"On This Day" In Engineering History

I would have to say that with the advances in meteorology that the Galveston Hurricane can't be blamed on anyone in particular. They had very little to gain intelligence on any hurricane.

That was a natural event, whereas the Titanic was man made.

The Hurricane that hit Louisiana in 2005, I would have to say was much deadlier. I'm talking in numbers that were killed, but because of the human error involved when there wasn't any excuse for the negligence. Here they had the intelligence sources on any hurricane. Here they had installed protection against hurrican. However the protective installations were in need of repair and the Governor has been informed of the needs for repair well in advance but they felt they could put it off for more important things.

Another factor is that the people new that the hurricane was coming, they had news reports on it days in advance and the people or so called victims made the choice to stay. These same people are the ones crying for government financial aide.

I have to concur - the one-two punch of Katrina and Rita caused more damage than should have happened because of lack of preparation, avoidance of expenditures, and failure on many levels to respond properly. And not just to NOLA! Many parts of the Gulf Coast suffered severe setbacks.

I don't consider Isaac Cline a villain, simply because he used his best judgment of such hurricanes. How was he supposed to know that hurricanes go on land unless it has occurred before or on that island? If the same thing happened at this day and age (with the present knowledge, of course), he would be considered some sort of evil.

He paid the ultimate price for his mistakes and corrected himself. He even went out to protect Galveston even more in the future. He can't be to blame for the lack of information surrounding natural disasters at that time period. He did the best he could do - use that information to inform others that would be in his position!

Oh and in your bold titles, you call him "Issac" not Isaac

Thanks for the edits, Jaxy! I've changed "Issac" to "Isaac" in the subheadings.

I agree that we can't blame Isaac Cline for lacking information that just wasn't available at the time. But I'm also critical of the way in which he allegedly ignored eyewitness accounts because they didn't "prove" the science of the storm. Did he really need to see, feel, and hear everything himself?

This is a crude analogy, but when I watch the local news, the meteorologist sometimes reports temperature readings submitted by viewers. These viewers probably aren't scientists, and their instruments are probably pretty crude when compared to the tools at the disposal of the National Weather Service. But the local meteorologist doesn't reject viewer reports outright because of an inability to "prove" them.

Hindsight, of course, is 20/20 vision. Had the Great Galveston Hurricane never occurred, Cline may have been lauded for saving taxpayer dollars by speaking out against an unnecessary seawall.

A lot of people don't believe things even though all the evidence out there to support it. Think of the people who still think the earth is flat and all the other pictures from space of the round earth are hoaxes and photo-shopped. People tend to believe until they are proven absolutely wrong - and so many others just ignore the evidence. All I can do is thank the heavens that Isaac Cline decided to take the evidence... perhaps a little later than some, but better late than never.

Houston owes its existence as it is today to the 1900 Galveston Hurricane. Following Galveston's inundation it lost the rank of being the premier, and most populous, Texas city to Dallas; and the expectation it was destined to become a major American port metropolis. A period of transient worker migration across east Texas and extending to Arkansas and up to Missouri was set in motion and lasted up to and into the Depression years. Short and long term, the hurricane consequences since to any other US city pales in comparison. The hurricane also had a profound effect on Galveston's unofficial status as an immigration port of entry...as well as a prime port for rum running and other smuggling...and a thriving gambling/casino trade♣♣