False Pride

One of the intangibles that exacerbated the tragedy of the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas, was the personal pride that stood in the way of making the right decisions and taking appropriate actions in the face of the advancing storm. While the US Weather Bureau in 1900 was probably the top such agency in the world, the prideful chief of this federal government department was completely closed to the possibility that his staff was not infallible and could make errors or that an outside source could provide a more accurate forecast.

Such was the case in 1900 when a band of local Cuban weathermen issued warnings that a "cyclone" was forming from the tropical storm that had charged through the Atlantic to the Florida Straits. The US Weather Bureau duly recognized the Florida storm but where it departed from the Cuban forecasters' warning was the prediction as to the...