WEBVTT - 5 Historical Storms 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:03.760 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:13.560 Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:16.000 I'm double your chalk reboarding and I'm faired out. And 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.279 since we're in the middle of Atlantic hurricane season in 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:22.079 our part of the world, and maybe it's also a 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:24.840 little bit because it's been really stormy here all week, 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:27.360 so we've got storms on the brain, we feel i'd 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.240 be interesting to take a look at some historical storms. 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:32.800 After all, the truly big ones really are kind of 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:35.760 characters and their own right, and they often change the 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.879 story of whatever area they decide to visit and the 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:40.880 lives of the people who live there. I think that's 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:44.120 really emphasized by the fact that we give them names 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:46.800 now that they really do have sort of a personality, 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:50.680 and those names become almost taboo in the immediate years 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:54.040 after a really big storm hit. And I think that's 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:58.520 especially true with Hurricane Katrina, though a recent storm in 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:00.960 recent history. You know, we're not gonna be about Katrina 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:03.760 on the podcast today, but it certainly comes to mind 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.040 if you're thinking about really giant storms in the United States. 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:10.120 Right It was a Category five storm, led to severe 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:13.840 flooding and spawned tornadoes that killed around eighteen hundred people 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:17.559 across several states. But as Sarah said, we're not going 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:21.440 to get into Katrina in this podcast so much today, 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:23.520 but it did get us thinking a lot about some 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:26.120 of the most destructive storms that left their marks on 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:28.600 the world over time. So we're gonna take a look 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:30.480 at just a handful of those. We're not going to 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:33.240 cover them all by any means today, but we're gonna 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:35.119 take a look at a few that we think are 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:37.760 pretty interesting. We are, so we're gonna start back in 0:01:37.920 --> 0:01:42.200 nineteen five with a tornado. And most of the storms 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.200 we're gonna be talking about our hurricanes or cyclones um 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:50.880 cyclones in the um the non American sense of Dorothy 0:01:50.920 --> 0:01:53.560 and the oz. But this one is a true tornado, 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:56.639 the Tri State tornado. And your average tornado is about 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.320 five hundred to two thousand feet y it and it 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.200 travels at about a speed of thirty miles per hour, 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.440 So pretty scary even if you just leave it at that. 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:08.960 We had a tornado in Atlanta a few years ago, 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:12.440 went right through downtown. It was a scary storm, it was. 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.639 But this next entry on our list, the ninet Tri 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.520 State Tornado, was massive enough to leave that tornado and 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:22.520 most typical tornadoes that we encounter in this country in 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.399 the dust. It formed at about one pm on March eighteenth, 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:31.600 n somewhere around the town of Ellington and southeastern Missouri, 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:34.600 and it was nearly a mile wide, moving in an 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:37.120 average speed of about sixty two miles per hour and 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:40.240 at times even up to seventy three miles per hour. 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:43.560 It was possibly because of that great width that a 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:46.480 lot of people who saw the storm coming didn't even 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:48.640 realize at first that it was a tornado. Looked like 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:51.480 a cloud wall right, And according to an article by 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:54.919 Sean Potter and Weatherwise magazine, W. F. Haywood, who was 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:58.400 the postmaster for Ellington, made one of the first recorded 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:01.320 sightings of the tornado, and he just observed it as 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:05.800 a quote blue black cloud mass that was coming toward them. 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.240 He was lucky, though, compared to some who didn't even 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:10.960 see it coming at all. Yeah, people described being in 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:16.200 buildings when windows suddenly started to shatter, walls came crumbling down, 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.200 whole houses were just lifted off the ground. Wizard of 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:22.960 As style. Definitely and too late if you realize you're 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:26.119 in a tornado. But it moved quickly too, so even 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:27.920 though it was so giant, it was moving along at 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:29.760 quite a clip. It covered a lot of ground. It 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:34.320 hit parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, traveling a total 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:36.960 of two hundred nineteen miles and only three and a 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:40.280 half hours, which was more than thirty six times as 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:44.360 much as an average tornado covers more than thirty six 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.480 times as much ground. In an article on American Heritage, 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:51.280 Wallas Aken calls it quote the longest uninterrupted track on 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:55.720 a record. In total, six people were killed and more 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.680 than two thousand were injured as a result of the storm. 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.760 Fifteen thousand homes were destroyed. The town that was hardest hit, 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:04.480 which is one we want to kind of give a 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:08.200 few details about, was Murphy'sboro, Illinois. Two hundred and thirty 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.040 four people died in that town alone, and that's set 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.280 a record for the most tornado fatalities in a single place. 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:17.000 And Aiken, the writer that we just mentioned, he was 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:20.200 actually a toddler living in Murphy's Borough when the tornado 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:24.040 struck and his article that we mentioned relates some stories 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.600 of residents and others who lived through the experience. I 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:29.839 think he also has a book on the subject, and 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:32.400 one one story that he relates that I found particularly 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.080 chilling involves the town's children who were in school at 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.360 the time that the tornado struck. The school building basically 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:44.400 collapsed on the kids died. Some who survived struggled out 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:46.680 from under the debris on their own and headed for 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:49.520 their homes. You know, it's a natural instinct for kids. 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:50.880 You know, I'm gonna head for home. I'm going to 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:54.240 find my family. But they found in many cases that 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:58.320 their homes were completely gone, even the entire neighborhoods had vanished. 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:04.000 One friend of Aiken's recalled reaching his home what he 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.000 what should have been his home, which was nothing but 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:10.360 an open field, with her grandmother in the middle of it, 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:14.640 decapitated and still sitting in her rocking chair. So completely 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:19.719 horrifying sight. After surviving and already horrifying situation. Yeah, and 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:22.360 horrific sites like these seemed pretty typical for those who 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:25.040 managed to live through that initial chaos, since there were 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:29.400 plenty of dead and injured people around who needed tending to. 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:32.600 Medical teams and supplies started to pour in from all 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:34.920 over the country. One point that I thought was interesting, 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:39.360 According to Potter's article, Chicago even offered up some liquor 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:41.960 that had been confiscated by the federal government after some 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.839 prohibition raids, and so they quote and made this available 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:50.520 in a medicinal way to the storm suffers. There's a 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:54.400 silver lining um to this disaster in a way raised 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:59.040 public awareness about tornadoes. I was really interested to find. 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:02.640 In this popular Mechanics article, John Galvin writes about how 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:06.479 even using the word tornado was considered taboo by the 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:10.320 National Weather Service at this time, basically because tornadoes were 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:13.640 so unpredictable. Talking about them was thought to cause pointless 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.200 panic that don't let people know until their houses they're rattling. 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.560 Well yeah, I mean, I don't know if they exactly 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:21.760 looked at it that way, but I guess they just 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.360 thought there was really no use since they could really 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:28.320 forecast them. Right. But after the tri State tornado, local 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:32.160 tornado spotting network started popping up, so people were more 0:06:32.200 --> 0:06:35.560 aware and we're taking steps to protect themselves a little bit. 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:39.039 And of course, researchers know so much more about tornadoes 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:41.039 now than they did back then, so much so that 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:43.479 in recent years some have suggested that the Tri State 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:47.320 tornado might have actually been a family of tornadoes, not 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:52.080 one single tornado that was caused by a super self understorm. 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:55.919 So this theory hasn't been definitively proven, and I guess 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:59.840 may never be, but this remains the single deadliest tornado 0:06:59.880 --> 0:07:02.200 and history because they can't prove that it was a 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:05.560 family of tornadoes. Well, so now that we've discussed that 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:08.640 type of storm pretty etherly, we're gonna move on to hurricanes, 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:10.680 and we're gonna be talking about a few hurricanes in 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:13.960 this episode, and the first one is the Great Hurricane 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:17.680 of seventeen eighty And today we're lucky that meteorologists have 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.600 the knowledge and the technology to estimate the strength of 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.240 storms and even predict their potential paths to some degree. So, 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:25.920 you know, you're just talking about you couldn't tell where 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:28.800 tornadoes were going. Imagine if you couldn't tell really where 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:30.640 a hurricane was going to go. I know, it's still 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:32.480 a little up in the air, but they can give 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.400 you some warning. But when you're talking about a storm 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.040 like the next one on our list, though, which happened 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.080 more than two hundred years ago, of course, there was 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:45.280 not that luxury, so modern researchers have had to piece 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.920 together some details regarding characteristics of the Great Hurricane of 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:53.200 seventeen eighty based on anecdotal evidence of the kind of 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:55.920 destruction that it caused, sort of having to look back 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.360 at it and figure out what the storm is really like. Yeah, 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:01.320 and that destruction that you just mentioned and was really significant, 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:03.880 to say the least. The fact that just considering the 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:05.680 fact that it stood out so much in what was 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:08.440 already an act of hurricane season that year, should hint 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:11.520 at that. But the death toll also speaks for itself. 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:14.920 More than twenty thousand people in the Eastern Caribbean lost 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:19.240 their lives, according to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency. 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:23.400 Researchers estimate that the hurricane formed in the Atlantic and 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:27.880 moved westward very slowly, at about six nautical miles per hour. 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:31.160 The storm got to Barbados on October tenth, where, according 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.400 to Encyclopedia Britannica, it destroyed nearly all the homes on 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:38.000 the island and about four thousand, five hundred people lost 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:40.760 their lives. The hurricane went on to hit pretty much 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:44.520 every island from Tobago to the Leeward Islands to Hispaniola, 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:48.720 but the biggest death tolls came out of Barbados and Martinique, 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:53.160 where nine thousand people died, and also sent Eustatious, where 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:57.160 four thousand, five hundred people also died. Researchers also believed 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:00.840 that the Great Hurricane was a Category five winds greater 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:04.120 than two hundred miles per hour. And again they've guessed 0:09:04.120 --> 0:09:06.640 that pieced it together just from reports of the storm 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:10.800 damage and examples of anecdotes that were offered up by 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.679 the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency. One of those examples 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:17.400 came from a letter sent in December of that year 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.640 from Sir George Rodney, and he wrote about the events 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.040 in Barbados and said, quote the strongest buildings in the 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:26.760 whole of the houses, most of which were stone and 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:30.560 remarkable for their solidity, gave way to the fury of 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:34.000 the wind and were torn up to their foundations. All 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.960 the forts destroyed, and many of the heavy cannon carried 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:39.960 upwards of a hundred feet from the forts. Had I 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:42.440 not been an eyewitness, and nothing could have induced me 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:46.079 to have believed it, more than six thousand persons perished 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:51.040 and all the inhabitants were entirely ruined. So pretty serious, 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:53.880 I mean, the sight of cannons blowing up into the air. 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.120 I think that's the strongest point he makes there. That's true. 0:09:57.120 --> 0:09:59.960 But I think this other point made by Dr Gilbert 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.240 Blaine and a letter that he wrote, is also very interesting. 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.160 He says, quote, what will give a strong idea of 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.080 the force of the wind is anything many of them, 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:11.720 and the trees is what he was referring to, were 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:14.280 stripped of their bark. So today we know that this 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:17.240 hasn't been observed in hurricanes where winds are about two 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:20.480 hundred miles per hour. And that's why researchers guessed that 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:22.920 the winds had to be greater than that. So I 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.439 think that's so neat that they can compare the history 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.320 of of other trees and other wind speeds and figure 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:33.240 out this one from sight. Yeah, and the casualties here 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:36.320 weren't all on land either. Also of historical note here 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:38.640 is that the American Revolution was going on at a 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.800 time that this hurricane struck, which meant that plenty of 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.640 European naval forces, both British and French, were concentrated in 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:49.240 the Caribbean. So thousands of soldiers died as their vessels 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:54.880 were damaged, destroyed swept away. Encyclopedia Britannicus says something like 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.640 more than forty French ships sank near Martinique alone. And 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:01.280 this is something I I've never heard mentioned when you 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.200 learn about the American Revolution, um, it seems like it 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.439 had to have shaken people up a little bit at least. 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.199 But Okay, so the next storm we're going to talk 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.000 about is certainly we're jumping ahead quite a bit. It's 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:15.680 a more modern storm, and it's one that I'm getting 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:17.880 a lot of you, especially if you're in the United States, 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:21.440 have probably heard about before. It has the distinction of 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:26.120 being known as the greatest natural disaster in US history. Yeah. 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.040 It took place in Galveston, Texas and nineteen hundred and 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.840 is sometimes known simply as the Galveston Storm. Galveston at 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.320 the time was one of the wealthiest cities in America, 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:37.480 and it was the largest city in Texas and a 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:41.559 big trade center Boomtown located on a barrier island in 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:45.199 the Gulf of Mexico. Galveston had gotten the message before 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:49.080 that it should do some storm preparation, including maybe constructing 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:52.360 a sea wall, and they'd seen nearby towns destroyed by 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:56.080 hurricanes in previous years, but they still didn't make any 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.320 moves to fortify the city prior to nineteen hundred. The 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:01.679 city got its first inkling that a storm was headed 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.480 its way in early September of that year, and what 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:08.439 started out as an area of quote unsettled weather near 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:11.520 the Windward Islands became a tropical storm that moved over 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:15.880 Cuba and hit Louisiana and Mississippi on the way to Texas, 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.600 so by the time it reached Galveston, though in September, 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:23.560 it was about a category four hurricane by modern estimates. 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:27.320 Again meteorologists or having to do some backtracking here. When 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:31.080 it first reached Galveston in the morning, it caused them flooding, 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.360 but it was still sunny out, and according to an 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:37.040 article by check Lions and History Magazine, most locals weren't 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:40.320 too concerned about the storm. They'd seen big storms before 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:42.680 living on the Gulf. They thought they could quote ride 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:45.480 it out, as sometimes people do in big storms like this. 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:48.400 But as the day went on, the wind started to 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.840 pick up, and it ultimately reached estimated speeds of about 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:54.760 a hundred and twenty two hundred thirty five miles per hour, 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:58.480 the highest speed recorded was actually one hundred miles per hour, 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:02.079 but there's a note or the wind instrument was destroyed 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.000 shortly after taking that measurement, so we can assume it 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:08.240 went quite a bit higher than that. The flooding also 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:10.960 got much worse. The rain just kept coming and the 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:14.800 tidal surges reached from eight to fifteen feet. People started 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:18.160 heading upwards, trying to get to the highest points that 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.000 they could in their homes, but it didn't really help. 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:24.560 The surges swept up homes from the foundation, and the 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:27.520 wind was just throwing trees and other objects around. So 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:29.719 it was just utter chaos. And we should note too 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:33.200 that as the Barrier Island, Galveston, of course, was very 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:36.760 low low to the sea, there was no high ground 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:40.280 to really get to. According to another article by Potter 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:44.720 and Weatherwise magazine, the entire southeast and west areas of 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:46.840 the city were just wiped out pretty much. All the 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:50.839 houses were just swept away. Most other buildings were destroyed too. 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:55.079 There were debris everywhere. There were bodies alive and dead, 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:59.200 trapped under the buildings. Potter quotes Isaac Klein, who was 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:02.040 in charge of the Augustin Weather Bureau office at the time, 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:04.480 is saying the site the next day was quote one 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:07.800 of the most horrible sites that ever civilized people looked upon. 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:12.120 Anywhere between six thousand and twelve thousand people died as 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:16.360 a result of this hurricane. Estimates usually sort of waiver 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:19.720 around I guess six thousand, but as many of these storms, 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:21.840 as they do for many of these storms, we have 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:26.160 a huge spans of numbers here. Yeah, and the exact 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:28.800 number of people who died may never be known. People 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:33.480 were drowned, of course, crushed by debris, and nearly ninety 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:36.240 kids in a local orphanage were killed, just an example 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.160 of some of the people who died in this storm. 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:43.120 About thirty thousand were left homeless too. Relief came in 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:45.120 from other areas of the country, but there were so 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:48.640 many dead bodies had to be burned for weeks after 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:51.320 the storm because there was just no way to bury 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:55.840 them all efficiently. Galveston never quite recaptured the prominence that 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:58.600 it once had, according to Lions article, but it did 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:01.800 survive and managed to reb old. One of the results 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:05.240 of what happened than nineteen oh to the city started 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:08.280 building a seventeen foot sea wall to protect itself and 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:10.880 houses and buildings were kind of raised up to that 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:14.880 level too, so there's more awareness again to keep this 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.840 from happening. Galveston really ended up having to almost raise 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:21.960 the entire city so they'd be a little safer. So 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:24.640 we're gonna be moving on now to another hurricane, but 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.160 before we do that, we need to discuss the relative 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:30.400 merits of coastal living in inland living. And it's say, 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:32.720 one of the obvious perks of living by the coast 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.000 is that you're near the beach, but one of the 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:39.080 upsides of living far inland is that you're usually spared 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:43.600 the full brunt of a hurricane, plus really terrifying side 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:47.560 effects like tsunami's if you're if you're in the cyclone 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:53.480 territory or storm surges, you're not completely off the hook. Though. Unfortunately, 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:58.080 in nineteen and extremely rare natural disaster occurred. It was 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:03.040 a freshwater storm surge at Lake Okeechobee in south central Florida, 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:05.480 which is just north of the what we think of 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:09.600 the Everglades today and forty miles northwest of Palm Beach, 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:13.280 and that surge plus the effects of the hurricane itself, 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:16.480 killed up to three thousand people, meaning that it came 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:20.400 pretty close to Galveston, depending on which numbers you're using 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:24.280 for Galveston as the deadliest storm in US history. In 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:28.520 the early twentieth century, South Florida underwent a huge development boom. 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.080 Just to give you some background on this area, Areas 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:35.240 like Palm Beach, which is an Atlantic Barrier island, attracted 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:38.800 the wealthy, while many of the inland everglade areas, including 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:43.400 the area around Lake Okeechobee, were drained for agriculture, and 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:46.520 according to Noah, only about fifty thousand people were living 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.920 in South Florida at the time, so migrant laborers from 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:52.880 mostly the Bahamas arrived to do the farm work and 0:16:52.920 --> 0:16:55.280 set up small towns around the lake. So those are 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.560 two focused areas, really different world economically, but both clearly 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:03.600 very vulnerable to weather. One a barrier island, always vulnerable. 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:08.520 The other small towns with shoddy structures sitting plumb next 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:11.400 to one of the largest freshwater lakes in the country 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:14.320 that only happened to be about twelve to fifteen feet 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.720 above sea levels. So again, according to Noah, the storm 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:23.600 we're discussing first hit Land about September twelfth. Ninety three 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:26.800 people were killed when it swept over Puerto Rico. From there, 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:29.800 it moved through the Bahamas and hit the mainland on 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:34.159 September sixt right in Palm Beach County, and the coast 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.239 was really badly damaged by the wind the storm, but 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:40.640 warnings had allowed many people to evacuate or to take 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:45.200 cover inland. Though water from the storm caused Lake Okotobe 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:47.840 to start to pool. You know, we mentioned that it's 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.480 a very large lake, it's also a very shallow lake. 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:54.960 And finally it broke through this short, inadequate muck levy 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.320 that was meant to protect the settlements to itself and 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:02.000 the freshwater storms are then at that point rose about 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:05.920 twelve feet around the lake, drowning people in the low 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.800 lying area in flooding towns like Belglade, South Bay, and 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:13.119 Canal Point, as well as other towns. And we mentioned 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:15.200 a minute ago that the death toll could have been 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:18.160 as high as three thousand. But there have been so 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:21.760 many recalculations regarding this storm over the years, and I 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:25.640 mentioned earlier that there's a lot of discrepancy in many 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:28.120 of these numbers, and we'll discuss some of the reasons 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.679 for that more later. But for this storm, it seems 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:35.040 like there were some racial politics involved. Different sources from 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:38.280 immediately after the flood ranged from one thousand dead from 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:41.399 the Miami Herald to two thousand, three hundred dead in 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.760 the Miami Daily News. So let's talk about that for 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:48.280 a second. Why was there so much confusion and miscalculation? 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.919 According to the American Meteorological Society and Russell post And 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:57.480 estimated three quarters of the dead were field workers, mostly 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:01.600 non white migratory workers. Many of them were only known 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:05.120 to even friends by their nicknames. Many of the bodies 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:08.639 were lost. Post article includes a quote describing how the 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.800 surge carried people into the quote sawgrass waste and the 0:19:12.840 --> 0:19:17.360 search for bodies ended November one because of lack of funds. 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:20.520 So they just mixture of of not being able to 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.919 actually locate the bodies and just not knowing who was 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:27.240 there alive in the first place. Right. Many of the 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:29.720 black dead and some of the white dead also were 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:35.160 buried in segregated mass graves. Simultaneous segregated memorial services were 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:40.480 held Sunday, September thirty and West Palm Beach. Mary McLeod 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:43.760 Bethune attended one of the black services. She was a 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:48.160 big thil rights activist and educator at the time. Economically, though, 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:52.280 the storm was also really damaging. It caused an estimated 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:56.560 twenty five million dollars in damages, which is now equal 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:01.600 to about sixteen billion dollars if you adjust for wealth, population, 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:05.719 and inflation. According to Post, it also ended the boom 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:09.040 of the nineteen twenties South Florida development because only two 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:12.520 years earlier there had been a similarly large storm that 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.560 had destroyed a lot of Miami, so people buying their 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:18.600 luxury houses were starting to realize this was a risky 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:21.400 area to live in. And that's why this one reminds 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:23.760 me so much of the Galveston storm, because it really 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:28.159 affected the whole trajectory of the of the city and 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:33.080 the area. Another note here of the literary variety, okachobe, 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:35.159 if it rang a bell for you, it might be 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:39.080 from readings Orneil Hurston's their eyes were watching God. Not 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.600 to give anything away, but it's a major plot device 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:45.479 between the heroine and the character Teacake. Florty and Hurston 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:48.120 hadn't been in the state during the storm, but according 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:52.119 to Valerie Boyd, she combined her interviews with survivors plus 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.800 her own experience in a storm in the Bahamas to 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:58.880 create a realistic scene. And I have to say it's 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:01.360 probably been about ten or so years since I read 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:05.440 that book. I can remember the storm then. So our 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:08.879 final storm for this list is the Bolla cyclone of 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.560 nineteen seventy and many of the storms we've discussed so 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:17.320 far have been truly extraordinary storms, truly large storms. The 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:21.040 Bula cyclone, though, could have been just an average or 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:25.000 maybe even under the right circumstances, a mild storm had 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:27.600 it not hit where it did and had it not 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.520 hit when it did. As it worked out, though, the storm, 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:34.920 which is also called the Ganges Brahmaputra Delta cyclone, became 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:39.000 one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest tropical cyclone 0:21:39.000 --> 0:21:42.800 on record. It's also one of the world's worst natural disasters. 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:46.120 The storm formed over the Bay of Bengal November eighth, 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:50.240 nineteen seventy, and this was after the traditional season's end, 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:53.640 so most people weren't even expecting more storms and we're 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.920 already kind of at max flood capacity for the year. 0:21:57.320 --> 0:21:59.879 It was also headed for the Ganges Delta, which was 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:03.159 in a part of East Pakistan and one of the flattest, 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.919 most flood prone regions of the world, flooding is expected. 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:09.720 It's what delivers the rich sediment that makes the soil 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:13.440 so fertile, but it also makes the land unstable since 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:16.960 many rivers criss crossed the region. Yeah. For instance, many 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:20.520 structures are built on these small sediment made islands that 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:23.199 only last a few years. You know, the sediment washes 0:22:23.240 --> 0:22:28.440 away new islands form, so understandably, building temporary structures like this, 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:34.159 you don't build really solid ones, really sturdy buildings and houses. 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.480 But because the soil in this region is so rich 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:40.000