The Boy with the U. S. Weather MenRolt-Wheeler, Francis
General
The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men
Rolt-Wheeler, Francis
United States. Weather Bureau -- Juvenile literature
"All day long, since midnight of the day before, three of us, up in the
Weather Bureau, kept watch by our instruments, at the telegraph wire and
the telephone. We had the men of Galveston to deal with, men who were
not afraid of danger, men who knew well what the word 'hurricane' meant.
All through that day an army was organized, an army of men that rested
neither for food nor sleep, warning those who were in the path of
danger, leading the women and children to safety, carrying the old and
sick upon their shoulders from regions where death was threatening.
"Our chief, at the Weather Office, summoned volunteers with motor-cycles
and these men went to every corner of the city with the news of the
approaching disaster. Through the streets rode these Paul Reveres,
carrying the cry of the warning, and on that Sunday not one house in the
entire city of Galveston was left unwarned. The city had lost six
thousand lives in the hurricane of 1900. It was not to be caught napping
a second time.
"At Seabrook, Texas, across the bay, Professor Stearns, a co-operative
observer, personally visited every house in that section on Sunday, the
fifteenth, and again on Monday. Before the hurricane, eighty-eight
houses stood there; after the hurricane, there were three. Yet every one
was saved, except two people, who had laughed at the weather warnings.
"Steadily the sea rose, all day Monday, and equally steadily the wind
increased. The Fire Department joined in the work of protection. The
police joined in the work of saving. As yet the hurricane had not come,
but, through the Weather Bureau warnings, no one was allowed to pass
into a fool's paradise of security.
"The summer evening came on with the whistling whir of the wind changing
its note to an angry rage. In our little office at the top of the
building, it looked as though we should be blown away. But there was too
much to do for any man to leave. Still, had it not been for the
thoughtfulness of one friend, none of us would have had anything to eat.
We did not have a let-up of any kind for fifty-six hours.
"A wall of water swept towards the island, and before it became too dark
to observe, in the early twilight one could see the wind-lashed waters
of the bay begin to heap themselves into broken and irregular waves,
each striving to overtop the other in their plunge upon the city. They
broke, indeed, into the back door of the city, and then, with a
suddenness that seemed to rock the very foundations of the earth, the
wind struck us, in three nerve-racking blasts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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