A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes

According to Dolin, the 1954 and 1955 hurricane seasons were watershed moments for improvements in hurricane research and forecasting. This disaster seasons afflicted wealthy New Englanders who demanded a better system of hurricane detection and protection. Robert H. Smith, the pioneer of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, had a plan to make improvements; however, he struggled to obtain funding from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration. It took the arrival of the destructive Hurricane Connie in 1955 for Eisenhower to take Smith’s proposal seriously and for the National Hurricane Research Project to come into being. This later transformed into the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

With the Weather Bureau armed with better forecasting information, its chief advice to those in the path of a hurricane was to evacuate. However, because of poverty, poor health, or sheer disbelief that the hurricane would be serious enough to merit the inconvenience and expense of evacuation, many people remained and faced the consequences. While local news stations played a role in providing forecasting information and hurricane safety tips, power outages meant they were often unable to get their message across in time.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) which was tasked with coordinating federal aid for hurricane victims, especially when the damage was beyond the scope of what local authorities could handle. However, Dolin considers that FEMA “had a checkered history” because it was underfunded and run by political cronies with insufficient hurricane experience (252).

The infamous Hurricane Katrina of 2005, which devastated New Orleans in Louisiana, “is arguably the most complicated and controversial natural and humanmade disaster in American history” (258). Prior to the disaster, ample data suggested that New Orleans, which was 50% below sea level and surrounded by three bodies of water, was especially vulnerable to hurricane damage. As Katrina approached, reports from the Weather Bureau grew increasingly concerning, and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco urged evacuation. Many people did not take the warning seriously, and the government was unsure that it could sustain the $32 million cost of a forced evacuation. While 80% of the city was evacuated, those who remained were mainly poor, Black, and unable to access a car. Ten thousand people went to the Superdome for shelter, which became unsanitary, owing to power outages and a plumbing failure.

While Katrina’s center dodged New Orleans, the storm “clobbered the city just the same,” as water levels rose and the levees protecting the city breeched, causing thousands of homes and businesses to flood (264). The one hundred degree heat caused the stagnant water to become “‘HazMat gumbo’ […] a fetid stew of dangerous chemicals and sewage that was hazardous to come into contact with” (266). Dead bodies floated in the water, as many people who could not reach their roofs in time drowned in their own homes. Although the hurricane hit in late August, it was not until early October that the city was finally drained. Economically, the city took years to recover. Since the hurricane, $20 billion has been spent on extending levees and building storm surge gates; however, Dolin argues that this measure is insufficient for contending with a Category 3 storm like Katrina.

State and federal response to the hurricane was slow, and George W. Bush’s failure to act decisively tarnished his reputation and caused Democrats to gain ground in the 2006 midterms. Sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson was amongst many who proposed that “race played a major role in the failure of the federal government […] to respond in a timely manner to the poor black folk of Louisiana because black grief and pain have been ignored throughout the nation’s history” (273). Others, such as then-Senator Barack Obama, claimed that “what started out as a natural disaster became a man-made disaster—a failure of government to look out for its citizens” (274).

When Hurricane Sandy was due to hit coastal New York and New Jersey in October 2012, many residents did not heed mandatory evacuation orders. However, the damage was extensive, as much of lower Manhattan remained flooded and out of power for weeks, while those on Staten Island and the Rockaways witnessed their homes floating away.

The storm season of 2017, which featured hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, was notable for being “the most expensive hurricane season on record, by far,” in addition to coinciding with some of the most accurate predictions of the hurricanes’ paths (291). However, it was also distinctive owing to the influence of Twitter. President Donald J. Trump entered into a Twitter war with the San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. While Trump claimed that his administration was doing an excellent job in distributing aid to Puerto Rico and that blame lay with the Puerto Rican government, Cruz claimed that Trump’s response was “inefficient at best” (296). Trump also claimed that Democrats were exaggerating the hurricane’s death toll by accounting for deaths indirectly caused by the storm, in order to damage his reputation.