Don't blow off hurricane warnings

Memoir tells of the 1928 hurricane

Well, we're back in another hurricane season. Not something to be taken lightly. 

Early settlers had their share of storms and the results could be frightening. Like today, it depended on the severity of the storm and its path. Two pioneer memoirs illustrate that in a vivid way.

The lighter remembrance was viewed through childhood eyes. Maria Davidson Pope wrote Remembrances of an Early Daytona Childhood fairly late in life - in her 60s or older. She was born in Daytona in 1874 and died at age 94 in 1969. 

She recounts with great detail the people and times of her youth. That includes periods of bad weather. As a child, she looked "forward to the fall gales with delight." These storms may or may not have been hurricanes. They were fierce enough to rattle windowpanes and blow boats loose from the wharves.

Flooding was a given on the low riverfront land. To lively children in a safe haven, that was an adventure. When the kitchen flooded, they played in the water, she wrote. "I remember paddling around on a small wooden table, turned upside down. Our great delight was to walk on stilts through the water. I so well remember the Puckett boys making me those stilts." 

Adults have different perspectives. In Memoirs of an Everglades Pioneer, Gertrude Petersen Winne shared dramatic memories of the horrible 1928 hurricane that tore through South Florida and killed thousands of people. 

There's a world of difference between a fall gale and that vicious 1928 storm, known as the Okeechobee Hurricane. An excellent fictional account is in Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. I'd long thought the underprivileged bore the brunt of that storm. Winne's memoir tells me otherwise. Rich and poor alike suffered. One difference is that more well-off residents may have had better access to weather forecasts. 

Winne and her family lived near the edge of Lake Okeechobee. Her husband was a fisherman in tune with the ways of wind and water. They heard the storm forecasts and watched conditions closely. "When the water in the creek rose 6 inches in 15 minutes, Ross [her husband] said, 'It's time to go.' "

They grabbed a few belongings and set out for West Palm Beach. They encouraged neighbors to do the same. Most declined. All - or almost all - who stayed behind died. The Winne family's three-story house was washed off its foundation and destroyed. 

The family almost didn't make it, themselves. The storm lashed into them before they reached West Palm. The car stalled out. When her husband opened the car door, the wind tore it back and bent the hinges. He shielded himself until a short break in the wind allowed him to get the door back on and get inside the vehicle. He'd also pushed the car into deep sand for stability and put rocks in front of the wheels. 

The couple and their children huddled inside the vehicle. They watched pine trees bend to the ground under the wind, saw roofs peel off buildings, and prayed that debris flying all around them wouldn't smash into the car. "During all this, the car surged and swayed like a mad ship but did not break loose from its mire of sand," Gertrude wrote.

During the eye of the storm, they got out and found that the paint on the car's exterior had been scoured off by flying sand. And heavy timbers had been forced into the asphalt pavement only a few feet behind the car. The family got the car started and managed to limp to safety in town, sometimes first getting out of the car and clearing the roadway of debris.

As soon as the storm ended, rescuers including Gertrude's husband headed out to the Everglades, she wrote. "The first truck to return from the Glades came in about 10 o'clock that night loaded with men, women, and children. Ross said if he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the look on those people's faces - utter hopelessness and despair; some of the people looked so blank and bewildered they had to be led by hand."  

Gertrude wasn't able to return home for over a month. Her husband helped nonstop with rescue efforts and with burying the dead. It was gruesome. "Death. Death and destruction lay everywhere," she wrote. "Some 2,000 or 3,000 people lay dead, scattered over the countryside..." 

If you live in a hurricane zone and a warning is issued, heed it. Please. We're a century past these pioneer experiences, but some things don't change. The destructive powers of hurricanes are one of them. 

---

To learn more about the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, see the National Weather Service's memorial page at https://www.weather.gov/mfl/okeechobee

Dorian, go away

The National Weather Service has a memorial page to the
1928 Okeechobee hurricane. This photo is from that page.
It depicts rescue workers pulling bodies from the water.

I write with a heavy heart. Hurricane Dorian is a monster storm and it's aiming right for Florida. At least we have the benefit of minute-by-minute forecasts, advance warning, and time to prepare. People in Florida a hundred years ago had none of that. Thousands of lives were lost as a result.

Wikipedia says more than 10,000 people have died in Florida due to what the encyclopedia's entry calls tropical cyclones. There's no footnote referencing a source, so I can't verify the accuracy of the number. There's an interesting sentence that says most of those deaths occurred before hurricane hunter flights started in mid 20th century. It takes only a brief look at a handful of early 20th century Florida hurricanes to understand that statement.

From the book Florida's Hurricane History, 1998 edition, for example, you learn that hundreds died in a Keys hurricane in 1906 (page 90), the Great Miami hurricane of 1926 (page 126), and especially the Okeechobee storm - called the Okeechobee Flood - in 1928, when thousands lost their lives (page 127). For a vivid fictional retelling of that storm and flood, read Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. She includes the hurricane as part of the narrative.

In Okeechobee, floodwaters caused the horrible tragedy. The hurricane caused the lake to rise so fiercely it rushed over the dikes meant to contain it (page 130). The ensuing flood destroyed entire communities. The National Weather Service has a memorial page about the Category 4 storm that provides a lot of detail. It notes that almost three-quarters of the those who died were people of color who worked as agricultural laborers.

Rushing and rising water remain major threats today when a hurricane strikes. I live 25 miles inland from the coast, at a "high" point (high land being a relative term in Florida). Where I live, we fear the winds, storm-spawned tornadoes, and fallen trees more than rising water. People who live on the waterfront have a different set of concerns. But we're all worried. I haven't given up hope that Dorian will veer off to the east and open water. But that wish seems to be fading. Stay safe, all.

Hurricanes haunt for a long time

 The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane pushed this
 rescue train off its tracks.
(Photo credit: State Archives of Florida)

Hurricane Irma knocked me right off my twice-a-month posting schedule. The storm also knocked out my power for almost six days.

That's minor compared to what Irma destroyed in the Florida Keys, as I'm sure you've heard. The only positive news was the low number of deaths.

A similarly devastating storm struck the Keys in 1935. That time, hundreds of people died. Sophisticated weather warning systems hadn't yet been developed. In Florida's Hurricane History, Jay Barnes writes that a warning at the time described the system as a tropical disturbance that might have winds of hurricane force. That was a day before the storm known as the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane slammed into the Keys with winds higher than 150 mph.

Reports of that storm terrify even today. Barnes writes that a rescue train that carried evacuees - including veterans building the Overseas Highway - was tossed off the tracks by a wall of water at least 17 feet high.

Barnes,  Florida Weather author Morton Winsberg, and most every account of the storm include the first-person observations of survivor J.E. Duane. He managed a fishing camp on Long Key and was an observer for the Weather Bureau. His report noted that he observed houses being lifted off foundations, moved, and broken apart by wind and water. 

Caught waist-deep in water, Duane was swept along until he grabbed onto a coconut tree's palm fronds and hung on "for dear life."  He was knocked unconscious. When he awoke - still in the tree - saw that he was 20 feet above the ground.

You can read more excerpts of Duane's report in a Monthly Weather Review article on NOAA's Hurricane Research Division website.

Eleven members of a family named Russell on Matecumbe Key also survived, Barnes writes. More than 50 other members of the extended family perished in the storm. Overall, more than 400 people died including many of the veterans.

I remember blogging about early Florida hurricanes last year after Matthew struck my area. Here's hoping it's the last time for a long, long while that I turn to that subject.

Hurricanes before The Weather Channel

This Federal Art Project painting of a Miami hurricane was
created by Robert W. Burke. Credit: Florida Memory

With Hurricane Matthew a fresh memory, what else can I write about but stormy weather? We had time to prepare: we boarded up windows, removed or secured yard items, stocked up on supplies, and prepared evacuation kits in hopes we wouldn't need them. Then we watched The Weather Channel and local TV forecasters until the power went out.

Imagine not having warning systems. If there's any bright side to a hurricane, the advance forecast has to be it. Pioneers didn't have such a luxury. In Florida's Hurricane History (University of North Carolina Press, 1998; newer editions have been issued since then), author Jay Barnes writes that "Early hurricanes usually barreled ashore without warning, often with dire consequences." (32)

Barnes explains how early residents watched cloud formations, sunrise colors, and animal and insect behavior for signs of approaching bad weather. Behavior was said to include:

• a cat's nervous tail twitching
• wandering livestock
• shorebirds gathered together
• bees returning to a hive
• low-flying swallows, bats, geese and ducks

Barnes points out that such "questionable forecasting methods" weren't much help. What did help was the scientific research done by a Jesuit priest named Father Benito Viñes in Cuba. Barnes says Fr. Viñes was "the person who did the most to advance the early understanding of hurricanes ..." (33).

From the 1870s until his death in 1893, the Spanish priest studied the storms and created a warning system that relied on volunteer observers, ship reports, and storm alerts issued by horseback and telegraph. USA Today calls Fr. Viñes the hurricane priest in the headline of a 2014 article about the scientist-priest. 

The U.S. Weather Bureau was formed in 1891. Four years later, in 1895, the Bradford County Telegraph in northern Florida featured an article about the department of agriculture's "new plan for the dissemination of hurricane warnings." The system consisted of steam vessels that would fly flags and blow whistles. Telegraphs also were used, but as the newspaper stated, only one line ran along the east coast "and in almost every hurricane communication is very soon destroyed."

Really, the 1895 system sounds similar to the one devised by Fr. Viñes. He deserves better name recognition. Here's a video so you can start learning about him:

This screengrab is from a video by Belen 
Jesuit Prep, which inducted Fr. Viñes into
the school's Hall of Fame

The 1880 Hurricane

NOAA satellite image, with sepia tone added.

Florida has been in a frenzy in recent days, as Tropical Storm Erika churned in the Atlantic. The system has dissipated but hasn't fully expired. Rain, wind, and some flooding are in store.

As unnerving as the steady stream of media coverage can be, I'm glad I can track every millisecond of a tropical system's activity. Pioneers couldn't. People often relied on weather lore, close reading of atmospheric conditions, and the lived experience of longtime residents.

Forecasting was still young when a  hurricane hit Central Florida in 1880. That particular storm interests me for two reasons: pioneer Girard M. Parce, a boy at the time, wrote about it in his late-in-life recollections; and the steamship Vera Cruz sank in it, just off the Central Florida coast.

The book Florida's Hurricane History notes that early 20th century assessments considered the 1880 storm a "Great Hurricane" with winds over 125 mph. Fairly recent re-analysis data from NOAA puts it at a Category 2 with maximum winds of 90 mph. Having lived through hurricanes, I can say that anything over 70 mph is very scary indeed.

Girard's recollections corroborate the book's comment that countless trees were downed in the storm, which made landfall between Palm Beach and Cocoa Beach, and then traveled northwest across the state. Girard was in DeLand, where he wrote that:

"... we were kept in the house for two days, not daring to go out except to feed the stock, because so many of the big pine trees were being blown down."

I wish he'd written more about the actual hurricane, which he referred to as "The Big Storm." He focused more on what happened afterward. It's fascinating. Because he says the storm wrecked three ships off the local coast, not just one.

"A short time after the storm I drove [by horse-drawn cart] a party of several men to Port Orange. While there we went up to Daytona and ferried over to the peninsula where lay on the beach the wreckage of a large ship, the Vera Cruz, and two lumber schooners. I believe one could have walked a half mile in either direction without stepping on the ground."

He notes that a salvage company "with a large gang of men" was busy on the scene, and that his older brother William thought the Vera Cruz had carried a cargo of mahogany. You can read a richly detailed account of the steamship - and some of its passengers -  on shipwrecks.com.

Girard recorded his memories in the 1920s at the request of his cousin - the daughter of the city of DeLand's founder. She (Helen DeLand) was collecting material for her history of the city, published in 1928 as The Story of DeLand and Lake Helen, Florida.