Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm double your chalk reboarding and I'm faired out. And
Speaker 1: since we're in the middle of Atlantic hurricane season in
Speaker 1: our part of the world, and maybe it's also a
Speaker 1: little bit because it's been really stormy here all week,
Speaker 1: so we've got storms on the brain, we feel i'd
Speaker 1: be interesting to take a look at some historical storms.
Speaker 1: After all, the truly big ones really are kind of
Speaker 1: characters and their own right, and they often change the
Speaker 1: story of whatever area they decide to visit and the
Speaker 1: lives of the people who live there. I think that's
Speaker 1: really emphasized by the fact that we give them names
Speaker 1: now that they really do have sort of a personality,
Speaker 1: and those names become almost taboo in the immediate years
Speaker 1: after a really big storm hit. And I think that's
Speaker 1: especially true with Hurricane Katrina, though a recent storm in
Speaker 1: recent history. You know, we're not gonna be about Katrina
Speaker 1: on the podcast today, but it certainly comes to mind
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about really giant storms in the United States.
Speaker 1: Right It was a Category five storm, led to severe
Speaker 1: flooding and spawned tornadoes that killed around eighteen hundred people
Speaker 1: across several states. But as Sarah said, we're not going
Speaker 1: to get into Katrina in this podcast so much today,
Speaker 1: but it did get us thinking a lot about some
Speaker 1: of the most destructive storms that left their marks on
Speaker 1: the world over time. So we're gonna take a look
Speaker 1: at just a handful of those. We're not going to
Speaker 1: cover them all by any means today, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a look at a few that we think are
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. We are, so we're gonna start back in
Speaker 1: nineteen five with a tornado. And most of the storms
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about our hurricanes or cyclones um
Speaker 1: cyclones in the um the non American sense of Dorothy
Speaker 1: and the oz. But this one is a true tornado,
Speaker 1: the Tri State tornado. And your average tornado is about
Speaker 1: five hundred to two thousand feet y it and it
Speaker 1: travels at about a speed of thirty miles per hour,
Speaker 1: So pretty scary even if you just leave it at that.
Speaker 1: We had a tornado in Atlanta a few years ago,
Speaker 1: went right through downtown. It was a scary storm, it was.
Speaker 1: But this next entry on our list, the ninet Tri
Speaker 1: State Tornado, was massive enough to leave that tornado and
Speaker 1: most typical tornadoes that we encounter in this country in
Speaker 1: the dust. It formed at about one pm on March eighteenth,
Speaker 1: n somewhere around the town of Ellington and southeastern Missouri,
Speaker 1: and it was nearly a mile wide, moving in an
Speaker 1: average speed of about sixty two miles per hour and
Speaker 1: at times even up to seventy three miles per hour.
Speaker 1: It was possibly because of that great width that a
Speaker 1: lot of people who saw the storm coming didn't even
Speaker 1: realize at first that it was a tornado. Looked like
Speaker 1: a cloud wall right, And according to an article by
Speaker 1: Sean Potter and Weatherwise magazine, W. F. Haywood, who was
Speaker 1: the postmaster for Ellington, made one of the first recorded
Speaker 1: sightings of the tornado, and he just observed it as
Speaker 1: a quote blue black cloud mass that was coming toward them.
Speaker 1: He was lucky, though, compared to some who didn't even
Speaker 1: see it coming at all. Yeah, people described being in
Speaker 1: buildings when windows suddenly started to shatter, walls came crumbling down,
Speaker 1: whole houses were just lifted off the ground. Wizard of
Speaker 1: As style. Definitely and too late if you realize you're
Speaker 1: in a tornado. But it moved quickly too, so even
Speaker 1: though it was so giant, it was moving along at
Speaker 1: quite a clip. It covered a lot of ground. It
Speaker 1: hit parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, traveling a total
Speaker 1: of two hundred nineteen miles and only three and a
Speaker 1: half hours, which was more than thirty six times as
Speaker 1: much as an average tornado covers more than thirty six
Speaker 1: times as much ground. In an article on American Heritage,
Speaker 1: Wallas Aken calls it quote the longest uninterrupted track on
Speaker 1: a record. In total, six people were killed and more
Speaker 1: than two thousand were injured as a result of the storm.
Speaker 1: Fifteen thousand homes were destroyed. The town that was hardest hit,
Speaker 1: which is one we want to kind of give a
Speaker 1: few details about, was Murphy'sboro, Illinois. Two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: four people died in that town alone, and that's set
Speaker 1: a record for the most tornado fatalities in a single place.
Speaker 1: And Aiken, the writer that we just mentioned, he was
Speaker 1: actually a toddler living in Murphy's Borough when the tornado
Speaker 1: struck and his article that we mentioned relates some stories
Speaker 1: of residents and others who lived through the experience. I
Speaker 1: think he also has a book on the subject, and
Speaker 1: one one story that he relates that I found particularly
Speaker 1: chilling involves the town's children who were in school at
Speaker 1: the time that the tornado struck. The school building basically
Speaker 1: collapsed on the kids died. Some who survived struggled out
Speaker 1: from under the debris on their own and headed for
Speaker 1: their homes. You know, it's a natural instinct for kids.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm gonna head for home. I'm going to
Speaker 1: find my family. But they found in many cases that
Speaker 1: their homes were completely gone, even the entire neighborhoods had vanished.
Speaker 1: One friend of Aiken's recalled reaching his home what he
Speaker 1: what should have been his home, which was nothing but
Speaker 1: an open field, with her grandmother in the middle of it,
Speaker 1: decapitated and still sitting in her rocking chair. So completely
Speaker 1: horrifying sight. After surviving and already horrifying situation. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: horrific sites like these seemed pretty typical for those who
Speaker 1: managed to live through that initial chaos, since there were
Speaker 1: plenty of dead and injured people around who needed tending to.
Speaker 1: Medical teams and supplies started to pour in from all
Speaker 1: over the country. One point that I thought was interesting,
Speaker 1: According to Potter's article, Chicago even offered up some liquor
Speaker 1: that had been confiscated by the federal government after some
Speaker 1: prohibition raids, and so they quote and made this available
Speaker 1: in a medicinal way to the storm suffers. There's a
Speaker 1: silver lining um to this disaster in a way 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 they're 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 they could really
Speaker 1: forecast them. Right. But after the tri State tornado, local
Speaker 1: tornado spotting network started popping up, so people were more
Speaker 1: aware 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 understorm.
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: and 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. So,
Speaker 1: you know, you're just talking about you couldn't tell where
Speaker 1: tornadoes were going. Imagine if you couldn't tell really where
Speaker 1: a hurricane was going to go. I know, it's still
Speaker 1: a little up in the air, but they can give
Speaker 1: you some warning. But when you're talking about a storm
Speaker 1: like the next one on our list, though, which happened
Speaker 1: more than two hundred years ago, of course, there was
Speaker 1: not that luxury, so modern researchers have had to piece
Speaker 1: together some details regarding characteristics of the Great Hurricane of
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty based on anecdotal evidence of the kind of
Speaker 1: destruction that it caused, sort of having to look back
Speaker 1: at it and figure out what the storm is really like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that destruction that you just mentioned and was really significant,
Speaker 1: to say the least. The fact that just considering the
Speaker 1: fact that it stood out so much in what was
Speaker 1: already an act of hurricane season that year, should hint
Speaker 1: at that. But the death toll also speaks for itself.
Speaker 1: More than twenty thousand people in the Eastern Caribbean lost
Speaker 1: their lives, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency.
Speaker 1: Researchers estimate that the hurricane formed in the Atlantic and
Speaker 1: moved westward very slowly, at about six nautical miles per hour.
Speaker 1: The storm got to Barbados on October tenth, where, according
Speaker 1: to Encyclopedia Britannica, it destroyed nearly all the homes on
Speaker 1: the island and about four thousand, five hundred people lost
Speaker 1: their lives. The hurricane went on to hit pretty much
Speaker 1: 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 winds greater
Speaker 1: than two hundred miles per hour. And again they've guessed
Speaker 1: that pieced it together just from reports of the storm
Speaker 1: damage and examples of anecdotes that were offered up by
Speaker 1: the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency. One of those examples
Speaker 1: came from a letter sent in December of that year
Speaker 1: from Sir George Rodney, and he wrote about the events
Speaker 1: in Barbados and said, quote the strongest buildings in the
Speaker 1: whole of the houses, most of which were stone and
Speaker 1: remarkable for their solidity, gave way to the fury of
Speaker 1: the wind and were torn up to their foundations. All
Speaker 1: the forts destroyed, and many of the heavy cannon carried
Speaker 1: upwards of a hundred feet from the forts. Had I
Speaker 1: not been an eyewitness, and nothing could have induced me
Speaker 1: to have believed it, more than six thousand persons perished
Speaker 1: 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 and a letter that he wrote, is also very interesting.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, what will give a strong idea of
Speaker 1: the force of the wind is 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 guessed that
Speaker 1: the winds had to be greater than that. So I
Speaker 1: think that's so neat that they can compare the history
Speaker 1: of of other trees and other wind speeds and figure
Speaker 1: out this one from sight. Yeah, and the casualties here
Speaker 1: weren't all on land either. Also of historical note here
Speaker 1: is that the American Revolution was going on at a
Speaker 1: time that this hurricane struck, which meant that plenty of
Speaker 1: European naval forces, both British and French, were concentrated in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean. So thousands of soldiers died as their vessels
Speaker 1: were damaged, destroyed swept away. Encyclopedia Britannicus says something like
Speaker 1: more than forty French ships sank near Martinique alone. And
Speaker 1: this is something I I've never heard mentioned when you
Speaker 1: learn about the American Revolution, um, it seems like it
Speaker 1: had to have shaken people up a little bit at least.
Speaker 1: But Okay, so the next storm we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about is certainly we're jumping ahead quite a bit. It's
Speaker 1: a more modern storm, and it's one that I'm getting
Speaker 1: a 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 located on a barrier island in
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico. Galveston had gotten the message before
Speaker 1: that it should do some storm preparation, including maybe constructing
Speaker 1: a sea wall, and they'd seen nearby towns destroyed by
Speaker 1: hurricanes in previous years, but they still didn't make any
Speaker 1: moves to fortify the city prior to nineteen hundred. The
Speaker 1: city got its first inkling that a storm was headed
Speaker 1: its way in early September of that year, and what
Speaker 1: started out as an area of quote unsettled weather near
Speaker 1: the Windward Islands became a tropical storm that moved over
Speaker 1: Cuba and hit Louisiana and Mississippi on the way to Texas,
Speaker 1: so by the time it reached Galveston, though in September,
Speaker 1: it was about a category four hurricane by modern estimates.
Speaker 1: Again meteorologists or having to do some backtracking here. When
Speaker 1: it first reached Galveston in the morning, it caused them flooding,
Speaker 1: but it was still sunny out, and according to an
Speaker 1: article by check Lions and History Magazine, most locals weren't
Speaker 1: too concerned about the storm. They'd seen big storms before
Speaker 1: living on the Gulf. They thought they could quote ride
Speaker 1: it out, as sometimes people do in big storms like this.
Speaker 1: But as the day went on, the wind started to
Speaker 1: pick up, and it ultimately reached estimated speeds of about
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty two hundred thirty five miles per hour,
Speaker 1: the highest speed recorded was actually one hundred miles per hour,
Speaker 1: but there's a note or the wind instrument was destroyed
Speaker 1: shortly after taking that measurement, so we can assume it
Speaker 1: went quite a bit higher than that. The flooding also
Speaker 1: got much worse. The rain just kept coming and the
Speaker 1: tidal surges reached from eight to fifteen feet. People started
Speaker 1: heading upwards, trying to get to the highest points that
Speaker 1: they could in their homes, but it didn't really help.
Speaker 1: The surges swept up homes from the foundation, and the
Speaker 1: wind was just throwing trees and other objects around. So
Speaker 1: it was just utter chaos. And we should note too
Speaker 1: that as the Barrier Island, Galveston, of course, was very
Speaker 1: low low to the sea, there was no high ground
Speaker 1: to really get to. According to another article by Potter
Speaker 1: and Weatherwise magazine, the entire southeast and west areas of
Speaker 1: the city were just wiped out pretty much. All the
Speaker 1: houses were just swept away. Most other buildings were destroyed too.
Speaker 1: There were debris everywhere. There were bodies alive and dead,
Speaker 1: trapped under the buildings. Potter quotes Isaac Klein, who was
Speaker 1: in charge of the Augustin Weather Bureau office at the time,
Speaker 1: is saying the site the next day was quote one
Speaker 1: of the most horrible sites that ever civilized people looked upon.
Speaker 1: Anywhere between six thousand and twelve thousand people died as
Speaker 1: a result of this hurricane. Estimates usually sort of waiver
Speaker 1: around I guess six thousand, but as many of these storms,
Speaker 1: as they do for many of these storms, we have
Speaker 1: a huge spans of numbers here. Yeah, and the exact
Speaker 1: number of people who died may never be known. People
Speaker 1: were drowned, of course, crushed by debris, and nearly ninety
Speaker 1: kids in a local orphanage were killed, just an example
Speaker 1: of some of the people who died in this storm.
Speaker 1: About thirty thousand were left homeless too. Relief came in
Speaker 1: from other areas of the country, but there were so
Speaker 1: many dead bodies had to be burned for weeks after
Speaker 1: the storm because there was just no way to bury
Speaker 1: them all efficiently. Galveston never quite recaptured the prominence that
Speaker 1: it once had, according to Lions article, but it did
Speaker 1: survive and managed to reb old. One of the results
Speaker 1: of what happened than nineteen oh to the city started
Speaker 1: building a seventeen foot sea wall to protect itself and
Speaker 1: houses and buildings were kind of raised up to that
Speaker 1: level too, so there's more awareness again to keep this
Speaker 1: from happening. Galveston really ended up having to almost raise
Speaker 1: the entire city so they'd be a little safer. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna be moving on now to another hurricane, but
Speaker 1: before we do that, we need to discuss the relative
Speaker 1: merits of coastal living in inland living. And it's say,
Speaker 1: one of the obvious perks of living by the coast
Speaker 1: is that you're near the beach, but one of the
Speaker 1: upsides of living far inland is that you're usually spared
Speaker 1: the full brunt of a hurricane, plus really terrifying side
Speaker 1: effects like tsunami's if you're if you're in the cyclone
Speaker 1: territory or storm surges, you're not completely off the hook. Though. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in nineteen and extremely rare natural disaster occurred. It was
Speaker 1: a freshwater storm surge at Lake Okeechobee in south central Florida,
Speaker 1: which is just north of the what we think of
Speaker 1: the Everglades today and forty miles northwest of Palm Beach,
Speaker 1: and that surge plus the effects of the hurricane itself,
Speaker 1: killed up to three thousand people, meaning that it came
Speaker 1: pretty close to Galveston, depending on which numbers you're using
Speaker 1: for Galveston as the deadliest storm in US history. In
Speaker 1: the 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 world 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. So again, according to Noah, the storm
Speaker 1: we're discussing first hit Land about September twelfth. Ninety three
Speaker 1: people 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 sixt 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 storms are then at that point rose about
Speaker 1: twelve feet around the lake, drowning people in the low
Speaker 1: lying area in 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 one because of lack of funds.
Speaker 1: So they just mixture of of not being able to
Speaker 1: actually locate the bodies and just not knowing who was
Speaker 1: there alive in the first place. Right. Many of the
Speaker 1: black dead and some of the white dead also were
Speaker 1: buried in segregated mass graves. Simultaneous segregated memorial services were
Speaker 1: held Sunday, September thirty and West Palm Beach. Mary McLeod
Speaker 1: Bethune attended one of the black services. She was a
Speaker 1: big thil 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. Another note here of the literary variety, okachobe,
Speaker 1: if it rang a bell for you, it might be
Speaker 1: from readings Orneil Hurston's their eyes were watching God. Not
Speaker 1: to give anything away, but it's a major plot device
Speaker 1: between the heroine and the character Teacake. Florty and Hurston
Speaker 1: hadn't been in the state during the storm, but according
Speaker 1: to Valerie Boyd, she combined her interviews with survivors plus
Speaker 1: her own experience in a storm in the Bahamas to
Speaker 1: create a realistic scene. And I have to say it's
Speaker 1: probably been about ten or so years since I read
Speaker 1: that book. I can remember the storm then. So our
Speaker 1: final storm for this list is the Bolla cyclone of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and many of the storms we've discussed so
Speaker 1: far have been truly extraordinary storms, truly large storms. The
Speaker 1: Bula cyclone, though, could have been just an average or
Speaker 1: maybe even under the right circumstances, a mild storm had
Speaker 1: it not hit where it did and had it not
Speaker 1: hit when it did. As it worked out, though, the storm,
Speaker 1: which is also called the Ganges Brahmaputra Delta cyclone, became
Speaker 1: one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest tropical cyclone
Speaker 1: on record. It's also one of the world's worst natural disasters.
Speaker 1: The storm formed over the Bay of Bengal November eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, and this was after the traditional season's end,
Speaker 1: so most people weren't even expecting more storms and we're
Speaker 1: already kind of at max flood capacity for the year.
Speaker 1: It was also headed for the Ganges Delta, which was
Speaker 1: in a part of East Pakistan and one of the flattest,
Speaker 1: most flood prone regions of the world, flooding is expected.
Speaker 1: It's what delivers the rich sediment that makes the soil
Speaker 1: so fertile, but it also makes the land unstable since
Speaker 1: many rivers criss crossed the region. Yeah. For instance, many
Speaker 1: structures are built on these small sediment made islands that
Speaker 1: only last a few years. You know, the sediment washes
Speaker 1: away new islands form, so understandably, building temporary structures like this,
Speaker 1: you don't build really solid ones, really sturdy buildings and houses.
Speaker 1: But because the soil in this region is so rich
Speaker 1: from all that sediment, the Delta is also one of
Speaker 1: the most densely populated areas of the world, really comparable
Speaker 1: to the Netherlands, which is I think Europe's most populated
Speaker 1: country or densely populated rather. According to Benjamin Riley in
Speaker 1: Disaster and Human History Case Studies in Nature, Society and Catastrophe,
Speaker 1: in the decade before the flood, the population in the
Speaker 1: Delta region had increased by about thirty percent, meaning that
Speaker 1: farmers were already having to push further into the mangrove
Speaker 1: forest buffer by the coast in order to eke out
Speaker 1: a living and it also meant that the population was
Speaker 1: really young. There were a lot of very young children
Speaker 1: at the time. So already there's this out of season
Speaker 1: storm and it was the sixth of the season, and
Speaker 1: it's in a flood prone area with a dense population
Speaker 1: living in mostly temporary housing. So just to set the
Speaker 1: scene right there, and the storm made landfall as a
Speaker 1: category three cyclone with a peak speed of one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen miles per hour. It hit right at high
Speaker 1: tide on a full moon night when people were sleeping.
Speaker 1: Many of the migrant workers who had arrived for rice
Speaker 1: harvests were sleeping outside. The storm surge created by the
Speaker 1: cyclone reached about nineteen feet, wiping out everything that it hit.
Speaker 1: Since there wasn't high ground, people climb trees only to
Speaker 1: find themselves surrounded by snakes. And there's a really odd story.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'd say take it with a of salt,
Speaker 1: but it's mentioned by Riley. He discussed with a Mrs Kareem,
Speaker 1: who credited a constrictor with saving her life. So most people,
Speaker 1: I'm sure if you found yourself suddenly in the tree
Speaker 1: with lots of snakes, that would be it. But she
Speaker 1: remembers uh losing consciousness. But at that moment being wrapped
Speaker 1: up by a constrictor who was really just trying to
Speaker 1: cling to anything on the tree, and it ended up
Speaker 1: saving her life and the life of her newborn child.
Speaker 1: So kind of a wild storm story there, but I
Speaker 1: guess you never know what what can happen, and in
Speaker 1: instance like these. The death toll, though, was initially estimated
Speaker 1: to be at about two d thousand, but it could
Speaker 1: have been as high as five hundred thousand. And again,
Speaker 1: just like we discussed with the Okeechobee hurricane, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons for why there's so much discrepancy here,
Speaker 1: and again one is that there were probably a lot
Speaker 1: of migrant workers among the dead, and nobody knew who
Speaker 1: was there and nobody knew who they were. Plus undocumented residents,
Speaker 1: you know, just people who hadn't registered in any sort
Speaker 1: of way, and we mentioned this earlier, lots of young children,
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 cycling 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 and
Speaker 1: the storm surge. 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 early schools. 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 mex Ago.
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: tested in two thousand seven when much freekly noted a
Speaker 1: huge cyclone forming in the Bay of Bengal. The way
Speaker 1: he went about spreading those warnings though it sounds so
Speaker 1: round about, it's amazing that that it actually worked, But
Speaker 1: 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: and 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, theology 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 save lots
Speaker 1: 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've like, we've been through this before,
Speaker 1: gone 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: tornadoes that you have hunkered down through. Yeah. I remember
Speaker 1: being a very little kid and there being a tornado
Speaker 1: in Atlanta and I was at ballet class. I was
Speaker 1: probably about every year four, and I remember all the
Speaker 1: little kids getting taken to the basement and we had
Speaker 1: a very hungry caterpillar read to us. My my biggest
Speaker 1: scary storm memory, I think, which is pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was living in Mobile, I had
Speaker 1: to I think this was we had to evacuate when
Speaker 1: George came and I had a kind of beat up
Speaker 1: Toyota Pisseo that I drove at the time, and I
Speaker 1: remember driving up state to where my parents live and
Speaker 1: just kind of blowing all over the road and for
Speaker 1: the first time, because I like little cars, but I
Speaker 1: was thinking, I really wish I had like one of
Speaker 1: those big something really heavy to kind of anchor me
Speaker 1: down at this point, but we'll send us your storm stories.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess living in Atlanta, we're most likely
Speaker 1: to experience tornadoes, hurricanes, we get we get pretty heavy
Speaker 1: hurricanes from time to time, um, not coastal levels of course.
Speaker 1: And then the occasional freak ice storm. Oh that's true.
Speaker 1: We had one of those a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: So feel free to share your most interesting storm stories
Speaker 1: with us. Why they're on Facebook, on our Twitter at
Speaker 1: Miston History can email them to us at History Podcast
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com. Would be interested. I mean, those
Speaker 1: are everybody likes freakish weather stories, right, that's true. And
Speaker 1: if you want to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: some of the storms that we talked about today and
Speaker 1: some additional ones, we have a great article on our
Speaker 1: site called ten most Destructive Storms. You can look at
Speaker 1: it by visiting our homepage at www. Dot how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com? M
Speaker 1: M M M