Speaker 1: Hey, Happy Saturday, everybody. We are nearing the end of
Speaker 1: the hurricane season, so this seemed like is good a
Speaker 1: time as any to share this classic episode from featuring
Speaker 1: five intense storm events. It's a mix of hurricanes, tornadoes,
Speaker 1: and freshwater storm surge all making appearances, and it is
Speaker 1: brought to you by previous hosts Sarah and Bablina. I'm
Speaker 1: really glad we're sharing this one because it includes two
Speaker 1: very frequent listener requests that are the tri State tornado
Speaker 1: of and the Galves and the hurricane of nine Dred.
Speaker 1: So batting down your hatches and enjoy. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in history class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Doubla Chocolate Boarding and
Speaker 1: I'm Sara Douty. And since we're in the middle of
Speaker 1: Atlantic hurricane season in our part of the world, and
Speaker 1: maybe it's also a little bit because it's been really
Speaker 1: stormy here all week, so we've got storms on the brain,
Speaker 1: we thought it'd be interesting to take a look at
Speaker 1: some historical storms. After all, the truly big ones really
Speaker 1: are kind of characters in their own right, and they
Speaker 1: often change the story of whatever area they decided to visit,
Speaker 1: and the lives of the people who live there. I
Speaker 1: think that's really emphasized by the fact that we give
Speaker 1: them names now though they really do have sort of
Speaker 1: a personality, and those names become almost taboo in the
Speaker 1: immediate years after a really big storm hit. And I
Speaker 1: think that's especially true with Hurricane Katrina, so a recent
Speaker 1: storm in recent history. You know, we're not gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about Katrina on the podcast today, but it certainly
Speaker 1: comes to mind if you're thinking about really giant storms
Speaker 1: in the United States. Right It was a Category five
Speaker 1: storm led to severe flooding and spawned tornadoes that killed
Speaker 1: around eight people across several states. But as Sarah said,
Speaker 1: we're not going to get into Katrina in this podcast
Speaker 1: so much today, but it did get us thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about some of the most destructive storms that left
Speaker 1: their marks on the world over time. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a look at just a handful of those. We're
Speaker 1: not going to cover them all by any means today,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna take a look at a few that
Speaker 1: we think are pretty interesting. We are, So we're gonna
Speaker 1: start back in nineteen five with a tornado and most
Speaker 1: of the storms we're gonna be talking about our hurricanes
Speaker 1: or cyclones, um cyclones in the um the non American
Speaker 1: sense of Dorothy and the oz. But this one is
Speaker 1: a true tornado, the Try State tornado. And your average
Speaker 1: tornado is about five hundred to two thousand feet wide,
Speaker 1: and it travels at about a speed of thirty miles
Speaker 1: per hour, so pretty scary even if you just leave
Speaker 1: it at that. We had a tornado in Atlanta a
Speaker 1: few years ago, went right through downtown. It was a
Speaker 1: scary storm, it was. But this next entry on our list,
Speaker 1: the n Try State tornado, was massive enough to leave
Speaker 1: that tornado and most typical tornadoes that we encounter in
Speaker 1: this country in the dust. It formed at about one
Speaker 1: pm on March eighteenth, somewhere around the town of Ellington
Speaker 1: and southeastern Missouri, and it was nearly a mile wide,
Speaker 1: moving at an average speed of about sixty two miles
Speaker 1: per hour and at times even up to seventy three
Speaker 1: miles per hour. And it was possibly because of that
Speaker 1: great width that a lot of people who saw the
Speaker 1: storm coming didn't even realize at first that it was
Speaker 1: a tornado. Looked like a cloud wall right and according
Speaker 1: to an article by Sean Potter and Weatherwise magazine. W. F. Haywood,
Speaker 1: who was the postmaster for Ellington, made one of the
Speaker 1: first recorded sightings of the tornado, and he just observed
Speaker 1: it as a quote blue black cloud mass that was
Speaker 1: coming toward them. He was lucky though, compared to some
Speaker 1: who didn't even see it coming at all. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: described being in buildings when windows suddenly started to shatter,
Speaker 1: walls came crumbling down, Whole houses were just lifted off
Speaker 1: the ground. Wizard of As style. Definitely and too late
Speaker 1: if you realize you're in a tornado. But it moved
Speaker 1: quickly too, so even though it was so giant, it
Speaker 1: was moving along at quite a clip, it covered a
Speaker 1: lot of ground. It hit parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana,
Speaker 1: traveling a total of two hundred nineteen miles in only
Speaker 1: three and a half hours, which was more than thirty
Speaker 1: six times as much as an average tornado covers more
Speaker 1: than thirty six times as much ground. In an article
Speaker 1: on American Heritage, whilst Aken calls it quote the longest
Speaker 1: uninterrupted track on a record. In total, six people were
Speaker 1: killed and more than two thousand were injured as a
Speaker 1: result of the storm, fifteen thousand homes were destroyed. The
Speaker 1: town that was hardest hit, which is the one we
Speaker 1: want to kind of give a few details about, was Murphy'sboro, Illinois.
Speaker 1: Two hundred and thirty four people died in that town alone,
Speaker 1: and that's set a record for the most tornado fatalities
Speaker 1: in a single place. And Aiken, the writer that we
Speaker 1: just mentioned, he was actually a toddler living in Murphy's
Speaker 1: Borough when the tornado struck, and his article that we
Speaker 1: mentioned relates some stories of residents and others who lived
Speaker 1: through the experience. I think he also has a book
Speaker 1: on the subject. And one one story that he relates
Speaker 1: that I found particularly chilling involves the town's children who
Speaker 1: were in school at the time that the tornado struck.
Speaker 1: The school building basically collapsed on the kids died. Some
Speaker 1: who survived struggled out from under the debris on their
Speaker 1: own and headed for their homes. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: natural instinct for kids, you know, I'm going to head
Speaker 1: for home. I'm going to find my family. But they
Speaker 1: found in many cases that their homes were completely gone.
Speaker 1: Even entire neighborhoods had vanished. One friend of Aiken's recalled
Speaker 1: reaching his home what he what should have been his home,
Speaker 1: which was nothing but an open field, with her grandmother
Speaker 1: in the middle of it, decapitated and still sitting in
Speaker 1: her rocking chair. So completely horrifying site. After surviving and
Speaker 1: already horrifying situation. Yeah, and horrific sites like these seemed
Speaker 1: pretty typical for those who managed to live through that
Speaker 1: in initial chaos, since there were plenty of dead and
Speaker 1: injured people around who needed tending to. Medical teams and
Speaker 1: supplies started to pour in from all over the country.
Speaker 1: One point that I thought was interesting, and according to
Speaker 1: Potter's article, Chicago even offered up some liquor that had
Speaker 1: been confiscated by the federal government after some prohibition raids,
Speaker 1: and so they quote and made this available in a
Speaker 1: medicinal way to the storm suffers. There is a silver
Speaker 1: lining um to this disaster in a way it raised
Speaker 1: public awareness about tornadoes. I was really interested to find.
Speaker 1: In this popular Mechanics article, John Galvin writes about how
Speaker 1: even using the word tornado was considered taboo by the
Speaker 1: National Weather Service at this time, basically because tornadoes were
Speaker 1: so unpredictable, talking about them was thought to cause pointless
Speaker 1: panic that don't let people know until their houses are rattling.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, I don't know if they exactly
Speaker 1: looked at it that way, but I guess they just
Speaker 1: thought there was really no use since that you could
Speaker 1: really right, But after the tri State tornado, local Tornado
Speaker 1: Spoty network started popping up, so people were more aware
Speaker 1: and we're taking steps to protect themselves a little bit.
Speaker 1: And of course, researchers know so much more about tornadoes
Speaker 1: now than they did back then, so much so that
Speaker 1: in recent years some have suggested that the Tri State
Speaker 1: tornado might have actually been a family of tornadoes, not
Speaker 1: one single tornado that was caused by a super self thunderstorm.
Speaker 1: So this theory hasn't been definitively proven, and I guess
Speaker 1: may never be, but this remains the single deadliest tornado
Speaker 1: in history because they can't prove that it was a
Speaker 1: family of tornadoes. Well, so, now that we've discussed that
Speaker 1: type of storm pretty etherly, we're gonna move on to hurricanes,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be talking about a few hurricanes in
Speaker 1: this episode, and the first one is the Great Hurricane
Speaker 1: of seventeen eighty And today we're lucky that meteorologists have
Speaker 1: the knowledge and the technology to estimate the strength of
Speaker 1: storms and even predict their potential paths to some degree.
Speaker 1: So you know, you're just talking about you couldn't tell
Speaker 1: where tornadoes were going. Imagine if you couldn't tell really
Speaker 1: where a hurricane was going to go. I know, it's
Speaker 1: still a little up in the air, but they can
Speaker 1: give you some warning. But when you're talking about a
Speaker 1: storm like the next one on our list, though, which
Speaker 1: happened more than two hundred years ago, of course, there
Speaker 1: was not that luxury. So modern researchers have had to
Speaker 1: piece together some details regarding characteristics of the Great Hurricane
Speaker 1: of seventeen eighty based on anecdotal evidence of the kind
Speaker 1: of destruction that it caused, sort of having to look
Speaker 1: back at it and figure out what the storm was
Speaker 1: really like. Yeah, and that destruction that you just mentioned
Speaker 1: was really significant, to say the least. The fact that
Speaker 1: just considering the fact that it stood out so much
Speaker 1: in what was already an act of hurricane season that year,
Speaker 1: should hint at that. But the death toll also speaks
Speaker 1: for itself. More than twenty thousand people in the Eastern
Speaker 1: Caribbean lost their lives. According to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency
Speaker 1: Response Agency, researchers estimate that the hurricane formed in the
Speaker 1: Atlantic and move westward very slowly at about six nautical
Speaker 1: miles per hour. The storm got to Barbados on October tenth, where,
Speaker 1: according to Encyclopedia Britannica, it destroyed nearly all the homes
Speaker 1: on the island and about four thousand, five hundred people
Speaker 1: lost their lives. The hurricane went on to hit pretty
Speaker 1: much every island from Tobago to the Leeward Islands to Hispaniola,
Speaker 1: but the biggest death tolls came out of Barbados and Martinique,
Speaker 1: where nine thousand people died, and also sent Eustatious, where
Speaker 1: four thousand, five hundred people also died. Researchers also believed
Speaker 1: that the Great Hurricane was a Category five with winds
Speaker 1: greater than two hundred miles per hour, and again they've
Speaker 1: guessed that pieced it together just from reports of the
Speaker 1: storm damage and examples of anecdotes that were offered up
Speaker 1: by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency. One of those
Speaker 1: examples came from a letter sent in December of that
Speaker 1: year from Sir George Rodney, and he wrote about the
Speaker 1: events in Barbados and said, quote, the strongest building in
Speaker 1: the whole of the houses, most of which were stone
Speaker 1: and remarkable for their solidity, gave way to the fury
Speaker 1: of the wind and were torn up to their foundations.
Speaker 1: All the forts destroyed, and many of the heavy cannon
Speaker 1: carried upwards of a hundred feet from the forts. Had
Speaker 1: I not been an eyewitness, and nothing could have induced
Speaker 1: me to have believed it, more than six thousand persons
Speaker 1: perished and all the inhabitants were entirely ruined. So pretty serious,
Speaker 1: I mean, the sight of cannons blowing up into the air.
Speaker 1: I think that's the strongest point he makes there. That's true.
Speaker 1: But I think this other point made by Dr Gilbert
Speaker 1: Blaine in a letter that he wrote, is also very interesting.
Speaker 1: He says, quote what will give a strong and idea
Speaker 1: of the force of the wind as anything. Many of them,
Speaker 1: and the trees is what he was referring to, were
Speaker 1: stripped of their bark. So today we know that this
Speaker 1: hasn't been observed in hurricanes where winds are about two
Speaker 1: hundred miles per hour, And that's why researchers guests that
Speaker 1: the winds had to be greater than that, and I
Speaker 1: think that's so any that they can compare the history
Speaker 1: of of other trees and other wind speeds and figure
Speaker 1: out this one from sea, and the casualties here weren't
Speaker 1: all on land either. Also of historical note here is
Speaker 1: that the American Revolution was going on at a time
Speaker 1: that this hurricane struck, which meant that plenty of European
Speaker 1: naval forces, both British and French, were concentrated in the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: so thousands of soldiers died as their vessels were damaged, destroyed,
Speaker 1: swept away. Encyclopedia Britannica says something like more than forty
Speaker 1: French ships sank in your Martinique alone, And this is
Speaker 1: something I have never heard mentioned when you learn about
Speaker 1: the American Revolution, um, it seems like it had to
Speaker 1: have shaken people up a little bit at least. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the next storm we're going to talk about is
Speaker 1: certainly we're jumping ahead in quite a bit. It's a
Speaker 1: more modern storm, and it's one that I'm think a
Speaker 1: lot of you, especially if you're in the United States,
Speaker 1: have probably heard about before. It has the distinction of
Speaker 1: being known as the greatest natural disaster in US history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it took place in Galveston, Texas and nineteen hundred and
Speaker 1: is sometimes known simply as the Galveston Storm. Galveston at
Speaker 1: the time was one of the wealthiest cities in America,
Speaker 1: and it was the largest city in Texas and a
Speaker 1: big trade center. Boomtown really located on a barrier island
Speaker 1: in the Gulf of Mexico. Galveston had gotten the message
Speaker 1: before that it should do some storm preparation, including maybe
Speaker 1: constructing a sea wall, and they'd seen nearby towns destroyed
Speaker 1: by hurricanes in previous years, but they still didn't make
Speaker 1: any moves to fortify the city prior to nineteen hundred.
Speaker 1: The city got its first inkling that a storm was
Speaker 1: headed its way in early September of that year, and
Speaker 1: what started out as an area of quote unsettled weather
Speaker 1: near the Windward Islands became a tropical storm that moved
Speaker 1: over Cuba and hit Louisiana and Mississippi on the way
Speaker 1: to Exus. So by the time it reached Galveston, though
Speaker 1: in September, it was about a Category four hurricane by
Speaker 1: modern estimates. Again, meteorologists are having to do some backtracking here.
Speaker 1: When it first reached Galveston in the morning, it caused
Speaker 1: some flooding, but it was still sunny out, and according
Speaker 1: to an article by check Lions and History Magazine, most
Speaker 1: locals weren't too concerned about the storm. They'd seen big
Speaker 1: storms before living on the Gulf. They thought they could
Speaker 1: quote ride it out, as sometimes people do in big
Speaker 1: storms like this. But as the day went on, the
Speaker 1: wind started to pick up, and it ultimately reached estimated
Speaker 1: speeds of about a hundred and twenty two hundred thirty
Speaker 1: five miles per hour. The highest speed recorded was actually
Speaker 1: one hundred miles per hour, but there's a note there
Speaker 1: the wind instrument was destroyed shortly after taking that measurement,
Speaker 1: so we can assume it went quite a bit higher
Speaker 1: than that. The flooding also gotten much worse. The rain
Speaker 1: just kept coming and the tidal surges reached from eight
Speaker 1: to fifteen feet. People started heading up words, trying to
Speaker 1: get to the highest points that they could in their homes,
Speaker 1: but it didn't really help. The surges swept up homes
Speaker 1: from the foundation, and the wind was just throwing trees
Speaker 1: and other objects around, so it was just utter chaos.
Speaker 1: And we should note too that as the Barrier Island Galveston,
Speaker 1: of course, was very low, low to the sea, there
Speaker 1: was no high ground to really get to. According to
Speaker 1: another article by Potter and Weatherwise magazine, the entire southeast
Speaker 1: and west areas of the city were just wiped out
Speaker 1: pretty much. All the houses were just swept away. Most
Speaker 1: other buildings were destroyed too. There were debris everywhere. There
Speaker 1: were bodies alive and dead, trapped under the buildings. Potter
Speaker 1: quotes Isaac Klein, who was in charge of the Galveston
Speaker 1: Weather Bureau office at the time, is saying the site
Speaker 1: the next day was quote one of the most horrible
Speaker 1: sites that ever civilized people looked upon. Anywhere between six
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve thousand people died as a result of
Speaker 1: this hurricane. Estimates usually sort of waiver around I guess
Speaker 1: six thousand, but as many of these storms, as they
Speaker 1: do for many of these storms, we have a huge
Speaker 1: spans of numbers here. Yeah, and the exact number of
Speaker 1: people who died may never be known. People were drowned,
Speaker 1: of course, crushed by debris, and nearly ninety kids in
Speaker 1: a local orphanage were killed just an example of some
Speaker 1: of the people who died in this storm, about thirty
Speaker 1: thousand were left homeless too. Relief came in from other
Speaker 1: areas of the country, but there were so many dead
Speaker 1: bodies had to be burned for weeks after the storm
Speaker 1: because there was just no way to bury them all efficiently.
Speaker 1: Galveston never quite recaptured the prominence that it once had,
Speaker 1: according to lions article, but it did survive and managed
Speaker 1: to rebuild. One of the results of what happened then
Speaker 1: nineteen o two, the city started building a seventeen foot
Speaker 1: sea wall to protect itself, and houses and buildings were
Speaker 1: kind of raised up to that level too, so there's
Speaker 1: more awareness again to keep this from happy. Yeah, Galveston
Speaker 1: really ended up having to almost raise the entire city
Speaker 1: so they'd be a little safer. So we're gonna be
Speaker 1: moving on now to another hurricane. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: we need to discuss the relative merits of coastal living
Speaker 1: in inland living. And I'd say one of the obvious
Speaker 1: perks of living by the coast is that you're near
Speaker 1: the beach, But one of the upsides of living far
Speaker 1: inland is that you're usually spared the full brunt of
Speaker 1: a hurricane plus really terrifying side effects like tsunami's if
Speaker 1: you're if you're in the cyclone territory or storm surges,
Speaker 1: you're not completely off the hook. Though. Unfortunately, in nineteen
Speaker 1: and extremely rare natural disaster occurred. It was a freshwater
Speaker 1: storm surge at Lake Okeechobee in south central Florida, which
Speaker 1: is just north of the what we think of the
Speaker 1: Everglades today and forty miles northwest of Palm Beach, and
Speaker 1: that surge plus the effects of the hurricane itself, killed
Speaker 1: up to three thousand people, meaning that it came pretty
Speaker 1: close to Galveston depending on which numbers you're using for
Speaker 1: Galveston as the deadliest storm in US history. In the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, South Florida underwent a huge development boom.
Speaker 1: Just to give you some background on this area, Areas
Speaker 1: like Palm Beach, which is an Atlantic Barrier island, attracted
Speaker 1: the wealthy, while many of the inland Everglade areas, including
Speaker 1: the area around Lake Okeechobee, were drained for agriculture, and
Speaker 1: according to Noah, only about fifty thousand people were living
Speaker 1: in South Florida at the time, so migrant laborers from
Speaker 1: mostly the Bahamas arrived to do the farm work and
Speaker 1: set up small towns around the lake. So those are
Speaker 1: two focused areas, really different worlds economically, but both clearly
Speaker 1: very vulnerable to weather. One a barrier island, always vulnerable.
Speaker 1: The other small towns with shoddy structures, sitting plumb next
Speaker 1: to one of the largest freshwater lakes in the country
Speaker 1: that only happened to be about twelve to fifteen feet
Speaker 1: above sea levels. Again according to Noah, the storm we're
Speaker 1: discussing first hit land about September twelfth. Ninety three people
Speaker 1: were killed when it swept over Puerto Rico. From there,
Speaker 1: it moved through the Bahamas and hit the mainland on
Speaker 1: September sixte right in Palm Beach County, and the coast
Speaker 1: was really badly damaged by the wind the storm, but
Speaker 1: warnings had allowed many people to evacuate or to take
Speaker 1: cover inland. Though water from the storm caused Lake Okotobe
Speaker 1: to start to pool. You know, we mentioned that it's
Speaker 1: a very large lake, it's also a very shallow lake.
Speaker 1: And finally it broke through this short, inadequate muck levy
Speaker 1: that was meant to protect the settlements to itself and
Speaker 1: the freshwater storm surge then at that point rose about
Speaker 1: twelve feet around the lake, drowning people in the low
Speaker 1: lying area and flooding towns like Belglade, South Bay, and
Speaker 1: Canal Point, as well as other towns. And we mentioned
Speaker 1: a minute ago that the death toll could have been
Speaker 1: as high as three thousand, But there have been so
Speaker 1: many recalculations regarding this storm over the years, and I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that there's a lot of discrepancy in many
Speaker 1: of these numbers, and we'll discuss some of the reasons
Speaker 1: for that more later, But for this storm, it seems
Speaker 1: like there were some racial politics involved. Different sources from
Speaker 1: immediately after the flood ranged from one thousand dead from
Speaker 1: the Miami Herald to two thousand, three hundred dead in
Speaker 1: the Miami Daily News. So let's talk about that for
Speaker 1: a second. Why was there so much confusion and miscalculation?
Speaker 1: According to the American Meteorological Society and Russell post And
Speaker 1: estimated three quarters of the dead were field workers, mostly
Speaker 1: non white migratory workers. Many of them were only known
Speaker 1: to even friends by their nicknames. Many of the bodies
Speaker 1: were lost. Post article includes a quote describing how the
Speaker 1: surge carried people into the quote sawgrass waste, and the
Speaker 1: search for bodies ended November f because of lack of funds,
Speaker 1: So the mixture of of not being able to actually
Speaker 1: locate the bodies and just not knowing who was there
Speaker 1: alive in the first place. Many of the black dead
Speaker 1: and some of the white dead also were buried in
Speaker 1: segregated mass graves. Simultaneous segregated memorial services were held Sunday,
Speaker 1: September thirty nine in West Palm Beach. Mary McLeod Bethune
Speaker 1: attended one of the black services. She was a big
Speaker 1: civil rights activist and educator at the time. Economically, though,
Speaker 1: the storm was also really damaging. It caused an estimated
Speaker 1: twenty five million dollars in damages, which is now equal
Speaker 1: to about sixteen billion dollars if you adjust for wealth, population,
Speaker 1: and inflation. According to Post. It also ended the boom
Speaker 1: of the nineteen twenties South Florida development because only two
Speaker 1: years earlier there had been a similarly large storm that
Speaker 1: had destroyed a lot of Miami, so people buying their
Speaker 1: luxury houses were starting to realize this was a risky
Speaker 1: area to live in, and that's why this one reminds
Speaker 1: me so much of the Galveston storm because it really
Speaker 1: affected the whole trajectory of the of the city and
Speaker 1: the area right. Another note here of the literary variety, Okachobe,
Speaker 1: if it rang a bell for you, it might be
Speaker 1: from readings or Neil Hurston's Their eyes were watching God.
Speaker 1: Not to give anything away, but it's a major plot
Speaker 1: device between the heroine and the character Teacake. Florrety and
Speaker 1: Hurston hadn't been in the state during the storm, but
Speaker 1: according to Valerie Boyd, she combined her interviews with survivors
Speaker 1: plus her own experience in a storm in the Bahamas
Speaker 1: to create a realistic scene. And I have to say,
Speaker 1: it's probably been about ten or so years since I
Speaker 1: read that book, but I can remember the storm scene.
Speaker 1: So our final storm for this list is the Bull
Speaker 1: Cyclone of nineteen seventy and many of the storms we've
Speaker 1: discussed so far have been truly extraordinary storms, truly large storms.
Speaker 1: The Bull of cyclone, though, could have been just an
Speaker 1: average or maybe even under the right circumstances, a mild
Speaker 1: storm had it not hit where it did and had
Speaker 1: it not hit when it did. As it worked out,
Speaker 1: though the storm, which is also called the Ganges Brahmaputra
Speaker 1: Delta cyclone, became one of the deadliest, if not the
Speaker 1: deadliest tropical cyclone on record. It's also one of the
Speaker 1: world's worst natural disasters. The storm formed over the Bay
Speaker 1: of Bengal November eighth nine, and this was after the
Speaker 1: traditional season's end, so most people weren't even expecting more
Speaker 1: storms and we're already kind of at max flood capacity
Speaker 1: for the year. It was also headed for the Ganges Delta,
Speaker 1: which was then a part of East Pakistan and one
Speaker 1: of the flattest, most flood prone regions of the world.
Speaker 1: Flooding is expected. It's what delivers the rich sediment that
Speaker 1: makes the soil so fertile, but it also makes the
Speaker 1: land unstable since many rivers criss crossed the region. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for instance, many structures are built on these small seedtiment
Speaker 1: made islands that only last a few years. You know,
Speaker 1: the sediment washes away new islands form, so understandably, building
Speaker 1: temporary structures like this, you don't build really solid ones,
Speaker 1: really sturdy buildings and houses. But because the soil in
Speaker 1: this region is so rich from all that sediment, the
Speaker 1: Delta is also one of the most densely populated areas
Speaker 1: of the world, really comparable to the Netherlands, which is
Speaker 1: I think Europe's most populated country or densely populated rather
Speaker 1: um According to Benjamin Riley in Disaster and Human History
Speaker 1: Case Studies in Nature, Society and Catastrophe, in the decade
Speaker 1: before the flood, the population in this Delta region had
Speaker 1: increased by about thirty percent, meaning that farmers were already
Speaker 1: having to push further into the mangrove forest buffer by
Speaker 1: the coast in order to eke out a living. And
Speaker 1: it also meant that the population was really young. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of very young children and at the time,
Speaker 1: so already there's this out of season storm and it
Speaker 1: was the sixth of the season, and it's in a
Speaker 1: flood prone area with a dense population living in mostly
Speaker 1: temporary housing. So just to set the scene right there,
Speaker 1: and the storm made landfall as a category three cyclone
Speaker 1: with a peak speed of one d and fifteen miles
Speaker 1: per hour. It hit right at high tide on a
Speaker 1: full moon night when people were sleeping. Many of the
Speaker 1: migrant workers who had arrived for rice harvests were sleeping outside.
Speaker 1: The storm surge created by the cyclone reached about nineteen feet,
Speaker 1: wiping out everything that it hit. Since there wasn't high ground,
Speaker 1: people climb trees only to find themselves surrounded by snakes.
Speaker 1: And there's a really odd story. I mean, i'd say
Speaker 1: take it with a grain of thought, but it's mentioned
Speaker 1: by Riley. He discusses a Mrs Kareem who credited a
Speaker 1: constrictor with saving her life. So most people, I'm sure
Speaker 1: if you found yourself suddenly in the tree with lots
Speaker 1: of snakes, that would be it. But she remembers uh,
Speaker 1: losing consciousness, but at that moment being wrapped up by
Speaker 1: a constrictor who was really just trying to cling to
Speaker 1: anything on the tree, and it ended up saving her
Speaker 1: life and the life of her newborn child. So kind
Speaker 1: of a wild storm story there, but I guess you
Speaker 1: never know what what can happen in in incidents like these.
Speaker 1: The death toll, though, was initially estimated to be at
Speaker 1: about two hundred thousand, but it could have been as
Speaker 1: high as five hundred thousand. And again, just like we
Speaker 1: discussed with the Okeechobee hurricane, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons for why there's so much discrepancy here and again
Speaker 1: one is that there were probably a lot of migrant
Speaker 1: workers among the dead, and nobody knew who was there,
Speaker 1: and nobody knew who they were. Plus undocumented residents, you know,
Speaker 1: just people who hadn't registered in any sort of way.
Speaker 1: And we mentioned this earlier, lots of young chill dren,
Speaker 1: so maybe they weren't even on the books yet. After
Speaker 1: the storm, hundreds of thousands of people were left without food,
Speaker 1: and since it had almost been harvest time, there were
Speaker 1: no stores of anything either. Agricultural equipment had been washed away,
Speaker 1: salt water had inundated farmland, livestock had drowned, The fishing
Speaker 1: industry was destroyed, and drinking water was contaminated and people
Speaker 1: contracted cholera from that. Many people were injured too, after
Speaker 1: such a traumatic survival situation. They had broken bones, they
Speaker 1: had abrasions on their arms and their chests and thighs, uh,
Speaker 1: something that relief workers Alfred Summer and w. Henry Moseley
Speaker 1: called quote cyclone syndrome or quote the grim evidence of
Speaker 1: the tenacity with which the survivors had clung to the
Speaker 1: trees to withstand the buffeting of the waves. So um
Speaker 1: just tearing yourself up trying to save your life during
Speaker 1: the storm search. Then despite all of these problems, you know,
Speaker 1: despite the starvation and the injuries, the government wasn't able
Speaker 1: to respond for ten days, which was something that ultimately
Speaker 1: heightened tensions between East Pakistan and West Pakistan, and much
Speaker 1: of the relief ultimately ended up coming from India and
Speaker 1: the United States and later Great Britain and China, which
Speaker 1: sent rice supplies for the people. So when an already
Speaker 1: scheduled December election rolled around, a lot of new opposition
Speaker 1: politicians ended up being elected, and ultimately, after a civil war,
Speaker 1: East Pakistan became the independent country of Bangladesh, and one
Speaker 1: of its earliest goals, understandably after all of this, was
Speaker 1: to set up better storm surge alert so that people
Speaker 1: could be more prepared for for something like this happening. Again,
Speaker 1: just a side note here, Hassan Mushriqui, a professor at
Speaker 1: l s U, got a map of Bangladesh from his
Speaker 1: father in law. He scanned the map for part of
Speaker 1: his work predicting storm surges in the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: Since he wanted to work on developing similar models for Bangladesh,
Speaker 1: he ended up creating an early warning system, which was
Speaker 1: test it in two thousand seven when much freekly noted
Speaker 1: a huge cyclone forming in the Bay of Bengal. The
Speaker 1: way he went about spreading those warnings though it sounds
Speaker 1: so round about, it's amazing that that it actually worked,
Speaker 1: but he began communicating once he noticed this huge storm forming,
Speaker 1: began communicating with the U. S. Navy to find out
Speaker 1: how much the government um in the in the area
Speaker 1: knew about what was going on, what kind of warnings
Speaker 1: were already in place, And when he realized from family
Speaker 1: that the storm wasn't really being treated very seriously, he
Speaker 1: got in touch with a food and disaster official in
Speaker 1: Bangladesh via his l s U freshman son and began
Speaker 1: sharing information. Began tracking the storm, and many people were
Speaker 1: successfully evacuated from the areas identified as most at risk,
Speaker 1: and he also helped retroactively target rescue efforts. Here's where
Speaker 1: the storm went, Here's where you need to go. More
Speaker 1: than three thousand people still died, which sounds like a
Speaker 1: huge number, but it was far fewer than a lot
Speaker 1: of the earlier cyclones, including of course the bullet cyclone
Speaker 1: that we already talked about So I guess that's promising
Speaker 1: that and most of these stories we've seen some sort
Speaker 1: of progress technology upgrade, whether it is building a wall,
Speaker 1: you know, acknowledging the fact that your city is in
Speaker 1: pretty serious danger, or uh, having some sort of software,
Speaker 1: having an early warning system in place? Can you save
Speaker 1: lots of lives? Yeah, and just that awareness that people have,
Speaker 1: I mean it's sad. I thinking it seriously, yeah, taking
Speaker 1: it seriously, not thinking that you're going to write it out.
Speaker 1: I mean I lived on the Gulf Coast for a while,
Speaker 1: and so I can relate to that idea that so
Speaker 1: many people just get numb to the experience that they
Speaker 1: just think they can, you know, they can hang out
Speaker 1: during the storm. They're like, we've been through this before,
Speaker 1: going through false evacuations, evacuations that come to nothing but
Speaker 1: better safement. Sorry, Definitely, it's funny too. We all kind
Speaker 1: of have our own sort of storm stories. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have any that you remember, Sarah, maybe
Speaker 1: tornado knows that you have hunkered down through or Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember being a very little kid and there being
Speaker 1: a tornado in Atlanta and I was at ballet class.
Speaker 1: I was probably about three or four, and I remember
Speaker 1: all the little kids getting taken to the basement and
Speaker 1: we had a very hungry caterpillar read to us. Was
Speaker 1: my my biggest scary storm memory, I think, which is
Speaker 1: pretty good. Storm. Yeah. I remember when I was living
Speaker 1: in Mobile, I had to I think this was night
Speaker 1: we had to evacuate when George came and I had
Speaker 1: a kind of beat up Toyota Pisseo that I drove
Speaker 1: at the time, and I remember driving up state to
Speaker 1: where my parents live and just kind of blowing all
Speaker 1: over the road and for the first time because I
Speaker 1: like little cars, but I was thinking, I really wish
Speaker 1: I had like one of those big yes, something really
Speaker 1: heavy to kind of anchor me down. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. If you have
Speaker 1: heard an email address or a Facebook you are l
Speaker 1: or something similar over the course of today's episode, since
Speaker 1: it is from the archive that might be out of
Speaker 1: date now, you can email us at History Podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, and you can find us
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