, “I became to be nervous.”

  DOWNTOWN, IT WAS business as usual. Women seemed to understand that something exceptional was occurring, but the men of Galveston went to great lengths to deny the strange feel of the day. They dressed as they always did, sat down to breakfast as always, drank the usual cup or two of coffee, read the morning paper, then set off for work and walked the same routes as always, the only difference being that they were forced to hold their hats against the strong northerly breeze. On the way they saw nothing out of place—provided they chose to overlook the twelve inches of water that filled every street, and the occasional boy floating past on a homemade raft. Cabs and drays moved among the avenues as if such flooding were a daily occurrence. As always, the immense fifteen-passenger bus owned by the Tremont Hotel went to the Santa Fe depot to pick up the morning’s first arrivals. It would be there even when the last train from the mainland finally reached the station, despite water that by then caressed the bellies of its horses.

  “My family pleaded with me to remain at home,” said A. R. Wolfram, a Galveston shopkeeper, “but I was determined to go to town. I tried to reassure them and promised that at the first signs of the storm’s approach, I would return home.” He did go home, for lunch, but left again to return to work, “despite the tearful pleadings of my wife and children.”

  Ike Kempner, one of Galveston’s richest men, walked into town for a meeting with two out-of-town businessmen, Joseph A. Kemp and Henry Sayles, to discuss an irrigation contract. Joseph Kemp was visibly concerned about the weather. Ike tried to reassure him. “We have had storms before,” he said. “Most of our homes are built on high stilts and the water has never come up into them. Then, too, Commodore Maury, the famed oceanographer, had recently issued a statement to the effect that storms originating in the West Indies would not place Galveston in their natural paths.”

  The meeting continued.

  JUDSON PALMER, SECRETARY of the Galveston YMCA, a centerpiece of the city’s social life, also walked to work at his usual time. He and Isaac Cline knew each other. Palmer taught the adult Sunday school at the First Baptist Church, where Isaac taught the young men’s class. Palmer lived at 2320 P½ Street, three blocks from Isaac’s house.

  On Saturday morning, Palmer’s wife, Mae, occupied herself doing the baking for Sunday dinner, while their six-year-old son, Lee, played with his beloved dog, Youno.

  Most days Palmer went home for lunch, but by noon the rain was gushing from the sky. Palmer decided to stay downtown.

  At one o’clock, Mae called him. She told him their yard was now underwater. What’s more, she had stuck her finger in the water and tasted it. It was salt water. She had tried calling
him from the telephone in their house, but found it was no longer operating. She walked to a neighbor’s place and phoned from there. Come home, she said. Please. She was starting to get scared.

  Palmer stayed at work. He joked with his coworkers, the “boys,” about “frightened women.” Soon, though, he did leave for home, and quickly understood why his wife had sounded so anxious. This was nothing like the other storms he had experienced in Galveston. The wind was blowing at about fifty miles an hour, he guessed. Water covered every street. He caught a ride on a passing delivery wagon.

  Mae fell into his arms. She did not want to stay in the house. She saw danger. They should all go downtown, she urged, and stay in the YMCA building until the storm passed. The building was strong, stronger certainly than their house. It was three stories of brick and stone.

  Judson agreed. The building would make a safe haven—for Mae and Lee. He, however, would stay at the house and look after it during the storm.

  Mae objected. He had to come. It wasn’t safe to stay this close to the beach. Powerful gusts of wind punctuated her remarks. Rain slapped the broad wood shutters she had closed to protect the windows. He simply had to come. Judson was adamant.

  She looked at him, heartbroken. But she would not leave him. If he stayed, they would all stay.

  LOUISA ROLLFING SHARED Mae Palmer’s fear, but had the same trouble convincing her husband of the danger.

  The elder August had left home at about 7:30 Saturday morning, his usual time. He walked downtown where his crew was finishing work on the Trust Building.

  Louisa had not yet grown concerned about the storm. Like her children, she at first found the storm exciting, and she reveled in the coolness of the morning. Everyone seemed to be out enjoying the breeze and watching the water that flowed between the high curbs of the street. “For a while even ladies were wading in the water, thinking it was fun,” she said. “The children had a grand time, picking up driftwood and other things that floated down the street.”

  After breakfast, the two oldest Rollfing children, Helen and August, went to the beach for a closer look. They returned with stories of how the surf had grown so immense it was now breaking apart the big bathhouses.

  A chill moved through Louisa. She had been to the bathhouses many times. She had walked their wooden decks high above the Gulf. These were immense structures on big thick timbers. They had been there forever. No one would have dared build such things into the North Sea off the island of her childhood. But the Gulf was far more peaceful. More like a very big lake, really, than a mighty ocean.

  Her children were joking. It was just the kind of big story their father would tell until his face broke in that wonderful smile.

  But Helen and little August insisted it was all true. They had seen everything—big boards flying through the air, pieces of the bathhouses simply falling into the sea.

  Now Louisa believed them. “Then it wasn’t fun anymore.”

  She sent her son downtown by trolley to the Trust Building with orders to find his father and bring him home. The water, she saw, was rising quickly and soon would reach the front door. She wanted to move to the center of the city, but she wanted her husband home. She was afraid now. She wanted all the family together.

  August found his father. “Mama says to come home,” he said. “She wants to move.”

  His father laughed, and gave the boy a message.

  Young August returned home. His mother watched him wade up the front walk, alone.

  Louisa glared.

  The boy cleared his throat, maybe scuffed his heel against the floor. “Papa says you must be crazy, he will come home for dinner.”

  The water continued to rise. Louisa saw neighbors begin to leave their homes.

  At last her husband did arrive—“And was surprised there wasn’t any dinner.”

  She did not kill him, but it is likely the thought crossed her mind. Dinner. She had not even thought about cooking.

  She was furious.

  He was furious.

  She was being such a woman. What was there to be afraid of? This was nothing special. Some wind, some water. So what? He shouted that she should go upstairs with the children, that he was going back to town to pay his men, and would then—and only then—return to the house.

  “That was more than I could stand,” Louisa said. “I stamped my foot and said some terrible thing: I told him, if he didn’t go immediately and get a carriage to take us away, and we in the meantime drowned, it would be his fault and he would never have any peace.”

  Which made him angrier.

  August went back downtown.

  RITTER’S CAFÉ

  “You Can’t Frighten Me”

  RABBI HENRY COHEN said his last good-byes to the members of his congregation and headed for home, on foot. Most days he rode his bicycle—a new “Cleveland” model—but never on the Sabbath. When he turned the corner onto Broadway, he stopped, startled by what he saw, half expecting to hear the sound of distant cannon.

  Rabbi Cohen, his wife, Mollie, and their children lived about a mile from the Gulf in a comfortable gray house raised twelve feet off the ground. It had plaster walls and a long central hall, or “hog run,” that cut the house in half. On the left were the bedrooms and bath, on the right the dining room, parlor, and Cohen’s library, walled with books. A narrow gallery ran across the front of the house, facing Broadway.

  Cohen was known throughout Galveston as a kind of psychotherapist, although the term and profession were not yet common. People of all religions and both sexes came to him to discuss troubles they felt they could disclose only to him, including problems with their sex lives. Everyone knew the rabbi and the stories that had given him near-legendary stature—the scar on his head delivered under unclear circumstances by a rifle butt during a Zulu uprising in Africa, the story of how he had barged alone into one of the city’s most unsavory bordellos to rescue a young woman held captive within, throwing her over his shoulder and bolting back into the night.

  He stood now on Broadway as a long line of people struggled past him toward the city. He saw whole families and noticed many carrying hampers of clothing and food and stained-glass lamps and framed photographs, like refugees from a military bombardment—except that the children all seemed delighted. And very muddy.

  A lushly planted esplanade of oleander, live oak, and Mexican dagger divided Broadway, but the heavy rains of the past month and the fresh downpours of the morning had turned the esplanade into a wonderfully slippery flume of mud, through which the children stomped and slid despite stern shouts from parents on the adjacent sidewalks.

  As Cohen watched, he heard fragments of the story: The sea had risen; it had destroyed the Midway; the bathhouses were about to collapse into the Gulf; the streetcar trestle was so thoroughly undermined it could not possibly stand much longer.

  Cohen realized these were indeed refugees. They had left their homes for safer ground.

  It was a shock. There had been floods before, but no one seemed to get terribly upset. That’s why most houses, his included, were raised on posts, and why the curbs in some places were three feet high.

  He took the stairs to his house three at a time and gathered up as many blankets and umbrellas as he could find, then brought them back down to the street, where he handed them out to the people who seemed most needful, the mothers with babies and toddlers, the elderly who moved so slowly against the wind.

  Mollie found a bag of apples and brought it to him. He passed these out to the children, who thanked him gaily. Mud streaked their cheeks and clotted their shoes. Many were barefoot, the boys with their pants rolled to their knees. Cohen had to smile.

  He was soaked. He was also shivering, a novelty for September in Galveston. He had no more umbrellas or apples, but he stayed put out of empathy for all the dislocated families, until Mollie ordered him back inside.

  The power was out, Cohen saw. With the storm shutters closed, the house was as dark as night. They ate
lunch by candle flare.

  “We had a storm like this in ’86,” Mollie said, referring to the winds and rain that had reached Galveston from the last of the big Indianola hurricanes. “My father’s store on Market Street was flooded,” she said, casually. She noted, however, that no flood had ever reached Broadway.

  With cinematic timing, a sledgehammer of wind struck the house with so much force it knocked plaster from the walls.

  “It’s just a little blow,” Mrs. Cohen said, softly, to the children.

  She swept the plaster into a small pile. The wind grew louder. Gusts came at shorter intervals, with progressively greater power. Each brought a fresh squall of plaster.

  Cohen went to the front door to gauge the storm’s progress, and saw that this time the water had reached Broadway. A shallow current raced along the street among the legs of the refugees. The water seemed to rise even as he watched.

  More people crowded the street. It was a parody of the city’s Mardi Gras celebration. In the stormlight everyone looked gray and worn and thoroughly miserable. The streetcars, Cohen realized, had stopped running.

  When he looked outside again a few minutes later, he saw that the water now covered the first step of the stairs to his gallery. He heard his children come up behind him. He shut the door abruptly, and turned with a big smile. “Come in the parlor, Mollie,” he called. “Let’s have some music!”

  She looked at him as if a block of plaster had just fallen on his head. She had things to do. There were lunch dishes to clear. Plaster littered the floor and plaster dust filmed the once-gleaming tops of all the tables in the house. Music, Henry?

  Still smiling, he gave a slight nod in the direction of the children.

  Mollie saw the smile; a heartbeat later she realized it did not include his eyes.

  He whispered, “I don’t want them to see the water rising.”