So... Alright - Hubris and Hurricanes

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Geoff tells a story about a very bad day for the coastal city of Galveston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Buy from DysonCanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage, accessories sold separately. And, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it,

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check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, check it, But it did. So I told a couple of stories the other day on the regulation podcast from my recent Thanksgiving trip. I went with my wife and the dog. We drove from Austin up to Branson, Missouri, which is kind of the halfway point between Austin and Dallas. It's not quite the halfway point between Austin and Dallas. It's not quite the halfway point between us and Dallas,

the halfway point between Austin and Detroit. And also, you know, Emily is a Hatfield and they are literally from Missouri. It's like her family's ancestral land where, you know, the grandparents and everyone grew up. So it has a special affinity, a special place in their hearts. And so we all met there. And then we spent a week in Branson going to Silver Dollar City, which I had never been to.

I honestly had never heard of until I met Emily. And she has been talking it up since the day we met. And it is like if all if you're not familiar with it, if you're ignorant of it like I was, it's like all it's like if you if you're not familiar with it, if you're ignorant of it like I was, it's like all it's like if you went to Disneyland and you go to Frontierland, it's like a frontier land was an entire park and also town. It's it's pretty charming. It's pretty cute. It's like a hillbilly Disney, I guess.

And the city itself is like. Emily described it as sober Vegas. It is like a family friendly Las Vegas. A lot of like go kart tracks and zip lining and ice cream shops and more ice cream shops and like restaurants that you didn't know still existed. I didn't know Fuddruckers was still around, but it is in Branson. I didn't know Shoney's was still around, but it's going strong in Branson. So if you ever you ever catch yourself thinking like,

what happened to Sizzler? Look up Branson, Missouri. You might find there's one or two of your favorite lost restaurant chain still going strong there. By the way, talk about going strong. So. Taco Bell used to have this thing called a chili cheese burrito. I don't know if you're familiar with it. I was always a huge fucking fan.

Emily is a huge fan. They got rid of the chili cheese burrito years ago, but we found out that not every Taco Bell got rid of them. Some still carry it. It's like a regional thing. I don't know how the determination is made, but we heard about a couple of years ago, Emily found a website that tracks or tells you where there are Taco Bells in America that have chili cheese burritos. And there were like.

A million in Branson and up around that area. And so when we drove, I didn't talk about this regulation, but when we drove from Austin to Branson, we stopped at like five different Taco Bells and had chili cheese burritos along the way at every one that we came across that had it. It was awesome. It was glorious. It was and had chili cheese burritos along the way at every one that we came across that had him. It was awesome. It was glorious. It was like a chili cheese burrito tour. So if you are in an area where your Taco Bell no longer carries chili cheese burritos and hasn't for a

very long time, check out Google it because you might be surprised. They do still exist out in the wild. It's not a part of the like decades menu they've got going on or anything. It's just they're around 365 days a year. And if you are in an area where chili cheese burritos are plentiful like Missouri or Oklahoma, you don't realize it. But so much of the rest of the United States is lacking is bur burrito-less, is chili cheese-less. You don't know how lucky you have it. Anyway, so when I was on this trip, I had a couple of funny things happen.

I got locked out of my hotel room in a bathrobe with the dog and a blanket while Emily was in the shower and I had to spend about 10 minutes on the floor just trying to cover up and keep the dog from running away until she got out of the shower. And I also bought a 17 pound smoked turkey to take with me to Missouri so that the family could all share in it.

And I left it in the hotel that we spent the night at in Tulsa. I tell those stories in more detail on the Regulation Podcast. I don't see any reason to retell them here. But one thing I did want to talk about is while we were making the drive, I love a road trip, Emily loves a road trip,

and it's just been forever since we've been able to eke one out, and so I really wanted to get the most out of this one. It sucked because my face was hurting. That's a continuing saga that hasn't fully solved itself yet. But while we were on it, it's just fucking immersing ourselves and soaking it up and fully enjoying it.

We listened to a book on tape, which I hadn't done in quite some time. And I wanna talk a little bit about that. If you're familiar with Eric Larson, well, there are two Eric Larson's that I'm aware of. There's the comic book writer, Eric Larson, who wrote the Savage Dragon, who I have a terrible tattoo of on my left calf.

And then there is the historical fiction writer, Eric Larsen, who wrote Devil in the White City and the book about Tesla that I couldn't quite get through. And he wrote one about the Night of the Long Knives. But he also wrote one called Isaac Storm that I had never read. I've read some of his stuff, but I never read this one. But since we had just been in Galveston

and kind of had Galveston on the brain, Emily suggested that we listen to it on the drive. And so we did. And I gotta be honest with you, if you're not familiar with it, or if you don't know what the book is, it's a book that tells the story of the 1900 Galveston hurricane,

which I grew up on the Gulf Coast. Hurricanes have been a part of my life as long as I can remember. I've lived in the outskirts of New Orleans. I've lived all up and down Florida. I've lived in Mobile, Alabama. I have lived front and center of Hurricane Alley for a lot of my life.

And I'm incredibly aware of hurricanes. My family would sit around and talk about Frederick and Camille when I was a kid and how terrible they were all the time. That's where a lot of their big stories come from. But I was kind of ignorant of the 1900 Galveston hurricane. Like I knew that it fucked Galveston up. I knew they built the seawall because of it,

but I didn't realize how big it was, how bad it was, how much damage it caused, and what a fucking change it made in the course of at least one town. Like really insane, interesting story. It's called Isaac Storm because it kind of, I guess if there was a protagonist in this story, it should be the town, but I guess it would be Isaac Klein,

who was the director of the Weather Bureau in Galveston. And it is basically a story that kind of follows him through the events leading up to it. And it's, man, if you ever wanted to just really fucking hate men for their greed and their ego and their ambition and their selfishness and their small mindedness and their hubris.

I cannot recommend a book more than Isaac Storm. It is just about how Isaac Klein was too fucking full of himself to recognize the danger those people were in. It was about how his superiors were bureaucrats who cared far too little about predicting the weather and saving people and far too much about advancing their own careers and looking good in the process.

And it is just a, and it's also about the fucking hubris that we were caught up in, in the Gilded Age in America at the turn of the century. Men, or at least the American man at that time, had his head so fucking far up his own ass and had such an inflated, we had such an inflated ego about our capabilities and about really kind of deifying ourselves to some degree.

And like had this idea that we were we were. It went past ambition, like ambitions is a super admirable thing, right? But it went past ambition. It went to like it just just it went past hubris to a point where people, I think, started to feel omnipotent, at least in the areas that they specialized in. I mean, it's cool in the sense that we thought we were capable of anything, but it's also really shitty in the sense

that we thought we understood everything. And that's why a hurricane like the Galveston hurricane of 1900 ended up killing somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 people when it didn't need to. I mean, it was gonna kill a lot of people, but they had enough warning to get thousands out, thousands out before it happened. Basically what happens is, it's fucking,

oh, it's so fucking annoying. There's a Cuban weather service, right, that's run by the people of Cuba. And then there's the United States Weather Service, as it's burgeoning and it's clamoring for acceptance. Weather predicting at this point is kind of like a dark magic, right? We don't understand the science.

We're infants in this arena. And so it really is a lot of dark alchemy and guessing. And so not a lot of Americans and other bureaucrats have a lot of faith or trust in it because people get, even now, you know, you turn on the weather report and it's wrong 50% of the time. And that's like the running meta joke is that, you know, the weather reporter doesn't know

what the fuck they're talking about because it's so hard to predict the weather. Way harder back then. And people trusted and believed in the weather sources way less back then. So you trusted and believed in the weather sources way less back then. So you had this United States Weather Bureau, they had the station in Cuba, right? And they were kind of at odds with the Cuban weather service

because the Cuban weather service was concerned with saving lives. And so they would be like, this is a tornado, this is a hurricane. And the US side of that didn't want to spark fear unnecessarily in Americans. And so they would downplay all the reports and they would take the words like hurricane and tornado out because they didn't want to quote unquote needlessly worry Americans because they thought the Cubans had a flair for the dramatic. Right. But what it really was, was they didn't want to look bad to the bureaucrats above them.

But what it really was was they didn't want to look bad to the bureaucrats above them. And it's a lot of people jockeying for position, just a lot of people trying to climb the governmental ladder. Right. And so they had actually right before the hurricane hits, they make a decision that they're not going to report any of the Cuban weather reports to the American branch anymore. They're gonna stop any telegrams that come out, they're gonna intercept them and stop them because they think that the Cubans are leaking weather to a college in New Orleans for some reason,

and it's gonna make the Americans look bad. They're like safeguarding information and gatekeeping information that's gonna save lives, right? That exists to save lives. And what happens is the Cuban people correctly predict that there's a massive fucking hurricane coming and they say it's going to bounce off Cuba and turn left and it's going to go into the Gulf and it's going to smack right into the West Texas somewhere. But the US they look at it and they go first off it's not a hurricane it's just a tropical storm it's nothing they downplay it downplay downplay

and they say and it's not going to go it's not going to go. It's not going to go west of Florida. It's going to skirt the eastern side of Florida and go take a right and it's going to go up northeast of America and cause no problems whatsoever. Nobody has anything to worry about. Right. So the thing turns left and it disappears from their radar because they're not looking for it. They think it's going up to the east. Right. That's what they've been told by some American weather bureaucrats who don't want there to be a hurricane in the Gulf. And on top of that, Galveston is under the mistaken

impression that it's hurricane proof. And they think that because of this fucking Isaac Klein guy, right? If you don't know about Galveston, it's a little port town, port city that's kind of on an island down on the coast of Texas, kind of nestled up east of tech, east of Houston. Right. And I guess I should maybe take a step back and talk about Galveston a little bit. Galveston, at this point in time, in 1900, is a rapidly growing city in Texas.

It is a huge success story, right? It is being built up so rapidly that let's see, the city, I'm gonna read some facts here. The city of Galveston, formally founded in 1839, had weathered some storms, all of which the city survived with ease. It was basically the city was founded and built up during a period of relatively mild weather.

And they got it into their heads that there would always be mild weather because it's all they had known since they started the settlement, right? But it was such a boom town because of its location on the coast that they saw the population increase. And this is something crazy that kind of blew my mind.

They saw the the population increase from 29,000 people in 1890 to 30 said almost 38,000 people in 1990 so in 10 years the population grew. I don't know. What is that 30% 20% but it also grew 8,000 people in that 10 years in 1900 when this hurricane hits it kills about 8,000 people. So basically, the entire growth in that decade when it became the fast one of the fastest growing cities in America got wiped out in an afternoon in a brutal, heartbreaking, disturbing, disgusting, terrible way. It was at the time the fourth largest municipality in terms of population in the state of Texas. It had one of the highest per capita income rates in the US. It was at the time the fourth largest municipality in terms of population in the state of Texas.

It had one of the highest per capita income rates in the US. It was basically New Orleans, before New Orleans became New Orleans and Houston before Houston became Houston. It was in a battle with Houston for prominence to see which was gonna be the bigger port town, right? Galveston felt like it was better positioned. It was more accessible.

It was one of the busiest ports in the country already. And because of that, it became a very rich city. It had electric lights on the streets early. It had running gas early. It had street cars early. It was one of the fastest growing towns. It became a beacon of American industrialism and technology. A lot of the early creature comfort technologies

that we were getting started in Galveston or were very early represented in Galveston before larger cities. Like, Galveston was up there with New York City and Baltimore at the time, and they were just like these fucking big hubs, right? Oh yeah, how about this? It had an area of downtown with like businesses

and ornate houses and stuff called the Strand that was considered the Wall Street of the entire Southwest, right? This is how important Galveston was and was becoming. Like it was in the middle of its boom. Think San Diego in the 80s, think Austin in 2010, you know? Think LA in the 70s, just exploding. And so because of that, it became a pretty sought after gig

for someone who was ambitious in a weather bureau. Isaac Klein ends up getting the position there. And at the time, the people of Galveston are a little nervous. They're nervous because of a place called Indianola, Texas. South of them a fair bit. Well, let me just read this. Today almost nothing, is this from Wikipedia?

Today almost nothing remains of the original Indianola as due to storm erosion, most of the entire city is underwater. A granite marker was placed on the shore at the nearest point to the Indianola Courthouse, now 300 feet away in Matagorda Bay. It reads, Calhoun County Courthouse, Edward Beaumont, architect, 1859. During the storms of 1875 and 1886, precious lives were saved within the walls of its shell,

concrete and lime, abandoned in 1886. The courthouse is 300 feet out into the bay now because the entire city washed away. In the move towards electric vehicles, Hyundai isn't just in the race, we're setting the pace. As Canada's most awarded fully electric vehicle lineup, our vehicles offer up to 550 kilometers of all electric range and winter optimized technology for all-season performance.

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tourism Alberta. There was a storm that hit in 1875 that basically destroyed the entire town killed about 400 people. I think there were only a couple thousand there though. So it was a major portion. They said fuck it. We are it was a freak storm we are going to rebuild and in 1880, they did. And then in 1886, just 11 years later, another storm came through and wiped it off the map and they abandoned the town. You can go explore it now if you want.

There's not much left of it, as I understand most of it's, you know, underwater. But it was a whole town that essentially got wiped away in two quick succession hurricanes. I saw this, which I thought was interesting. If you want to learn about what Indianola was like before it disappeared, this is a passage from a Frederick Law Olmsted book where he called Journey Through Texas. It was a memoir he put out in 1860.

If you don't know who Frederick Law Olmsted is, interestingly enough, he was the, like I guess he would call him the godfather of landscape architecture and urban planning in America probably. He created Central Park. He, and he was so forward thinking that he created Central Park in a way

that it wouldn't fully mature and realize his vision until 40 to 60 years in the future, which would be long after he was dead. I miss the era, especially when we're talking about the hubris that killed a bunch of people in 1900, I miss the era of man who could think so far into the future and think about the greater good, not his own, and would set the world up to see a beauty

that he would never personally get to experience just because he he knew that was the proper way to do it. Interesting guy, Frederick Law Olmsted. I read a little bit about him. He he was also one of the he was the landscape architect of the Chicago World's Fair, which was kind of at the time blew everybody's fucking dicks out of the water. It was so cool and and amazing and beautiful. And then he eventually I want to say he went crazy and died in in like a mental institution broke really sad, sad into a brilliant career and a guy who who did so many things in America 120 years ago that we are all still enjoying today. For instance, the

park system in Boston, I think it's called the Emerald Necklace, I want to say. That's him. He, as far as I know, he built that interconnecting series of parks that they're supposedly so beautiful. I've never really explored. Anyway, he wrote about this is about Indianola in his 1860 memoir. So this would be about 15 years before it gets hit with the first hurricane. At the entrance are some prominent gables. And it was so like the approach to a European seaport that we thought of our passports and the OCTROI officers.

I had to look up what OCTROI is, O-C-T-R-O-I, what that word is. I wasn't familiar with it. It's basically like a like a tax officer, like someone who collects an import tax. The beach on which the town is built is some 300 yards in width and extends about a mile in length, having but two parallel streets front and back. It has a more busy and prosperous appearance than Lavaca.

And apparently at this time, Indianola and Lavaca were like fighting for position and prominence in much the same way that in a few years, Galveston and Houston would be doing the same thing. It's much larger than Lavaca, but is said to have less heavy business and less capital. The rivalry is extreme and amusing. At Lavaca, we heard of Indianola as a little village town by the bay. They call it Indianola, where our vessels land goods on their way up. Each consider the other to be sickly. Indianola has the advantage of the best water and of

the New Orleans steamers, which land at Powderhorn, a sort of hotel suburb four miles below by a hard beach road where nine to 10 feet of water can be carried. I don't know what that means. We spent a quiet Sunday at Indianola. The beach around town forms a pleasant promenade and we enjoyed the full sun and we enjoyed to the full the calm sunny sea, which seemed like a return to an old friend after months of inland journey. Our hotel was a great improvement to that of the day before.

The Germans who composed half the population, that's a good point, half the population of Indianola was German settlers who came in like one big lump. They have enterprise to cultivate vegetable gardens, which furnished at least salads at all seasons. Around one of these gardens, we noticed a hedge of enormous prickly pear. The native oysters are large and abundant.

Game of all kinds is cheap. So Frederick Law Olmsted was really impressed with Indianola and said it reminded him of European sea towns, which is cheap. So Frederick Law Olmsted was really impressed with Indianola and said it reminded him of European sea towns which is interesting. So 15 years later he gets hit by a hurricane, most of the city is destroyed, a percentage of the population is killed, they decide to rebuild. Just 11 years later it is hit with another one and destroyed and this is where I think Isaac becomes kind of a piece of shit. When this happens, the people of Galveston start talking, hey, maybe we're not super safe after all.

Maybe we do need some sort of a protection from the ocean because Galveston just falls into the ocean. It's like eight feet above sea level, I wanna say, maybe. Seven feet above sea level. It's like eight feet above sea level, I wanna say maybe, seven feet above sea level. It's not high at all. It's like right there. And so they consult some architects and they decide, you know what, we should build a seawall

and they even approve a little bit of money for it, right? So then in comes Isaac Klein, who wants to calm panic from the people because he, a weatherman, has determined because there has never been, and this is really his kind of logic, there's never been a hurricane in his lifetime that's hit Galveston directly that's caused damage.

And so he decides that the way it's positioned in the Gulf makes it uniquely protected and safe. And that the two hurricanes that hit to the south of them in Indianola and wiped it off the map were such freak storms that even though it happened twice in 11 years, that it would never happen again in their lifetimes. And even if it did, any hurricane that came would go southwest or east of them and not actually hit them. Because, I think just because he wanted that to be true, would go south, west or east of them and not actually hit them because,

I think just because he wanted that to be true, because he was so fucking full of himself because he thought he knew everything, even though they were just in there, they were dipping their toes in the infancy of weather science at this point. So he senses that there's all this talk about building a seawall and people getting a little nervous

because of Indianola, so he goes out and he writes an article in the Galveston Daily News to assuage the fears of Galveston, telling the people that it's impossible for a hurricane of any significant strength to strike Galveston Island impossible. And this is a man who works for the United States Weather Bureau, who is a government employee and official, is now pinning this op-ed in the paper

and telling people, don't build a seawall, don't worry about it. I've determined that a hurricane cannot hit this town in any measurable strength, right? So it eases tensions. This comes out in 1891. They could have built a seawall. The one that they'd envisioned wouldn't have been big enough to stop the hurricane.

This was a massive fucking hurricane, but it would have helped. It would have saved some lives. Instead, what happens is the message from Cuba gets intercepted or lost and not communicated properly. The Americans are told that there's a storm coming up the Eastern coast and like fishermen in New Jersey should be a little careful, but that the Gulf is fine. And then people get weirds, you know,

weathermen along the Gulf get weird, get like weird barometer reports and shit and turn them in. And they become kind of tangentially aware that something's coming towards Galveston. And as Isaac's kind of figuring it out on the Friday that it's gonna hit, he's starting to get reports. It's hours away, people are going about their daily business or like nothing's happening.

It starts, the storm starts to hit. They don't believe it can be anything serious. Isaac realizes pretty quickly that this is gonna be a bad storm and it's gonna cause damage. So he says now that he runs down to the beach and he personally warns over 6,000, and by the way, this number changes over the years.

It starts at like, he personally warns 2,000 people to get off the coast, to get away from the water. And then as the years go on, it was 6,000 people he warned. And as he got even older, I think that the number may have climbed even more. There's not a single report of him alerting anyone to the dangers. This is pretty clearly, I mean, I don't know,

this is conjecture, of course, but it's pretty apparent to me that this is a way that he can save face for not alerting the people of Galveston sooner, that there was a hurricane barreling down towards them that was going to wipe out almost the every structure in the fucking town and destroy the entire population boom they have just experienced. Oh, also, you really should just read the book because they're gonna it's much more interesting than I'm able to convey in this rambling manner. But he has a brother who

works for him who competes with him constantly. They don't like each other. They're very competitive. He's the more successful one. His brother has reports and accounts of the day that kind of directly contradict what Isaac says. They both kind of try to make themselves into heroes in the day. There are reports where they do line up like Isaac decides to go home to his pregnant wife and his kids to stay in the house with them to ride out the storm. He thinks that the storm, he's got one of the best built houses in town

and it's on a hill and he thinks it'll be fine. And so his brother is, I think his name's Joseph, is like, nah, dude, we gotta get the fuck out of here. And he's like, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm the big brother in this relationship. I say we go home. His brother goes with him. I think they take in like 30 or 40 refugees.

Everybody crams into their house. A lot of people are cramming into a lot of houses and then of course the house gets fucking decimated and What ends up happening is the brother Joseph gets sucked at it jumps out of the house grabs his two daughters and manages to save them Isaac goes down with the house and his wife and one of his I think his Son and eventually he and I think the son come up, but the wife dies pregnant, she was pregnant. And so he loses his wife and his unborn child. And then spends the rest of his life, I think,

trying to change the public record to make himself more of a hero. The entire organization does they directly they like Alternative facts their way out of this they could have saved thousands of people and Instead the bureaucrats just lie and they start releasing press reports saying to newspapers saying Isaac saved press reports saying to newspapers saying Isaac saved thousands of people and none of it's true and nobody fact checks that are cares and it just becomes kind of accepted

and he he kind of goes through the rest of his life really fucking full of himself at some point he retires and becomes a painter and and just it just it's a really it's a really bummer of a story. Isaac's one of a handful of shitty characters in this story of people that care more about themselves and their own career than they do about the betterment and the health of the people around them. And Isaac is a more redeemable character than some of them. And I do think that he was genuinely trying to do good. was genuinely trying to do good. He was inventing techniques and like he was a forefather in weather sciences and he pushed the medium, he did good things.

All of these men at the time, these people did good things, but their own ego was so in the way of their success and the things that they're doing that it just taints it all and you end up with a situation where one of the biggest hurricanes in recorded history hits. By the way this hurricane was so fucking big that it went through Texas it went up the entire United States into Canada and came out like fucking Newfoundland still a a strong storm, still killing people along the way. And the United States fucking Weather Bureau was still giving false reports.

They're like still downplaying it. They're like, no, no, no, it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. And then people are dying and they're like, it wasn't a big deal. They're like, don't believe your eyes. It wasn't a big deal. And it's just, oh, it's frustrating because you read about this and this happening in 1900 and how they're just able to kind of blatantly lie to the public and get a seemingly get away with it. And now, you know, you compare it to this post truth world we live in, where nothing is to

be believed because everything is manipulatable. And it's just like the parallels are crazy. I don't even think you really need AI and manipulation because the American people are willing to believe any lie you'll print in a newspaper, apparently. And that's been the case since 1900. Anyway, that's the book we we listened to on the road trip. It was really good and really frustrating and really interesting. And Eric Larson is a great writer. It was really good and really frustrating and really interesting and Eric Larsen is a great writer. I appreciate the stories he finds and chooses to tell because Until him the the Chicago World's Fair was never on my radar

The night along knives was never on my radar and Isaac Storm was definitely not on my radar So if you're looking for some good fiction, if you're looking to be pissed off by the hubris of man, maybe check it out. Oh, I guess I should also by saying that the hurricane does such damage to the city of Galveston, it never recovers all of the business that it won from Houston in its popularity contest moves to Houston, which is a much seen as a much safer location now. And Galveston kind of becomes a husk of itself, a sort of a cautionary tale of what could have been and a reminder of a very brief but gleaming, too good to be true period in American history. So the song of the episode today is going to be an old one. It is an earworm. It will get stuck in your head for a long time. It is Woody Guthrie, the Rangers

Command. I've been listening to it a lot lately and well, I really like it. I hope you do too. I will see you next week. I got a whole list of other shit I want to talk about with you. So hopefully you'll lend me your ears one more time. All right. This is the end of the show.