The Deadly History of Hurricanes and Lessons That Must Be Learned

The catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation that now envelopes the Gulf States is a terrible example of the wrath and fury of a dangerous storm that cannot be avoided. Although monster hurricanes such as Katrina take their toll on buildings and people with their high winds, history has shown that in every case, the greatest amount of damage and the primary cause of death was due to water. Yet even with that knowledge, changes to prevent future destruction are always slow in coming.

The immense horror of Katrina is all too familiar to the people who live along Lake Okeechobee in Florida, especially those who were alive during the great storm of 1928, before hurricanes even had names. That hurricane may have caused the highest number of black people killed in a single day in the history of the United States, at least before Katrina. The storm was the deadliest weather event ever to strike Florida or the eastern United States, with an official death toll at the time of 1,836. Unfortunately, the victims of the storm were primarily black migrant workers from the Caribbean living in Florida’s interior regions, and therefore the storm has not received much attention through the years. Until recently, when the National Hurricane Center formally changed the death toll to 2,500, in order to acknowledge the claims that officials made in 1928 that the reported death toll was just too low.

The new, higher figure makes that 1928 hurricane the second deadliest natural disaster of any kind in U.S. history, after the 1900 hurricane that destroyed most of Galveston, Texas. Officials are fairly certain that as the death toll from Katrina rises, it will quickly eclipse these two as being the worst storm ever to hit American shores—and in all three, the primary instrument of death was water. In both Katrina and Galveston, the storm surge washed over the city. And in both Katrina and the Lake Okeechobee hurricane, winds broke an inadequate dam system and sent water pouring into populated areas.

When Florida leaders decided to drain the Everglades in the early 20th century to gain access to the rich farm soil below, they suddenly had a problem on their hands with Lake Okeechobee. Because the lake is only 12 to 20 feet deep, its water would be blown out when any storm came that packed high winds. So officials decided that building a 6-foot earthen wall around the lake would prevent such problems, as long as the rains and winds were not too high. Unfortunately their plan was far too shortsighted and simplistic. A hurricane smashed into Miami in 1926, sending a portion of the dike crumbling and drowning hundreds of people in the path of the raging waters. Local politicians said that the next time a hurricane hit, the results would be catastrophic, so a more solid barrier needed to be built. And politicians were still talking about making improvements when the massive 1928 hurricane hit.

Just like in New Orleans when Katrina hit, thousands of people stayed in the interior of Florida despite warnings to leave. People asked the same questions then that they’re asking now—why didn’t those people leave before the storm arrived in full force? The answer is the same in both cases. Many of the victims of both storms were poor, and for them, leaving their homes wasn’t a viable option. Although the people in Katrina’s path had a highway system available to them, the migrant workers who lived along the edge of Lake Okeechobee, most of whom didn’t have access to a car, had only two options. They could either head north up a winding two-lane road, or they could take the road to the coast, which wasn’t a viable option with a hurricane rushing to meet them.

The 1928 storm hit before the Saffir-Simpson Scale existed, but meteorologists estimate that the storm’s winds topped out at about 145 mph, almost a Category 5 hurricane, and it maintained that strength right up until it slammed into the shore of Lake Okeechobee. When Florida’s governor heard the first reports of damages, he suggested that the destruction wasn’t that bad—until the horrific reports began arriving from the interior of the state, where Lake Okeechobee had overflowed its inadequate dam system. Thousands of people lay dead, floating in the stagnant water along with dead animals and rotting vegetation. The scene was nightmarish, with relief workers burying some victims on the spot in the Everglades, but having the water-soaked earth spew the bodies back out. Bodies were buried in mass graves, or piled into mass graves and burned, and some were loaded onto barges and removed from the interior to be buried in unmarked mass graves in dry areas.

After the 1928 hurricane, Florida’s leaders stepped up to the plate to build a larger, stronger dike to prevent such catastrophes in future storms. It took 30 years to do it, but a dike was built through a joint state and federal project. The new dike was over 35 feet high, 10 to 30 feet wide at the top, and 125 to 150 feet wide at the base. The dike has been successful in containing Lake Okeechobee so far, in part because water managers are used to lower the water level of the lake when a particularly powerful storm is coming. Engineers boast that the dike would never collapse, even in a catastrophically powerful storm such as Katrina. But still, it leaks.

People who live in areas hit hard by devastating storms such as Florida’s 1928 hurricane and last month’s Katrina always ask later if officials learned the lessons required to prepare for the next storm. And sometimes the answer is yes. But there will always be a next hurricane, and there will always be lessons to be learned. Unfortunately, most of those lessons continue to be ignored. Hurricane researchers have begun to make ever more somber predictions about the historical cycle of hurricanes. Forecasters warnings become more strident each year that we are approaching an era of more and bigger storms, and the precautionary measures currently in place may not be strong enough and should be regularly evaluated and reinforced. But as the horrific pictures of death and devastation begin to fade into memory, precautionary measures lose some of their urgency. And people continue to build along the coast, and in flood-prone areas, and real estate values in those areas continue to rise. Along with life insurance premiums.