Note: I wrote this prior to recent events. Hurricane Irma disrupted the publishing schedule. The large, category 5 hurricane resulted in an evacuation for Karl and I. Fortunately it veered slightly east resulting in no flooding, our major concern, and minimal damage to the house.
Reading Florida: The 1935 Hurricane
Reading Florida Series: Part of taking any skill to the next level,
making it more than just average, comes from knowing your subject. We photograph
for the most part in our home state of Florida. To increase our knowledge about
the area and get ideas for future trips we read widely about Florida, both non-fiction
and fiction.
Book: Storm of the Century by Willie Drye
The 1935 Hurricane that
hit Key West still inspires books and stories. It occurred before named
hurricanes, and before technology enabled us to have warning far in advance. The
victims of this storm officially received only two days notice. The loss of
life suffered, and the enduring questions of who knew what when and if it could
have made a difference, remain.
This book starts with
Sunday, September 1, the day before the storm hit Islamorada in the Upper Keys.
Using the stories and viewpoints of the key players, moving back and forth in
time, it proceeds forward through the hurricane and to the aftermath. In 1935
the country was in the middle of the Great Depression. FDR was in office, and
various government and work programs passed Congress to get people back to
work. Some of those people were the veterans of the First World War, at that
time just called the Great War or the World War because the second one was not
even imagined. Over 600 veterans hired to build the overseas lived in shacks
provided by the project, two camps on Matecumbe Key and one on Windley Key.
Officially 259 veterans died from the hurricane, along with 163 residents or
visitors.
The Category 5
hurricane measured a barometric reading of 26.35 at the worst of the storm.
Unofficially, it dropped to 26.00. With the information at hand, winds were
estimated at around 200 miles per hour at the time, and the storm surge 20
feet. This hurricane underwent a rapid intensification which contributed to the
lack of warnings until two days before it hit. A train dispatched to bring the
veterans to safety arrived too late.
Ernest Hemingway, then
a resident of Key West, prepared his house and boat. Key West did not take a
direct hit, that occurred further up the keys at Matecumbe Key. Hemingway took
his boat up to the area after the hurricane passed with some relief supplies.
What he saw caused him to write an essay published by the New Masses titled “Who Murdered the Vets?” The subtitle: A
first-hand Report on the Florida Hurricane”.
I enjoyed the book and
the detail it provided. The eight pages of black and white photos put a face on
the area and the people. As I searched and read other accounts, I noticed that
the wind speed, the number dead, who was where, and other details vary. For
example, generally on the anniversary of the storm some newspaper somewhere
writes an article about it. Several I found say Hemingway “visited the Keys”
after the storm. He lived in Key West at the time, and took his boat to visit
the area of the Keys that took the direct hit. A small difference, but I feel
significant.
I write this as we all
see the devastation caused in Texas by a recent storm that also underwent a
rapid intensification. In spite of all the advances in tracking and predicting
hurricanes and in fact all storms, nature still can throw surprises at us.
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