Storm warning: The impact of hurricanes is on the rise
Two new books, 鈥淎 Furious Sky鈥� and 鈥淜atrina,鈥� offer insights into these storms and the challenges that they pose for planning and mitigation efforts.
鈥淜atrina: A History, 1915鈥�2015鈥� by Andy Horowitz, Harvard University Press, 296 pp.; and 鈥淎 Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes鈥� by Eric Jay Dolin, Liveright, 432 pp.
Courtesy of Harvard University Press and W. W. Norton & Company
For the first time since such records have been kept, 2020鈥檚 Atlantic hurricane season has seen nine tropical storms before Aug. 1.聽The month of July alone saw Cristobal, Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo, Hanna, and finally Isaias, all of which were the earliest named storms, with Isaias strengthening to full hurricane force that threatened as far north as New England.
Two new books, Eric Jay Dolin鈥檚 鈥淎 Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America鈥檚 Hurricanes,鈥� and聽Andy Horowitz鈥檚 鈥淜atrina: A History, 1915-2015鈥� offer insights into the powerful effects of these weather systems.
Dolin (read the Monitor鈥檚 Q&A with him here) explains that hurricanes have left an indelible mark on American history. In the book鈥檚 epigraph, he quotes a letter written by a teenage Alexander Hamilton, describing a hurricane that struck his home on St. Croix in the Caribbean in 1772: 鈥淭he roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of the falling houses ... were sufficient to strike astonishment into angels.鈥�
That tone of astonishment runs throughout Dolin鈥檚 thoroughly engrossing book. He鈥檚 combed historical archives, searching for the hurricanes that were severe enough to commandeer the narrative, however briefly. One such storm, for example, struck Massachusetts in 1635, flattening trees and houses and prompting then-Gov. William Bradford to comment that 鈥渘one living in these parts, either English or Indians, ever saw鈥� the like of it.
Lessons from Katrina
Hurricane Katrina hammered New Orleans in late August 2005, taking more than 1,800 lives and causing more than $160 billion in damages. Horowitz, a history professor at Tulane University, has written easily the best book on the subject since Douglas Brinkley鈥檚 2006 鈥淭he Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.鈥� Beyond delving into the tangled history of Louisiana politics, Horowitz鈥檚 book thoughtfully attempts to understand the cultural nature of these calamities. 鈥淒isasters are less discrete events than they are contingent processes,鈥� he writes. 鈥淪eemingly acute incidents, like the largely forgotten 1915 hurricane, live on as the lessons they teach, the decisions they prompt, and the accommodations they oblige.鈥�
His book takes an intriguing look at the social dynamics that so often play out in natural disasters, noting that the 鈥渆nvironmental precarity, economic inequality, racial enmity, political division, bureaucratic ineptitude, social trauma, and resistance to all of these things that defined much of the Katrina disaster might have happened anywhere in the United States.鈥� But the fact that Katrina鈥檚 impact fell disproportionately on poor Louisianans raises a host of issues that Horowitz addresses better than any previous narrative history of the catastrophe.聽
Both authors stress the importance of preparedness. They also question the practice, over the years, of allowing homes to be rebuilt in more or less the same locations where storms had only recently destroyed them. The kind of long-term planning that accounts for climate change and rising sea levels has been conspicuously absent.
Each book points to the increasingly sophisticated technology that enables more accurate predictions of not only the onset but also the path of monster storms as a reason for some hope. But it would be better still if those storms encountered only tough levee systems when they came ashore, instead of row upon row of houses built right down to the water.