New England hurricane of 1938...

[Virginia Dare]

watched the program on History Channel last night, pretty scary stuff. A couple of points were made:

One, the Weather Bureau in Washington, although dealing with rudimentary forecasting tools, dropped the ball. They simply couldn't fathom a storm of that size hitting the New England coast at that time of year, and therefore didn't track it properly. It probably wouldn't have made much difference though since the storm was moving so incredibly fast, and all communication was knocked out pretty much immediately upon landfall.

Two, the aftermath was just as devastating, large scale looting, jurisdictions overwhelmed with corpses and injuries. Martial Law was installed in several areas, even with shoot to kill orders. It was towards the end of the depression, so charities were not able to step in where in the past they had, so Roosevelt used the situation to create jobs and put public money into building the infrastructure back up (yeah, unlike now, we had an intelligent and caring President back then). It also helped the fledgling airline industry, since roads and railways were out of commission for a while.

Three, the comment made by the historian at the end of the piece. Another storm of that size and magnitude will hit the New England coast again, it's just a matter of when. These areas are now much more developed than they were then, with a much higher population. Just like past generations, we think that we have all of the tools to combat it and that we are invincible, and then inevitably mother nature comes along with a storm that wipes all of that away.

Not to mention the impact of global warming....anyway, my feeling is that most of us here will see in our lifetimes a hurricane or other natural disaster so devastating that it will make Katrina look like a little squall, and this terrifies me even more than a few radical Islamics out for martyrdom.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I watched it too. Really sad about the school kids on the bus.

[Kota]

2. I watched also, very good. The show that came on after was

about levees. So many other countries are way ahead of the U.S. on this. Particularly the Netherlands, which is low lying much like New Orleans. They had a 30 year plan after floods in I think 1958. Just incredible what they have done.

[CatWoman]

5. their leevees vs our leevees

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0112-15.htm

[fudge stripe cookays]

3. Fascinating story.

I had not heard much about it before. And Katherine Hepburn went out swimming in it before it got too bad! What a life that woman had.

[Virginia Dare]

6. I generally pay attention to these stories...

I had never realized how close she came to being killed in that storm.

The other amazing story was the family where the father had a heart attack earlier in the day, a traumatic experience in and of itself, and then just a few hours later they end up floating around in shark infested ocean waters on a make-shift raft, which was the only piece left of their home for a couple of hours. Wow.

I'm always interested in how people react in a crisis. You never know what sort of courage you may have to summon for yourself one of these days.

[OldSiouxWarrior]

4. We are poised for several super-disasters.

The US has been very lucky and has not had a super disaster since 1906 (San Francisco earthquake/fire) until Katrina. But we are poised for any number of big ones.

Super tsunami (200 feet high) hitting the entire east coast.
Details: http://johncholden.com/photo2.html

Ordinary, but large, tsunami hits west coast.

MidWest 8.0+ earthquake.

The "Big One" finally hits Los Angeles or San Francisco.

An F5 tornado hits a major city, downtown, during a business day.

Sudden climate change. 12K years ago the earth's temperature dropped 18 degrees in a single decade.