Book Review | Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

Rating | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

If you only read one book about California's 2018 Camp Fire, it must be this one. It is the most accurate account I've read, compared to others that were merely cash-grabs with incorrect information. This one also addresses head-on one of the main causes of a lengthening fire season, with bigger, hotter, more destructive fires coming now year after year: CLIMATE CHANGE.

This story is a deeply personal one to me. A friend of mine is from Paradise. I texted her in a panic, saying to just please let me know she was okay. She did, so I could at least be sure she was safe. Over the next few days the videos, photos, and graphics she sent were horrifying. When we finally spoke by phone, she relayed the whole story - how she arrived at school for the day, the students coming not long after. It wouldn't be long before they started evacuating though, and the last bus pulled away as the fire reached school grounds. The video she sent of her own evacuation looked like something from a disaster movie - literally fire everywhere, both sides of the road engulfed in flames. Had she sent that to me in the moment, I would have lost my ever-loving mind. I would not have believed they could escape, but thankfully her entire family was able to get to safety. She was the only family member to not lose her house. She sent me a fire map showing her entire neighborhood, her house the lone green X. The rest of the homes were either totally or partially destroyed.

As Paradise woke on the morning of November 8th, 2018, the sky looked funny, a weird gray-ish orange-ish mix, accompanied by massive windgusts. The fire sparked at 6:30 that morning and within ninety minutes would reach the outskirts of the town. Another two hours and the blaze was devouring everything in sight at the rate of an acre PER SECOND. At that point it was too late for some; residents were trapped in the flames - whether in the homes or cars, trying to escape.

Within a matter of hours, the town of Paradise was all but gone. That's 95% of the buildings incinerated, about 18,000 structures altogether - 11,000 of which were homes. The biggest cost though, was the 85 lives lost in the flames. That is the official total, though the author disagrees; according to her count there were at least fifty more wrongful-death lawsuits filed by families against the culprit, PG&E.

At the time, Lizzie Johnson was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and had spent several years reporting on the many fires that have destroyed California's landscape. She reports from the ground, in the midst of the fire, and for long after. She gathered stories from survivors, making them the focal point of this terrible and traumatic event. Johnson meets them where they are - shelters, hotels, makeshift camps, giving as many as possible a chance to share their experiences and she is able to deliver those experiences with care and empathy. We follow a handful of survivors and Johnson allows us to get to know them as they were before the fire, their history in relation to Paradise, and giving each person a voice to tell their story their way. Even knowing ahead of time they survived, obviously, it did not make the stories any less harrowing. Fear was palpable throughout the entire book and at times it felt like I was there, though this in no way compares to the actual experiences of people who actually were.

She is also able to access public records that include the panicked 911 calls of citizens in need of help, and court records from the grand jury investigation. All of that allows Johnson to show minute-by-minute what happened to Paradise as it burned.

Johnson also does a fantastic job with exploring the root causes of the Camp Fire, which ultimately burned for seventeen days. First and foremost, PG&E's stunning neglect of critical infrastructure. The tower that started the fire had last been inspected in 2001 - despite PG&E's claim that towers are inspected every five years. It all comes down to the little c-hook, about the size of a human hand, made of steel a century ago when the original power line was built. This hook's job was to hold the electrical insulators connected to the tower. But years of friction wore down the metal and the hook snapped. The live power line fell, hitting the tower and sending down a spray of molten metal to the brush below, brittle and dry from severe lack of rain. Unfortunately this is not surprising. A quick internet search will give you a plethora of information about various lawsuits filed against the company for years.

There were other contributing factors to this immense tragedy. There's the aforementioned lack of rain - over seven months without a drop, to be exact. Climate Change is real, can people stop pretending it isn't? The emergency warning system only reached about half the residents because of an undetected flaw. A private warning system was also available, at a cost to subscribe, of course. And what would a massive disaster be without lack of communication between emergency response teams? We saw this seventeen years earlier, on September 11th, with police and fire unable to coordinate because they used different comms systems. Yet somehow, we've still not managed to fix this issue. It also didn't help that a few years earlier, the town council had voted to shrink the four-lane Skyway (main road in and out of town) down to two. They were warned that this could be an issue in the future should the town need to evacuate quickly, but the project went ahead anyway.

This is a tense, traumatic, hopeful read, Highly recommended.

Book Review | Curse of The Narrows: The Halifax Disaster of 1917

Rating | ⭐⭐⭐⭐

It's 1917 and the port at Halifax is beyond crowded. Ships have constantly been on their way to Europe since the UK's declaration of war on August 4th, 1914. While Canada determined for itself how much military and financial support it would give, there was no question that support would be provided.

But this day, December 6th, would be different. Two ships, the Mont Blanc and the Imo, would collide in the Narrows. Called such because of a hard-to-navigate stretch of the harbor, the ships should never have even been close to one another.

Yet they were, and the result of the collision would have devastating consequences for the entire city. The Imo would survive, despite severe structural damage. Massive repairs would be made and the Imo would return to service in 1918.

The Mont Blanc, though? That one didn't stand a chance.

From the collision, she burned quickly and rammed into the city's docks. Initially bound for Europe with a cargo of 2,700 tons of explosives, the captain and crew abandoned the ship at once, rowing for Dartmouth across the harbor and trying to warn everyone of what was to come. Thousands at the shore crowded with homes and businesses were already watching the fires burn, and at 9:05 AM, said fires reached the explosives packed carefully within the hold.

The result was an explosion with such force that all 3,000+ tons of iron that was the Mont Blanc was immediately vaporized in a cloud that shot into the sky over 2,000 feet high. Not only was much of the city flattened by the blast, but the blast created a massive wave that drenched the decimated and bewildered city. Not a single building in Halifax, or within a 16-mile radius, was left undamaged. An estimated 2,000 people were killed (different reports give different numbers) instantly, while another 9,000 were injured. Of those injured, another 300 would succumb to their injuries later.

On top of all of this devastation, a blizzard would arrive the following morning, completely isolating Halifax from any help from the outside world.

It's so difficult to wrap one's head around just how big this explosion was - the largest pre-atomic explosion in history. The anchor of the Mont Blanc landed some two miles away. The explosion was heard as far away as Boston, Massachusetts, when a fishing boat returned to the harbor there and inquired about the explosion they'd heard. The cloud of smoke was visible to ships more than fifty miles away.

The author describes in great detail each small event that happened, one after the other, in this massive chain of things that should NOT have happened, that resulted in such terrible death and destruction. Mac Donald does not stop there though. She shares how a massive relief mission set out from Boston almost immediately, despite not knowing the exact nature of the damage or even what was needed to help. Even with communication pretty much cut off completely, there was no hesitation. Food and water, clothing, money, building materials (especially glass - not a single window was left in Halifax after the explosion), doctors, medication, and volunteers headed northeast, ready to do whatever necessary to help a community in need.

The sheer volume and magnitude of injuries and causes of death were overwhelming. As mentioned previously, not a single window was left in Halifax. Much of that glass was embedded in the victims - including in their eyes. I can not stress enough how many eyes were removed due to this. The author goes into great detail. Buckets-ful of eyes. No anesthesia except ether, sometimes. We're talking HUNDREDS of severe eye injuries. Roughly 250 eye removals occurred to prevent infection, with sixteen people losing both eyes. The majority of those hundreds had partial vision loss due to the glass.

Scores of bodies were recovered, though many could not be identified due to the damage inflicted by the blast. The massive tsunami dragged dozens of witnesses and sailors back into the freezing water to drown. Others were crushed in collapsed buildings, mutilated by flying debris, or consumed by the raging fires.

Naturally when something of this magnitude occurs, there is the need to assign blame. Someone had to have caused this. While the captain and pilot of the Imo were killed in the collision, the captain and pilot of the Mont Blanc survived and were able to give their accounts of what happened in the moments before the fatal collision. Investigations, both judicial and military, were conducted and came to the same conclusions.

First of course, is that the two ships never should have gotten as near to one another as they did in the first place, regardless of what was on board. Both investigations ultimately decided blame was to be placed equally on the pilot and captain of the Mont Blanc, and the pilot and captain of the Imo. While the latter were both killed, the former were never indicted and there would be no actual trials to decide innocence or guilt. There was also the issue of the whistles from both ships, sending contradictory and misinterpreted signals to one another. The Imo had moved into the Mont Blanc's shipping lane to avoid a smaller vessel in its own, which caused more confusion. And of course there is the issue of the Mont Blanc not flying a red flag to indicate explosives were on board. However, maritime law at the time stated the flag only needed to be flown when loading or unloading cargo, not while in transit. As the Mont Blanc was moving to the harbor to join an Allied convoy, they were not required to fly it - nor would they have, as German u-boats were certainly on the look-out for just such flags.

The author does a masterful job recreating the horrific events of the day and documenting everything that came after. It is a riveting story of both catastrophic loss and enduring hope as people came together to bury their dead and rebuild their community.

Highly recommended.

Mini Reviews | Natural Disasters

 Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Natural disasters have long been a source of endless fascination for me, starting when I was a child. No surprise then that books like this continue to interest me as an adult.

The book focuses on California and the San Andreas Fault and the information contained within it is not entirely new. Everyone knows the fault is massive, and has spawned countless secondary faults, many just as potentially deadly as the big one. Yet people live over the fault. People drive across it everyday on one or more of the dozens of highways and interstates. Both San Francisco and Los Angeles sprawl out over the fault - and no one seems keen to move away any time soon.

I found this to be an easy enough read, no science background required. yet still well-researched and in-depth as well, thoroughly explaining the geology needed to understand the San Andreas Fault. We are also given a history of the area and pertinent people, such as Andew Larson, the UC-Berkeley prof who named the fault in the late 1800s and Charles Richter, who developed and refined the scale we still use today to measure these beasts.

It is interesting to compare the jump in knowledge from the 1906 SF earthquake, to nearly 60 years later when plate tectonics were discovered. Up until that time, scientists believed that underground volcanoes caused the earth to move. Needless to say, the science has come a long way since then.

But even so, it has not come far enough, and I don't know that it can. We still can't predict earthquakes, and it is possible we will never be able to. Major earthquakes will continue to happen. But don't expect California to one day just go floating off into the Pacific Ocean. Instead the author maintains that the San Andreas Fault and all of its offshoots are actually pulling California apart. Between the fires and the earthquakes, California doesn't stand a chance.

 Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I did not realize this was an older book, published in the 1970s. Even as a I read it, it seemed as if it were a more recent publication, while at the same time also reading as though it was an eyewitness reporters account. Not too shabby to make a reader believe to completely opposite things at one time.

The authors make fantastic use of sources not previously available to the public. They acquired documents from insurance companies, the Red Cross, the military, and also collections of eyewitness accounts of those who managed to survive one of the worst disasters in US history.

As with any other catastrophic event, there are heroes and villains. It will surprise no one that the powers that be were incapable of handling a disaster of this magnitude for a couple reasons - they were corrupt beyond reproach and had no idea what the hell they were doing.

Just as the title says, this truly is a minute-by-minute accounts, from those first terrible seconds in the early morning of April 18th, beginning at 5:13 AM. The book moves quickly and the reader can only hang on for the ride as we move quickly through the city, witnessing the horrors of that day and the aftermath of the fires raging.

One thing I also really appreciated was the interviews the authors did with survivors. It must have been quite difficult for them to share their stories, but I am so glad they did. They gave a depth to the story, sharing their grief over such an awful experience.

 Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Our planet would not be what it is today, giving us life, were it not for natural disasters. We need them for our home to flourish and without these life-giving forces, our planet would die and so would we.

If we were not so arrogant, and did not think that time and time again we could thwart Mother Nature, these disasters would not so often result is huge losses of life.

Yet here we are, living on super active fault lines, building cities below sea level...you get the idea.

This book looks at several incredibly devastating disasters that have impacted humankind. From Pompeii to Katrina, there are many here that prove that not much has changed, and we still think we are in charge.

We know that our world is changing. As climate change continues to wreak havoc, we must learn from past mistakes. Temperatures are rising around the world, ice caps are melting, eventually major life changes are going to start happening for a lot of people living on the coasts. All kinds of natural disasters are getting worse, and will continue to do so. It doesn't have to be this way though, if we could just take five seconds to learn from our past.

The author does a fantastic job examining each natural disaster, then exploring how each impacted society dealt with the aftermath - what they did differently, what they predicted, what they got wrong. Not a bad way to spend a couple hours.

Quick Thoughts | Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy

Rating ⭐⭐

This one is personal for me.

In November of 2018 the Camp Fire raged, completely destroying Paradise, California. In short order, roughly 27,000 people lost nearly everything - and at least 85 lost their lives.

After such a horrific event, the victims and survivors, deserve to have their stories told. This book does that, but only sort of - and not very well.

I understand that with a tragedy of this magnitude, telling every single story is not possible. I believe they chose to focus on people who represented a wider cast. A firefighter who drove his bulldozer into the fire to do his job, a police officer who recorded with his body cam even as he thought he wouldn't make it out, a woman who left their home while her father stayed behind to fight the blaze, and a mother who had just given birth are among those chosen. There are many others we meet along the way, some survive and some do not. Still, the narrative left me feeling that, had I not already had a personal connection to the story, there was so much more missing.

One of my very good friends lived in Paradise then, and due to the miracle of her home surviving when nearly every other home in her neighborhood was destroyed, she lived there up until very recently with her husband and children. The photos and videos and maps she sent me that day, and in the days after their evacuation, are seared into my brain. I cried watching the video of her actual evacuation that she recorded as they drove; there literally really was fire everywhere. It terrified me for her even after I knew that she was safe, just seeing what she had seen. The stories she told of her various family members also evacuating that day were terrible, and I can't begin to imagine what it was like. Luckily they all survived, though most lost their homes and even beloved pets as the fire quickly spread.

Side note: my friend's sister and brother-in-law are mentioned in the book, yet much of the information is inaccurate, so it makes me wonder what else is not correct either.

Really, the fire was so massive and contains so many stories, that I expected more from the book. it came in at 229 pages. How is that possible for the most devastating fire in California's history, and the sixth worst fire in the history of the United States? The story isn't even over yet. The window to file lawsuits just closed at the end of March - three months ago.

I don't understand writing a book when the story isn't complete yet. The fire happened nearly three years ago now, so it's not like it was a rush job to make money of this big tragedy. Why not just wait for some kind of closure, then tell the WHOLE story?

Review Bomb | Getting To Be That Time Of Year...

 

Since summer is nearly upon us I thought this would be a good time to remind everyone that no matter what we as humans try to do to control Mother Nature, she will never be tamed.

(Side note: while these are natural disasters, I consider the Galveston Hurricane to be a man-made disaster as well, seeing as how weather reports from Cuba were completely ignored by the US, due to us thinking we know more than everyone else.)

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Any book by Erik Larson is a must-read for me. I started years ago with Devil in the White City and haven't stopped yet. Dead Wake rivals White City as my favorite, but you can't miss when picking up any of his books.

Isaac's Storm is Larson's first book and I loved it every bit as much as his most recent works - though I still have to get to Thunderstruck (which I own) and The Splendid and the Vile, which I have literally just checked out in ebook form from the library - 'Currently Reading' shelf and overdue ARCs be damned!

I have read several books about the Galveston Hurricane and this is the best. Larson uses much of Cline's own words to paint the picture of a man who, despite his experience, had no idea what he was truly up against that early September day. Through Cline's reports, letters, and telegrams we are given a look into his mind to see what he was thinking.

Cline and his family lived in Galveston where he was the resident meteorologist for the US Weather Bureau. As he observed the unusual weather phenomena the morning of September 8th, 1900, he failed to see what was coming even as the winds and sea swells gave warning. The hurricane barreling down on Galveston would become the greatest natural disaster in the history of the US, with at least 6,000 lives lost and the entire city nearly obliterated.

Larson masterfully blends science and history together, telling the story mostly from Cline's perspective. Cline was sure, based on his experience and knowledge, that no hurricane could really do damage to the city. This alone might be the worst thing about the whole tragedy, except there's more. the US Weather Bureau received warnings from Cuba that the massive storm as on its way, but Americans did what Americans do, and dismissed the warnings because we obviously know everything and what are the chances that someone else might be correct?

It wasn't until late afternoon into the evening that Cline realized something was wrong. In his defense, despite the winds and swells, there were other factors that indicated there was no storm coming - the barometer rose throughout the day. Yet the swells grew bigger and by nightfall they were so huge that structures near the beach were rapidly being demolished. But even before this, the city began to flood in the afternoon.

Yet Cline alone is not to blame, so I do not want my words misconstrued. As we know, bureaucracy is a bitch and it reared its ugly head here just as it does in disasters of our time. Even as the Weather Bureau was ignoring hurricane warnings from Cuba, they were also hamstrung by rivalries within about whether or not to even send out storm warnings. With no warnings issued, no calls to evacuate were ever given. The city was completely blindsided when the rage of the hurricane was suddenly upon them after nightfall. Not a single other person in the city aside from those who worked at the weather station even knew a storm as coming, let alone a hurricane.

As I have read books about this storm, I have wondered if the death toll might have been lower had it occurred during the day and honestly, I am not sure. No doubt that trying to find one's way in complete darkness contributed to many deaths, but the majority seem to have come from people struck by debris or their shelters collapsing on them. That would have happened no matter the time of day. But perhaps some who drowned would have avoided this fate had they been able to see how quickly the water was rising, and made it to higher crowd? This supposes a lot, I know, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about this particular hurricane and thoughts like this continue to pop up in my mind.

Like all of Larson's books, this reads as a novel and the pace is quick as we are taken along on the collision course with the storm. The lead-up is intense because you know what is coming, you have all kinds of information that the citizens did not, and know that many of them will not survive. Through the storm's arrival and its aftermath, you feel as though you are there in the midst of it, there among the remains of once-stately homes, businesses, churches, schools. You witness the desperate search for missing loved ones, and joy when reunions occur and the overwhelming grief and agony when they do not.

Highly. highly recommended.

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

In the terrifying hours that began on April 3rd, 1974 and ended on the 4th, a total of 148 massive tornados would wreak havoc in North America, from southern Ontario down to Alabama, Illinois to Virginia. It is surprising that more were not killed in the fury, given the devastation. In total over 300 lives were lost, but that is still 300+ too many. This "perfect storm" so-called by experts, will happen every 500 years or so, according to their estimates.

Here the author focuses on Limestone County, Alabama. We are given a history of the area and he introduces the people going about their lives until suddenly they aren't anymore because their whole world has changed. Levine focuses here because it is in this county that eight of the tornados touch down. One of the eight is an F5 and another is either an F4 or F5, though it was never fully determined which.

I appreciate the author's use of the science behind what makes a tornado happen and I feel like he explained it in a way that those with less knowledge than weather nerds like me have can still understand. The tornados come, lives change forever, and all the survivors can do is bury the victims and try to move on. It is as heartbreaking as it is compulsive to read. He makes the survivors so real as he sets their lives on these two days against the backdrop of the US at the time. Think of 1974 and all that the US was dealing with, as well as Alabama specifically. He paints quite a picture of figurative upheaval coupled with literal upheaval, and does so with the utmost compassion. There is nothing voyeuristic here as he relates the stories of the people who survived, and what they went through in order to do so.

Highly recommended.

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Perhaps the best account of the absolute clusterfuck that was Superstorm Sandy. The storm was so massive, even scientists aboard the International Space Station were singularly focused on it as is stretch for literally hundreds of thousands of square miles. No one knew what to call it after it morphed from a tropical storm into the monster it became and absolutely no one knew how to prepare for it because they could not decide what it was, until it was too late to make any meaningful decisions. NOAA, the NWS, and the Coast Guard were constantly stumbling over themselves in regards to warnings and reports because the storm was so unprecedented.

The author does a fantastic job here of weaving together multiple points of view as those in power grappled with decisions they could not confidently make because the storm was constantly changing and morphing into something no one had ever seen before. As always there are heroes and villains, and everyone in between. The story specifically touches on the crew of the Bounty, a replica of the HMS Bounty that was not completely seaworthy even after some much-needed repairs, yet her captain took her straight toward the hurricane anyway. Some crew survived, bodies were recovered, though his was never found (this story is touched on in A Furious Sky, which I am also reviewing in this post, but much more information was included in this book than that one).

Overall I found this to be a very engaging read, though it was a bit dry in places when I was bombarded with acronyms and some technical aspects. I love weather stories but even I was a little bleary-eyed in parts where I was not sure what was actually being discussed. This is a thorough look at an absolutely devastating storm. I recall feeling that after reading this book there must be a better system put in place, so many lives could have been saved. But after reading A Furious Sky and seeing how many times we have said that exact phrase with each new kind of storm, I don't know that we will ever have a perfect system. Our world is changing rapidly due to climate change and these storms will always get worse. There is always a new big one coming and we honestly have no way to be 100% prepared for any of them that will most certainly follow. However, the author does well to point out that with better funding and better policies, those future situations could at least potentially result in better outcomes for the majority of people impacted. If everyone could just let NOAA do its job and give them the funding and technology to do so, we could be in a bit better shape at least.

 ⭐⭐⭐

This one tells the story of Moore, Oklahoma's complete devastation in May of 2013. The author grew up in Moore and as a child of Oklahoma it makes sense that she wanted to be a storm chaser. Instead, she became a journalist and returned home in the wake of the worst tornado ever recorded to find what was left.

Even as a journalist, certain choices in her writing style bothered me throughout, otherwise this would have easily been a four star read. She's a good writer and journalist, her reporting on the actual facts of surviving this monster are fantastic. Yet there was so much repetition on certain points that it became a chore at times to read. Everyone who has a fascination with tornadoes knows who Gary England is and it was unnecessary to constantly remind us of who he is and what he does. I understand doing so the first time for those who might be unfamiliar with him, but seriously. He's pretty much achieved worship status in Oklahoma.

The most frustrating part of the constant repetition though had to do with the children who were in school when the tornado struck. Everything was tiny.  Tiny tiny tiny. Tiny chairs and tables, tiny bodies, tiny faces, tiny bathrooms. Tiny tiny tiny. This was so unnecessary to convey the complete vulnerability of these children and bordered on ridiculous. Even use of a different word would have been helpful because, GOOD LORD!

The majority of the book, however, is a good read and at times you feel like you are there in the midst of this monster, trying to survive. The lead-up itself was a bit slow but once we are in it, the pace moves quickly and you are whisked from location to location to survey the damage.

Recommended.

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Just finished this one yesterday afternoon, could not put it down!

The author dives deep in the US history of hurricanes, going back through historical records to see how these monstrosities were written about, what progress was made along the way and by whom, and with what tools and instruments, and so on.

It is kind of embarrassing to admit that I've never really given a thought to how people hundreds of years ago dealt with this kind of weather phenomenon and how they viewed these storms. I learned much about these early hurricanes that remained nameless - and of the how the naming system we have today functions. I knew previously that lists are drawn up a couple years in advance, containing male and female names. I had no idea that prior to this, hurricanes were given strictly female names - and in that era the headlines about said hurricanes were as gross as one can imagine as misogyny gleeful abounded in the form of all sorts of ridiculous adjectives.

Dolin opened my eyes to just how impactful these storms were in the early days of our country - and the time before we were even that. As a result of hurricanes striking, it seems that this is one of the reasons Spain was unable to get a foothold in any farther than Florida. Not to mention the fact that these storms also played major roles in helping us win the Revolutionary War.

The author does a masterful job tracing the developments of scientists as they worked to understand these live-altering events. So many men who I had never heard of (so you know that there are women involved whose names we will never know as a result) contributed greatly to the field of hurricane study. It will surprise no one that Benjamin Franklin was in on the action as well.

Yet even for all the progress we have made in predicting and tracking hurricanes, we will be our own downfall.

Much like I mentioned in the Hurricane Sandy review, we will never have a perfect system because of our own impact on our planet. Climate change is making these storms deadlier and deadlier each year. If we do not make changes NOW, and some scientists warn we are already past the point of no return, then things will get worse - something likely unimaginable to those who survived the Galveston Hurricane in 1900. The official count remains around 6,000 killed, though given the timing and the fact that Galveston was a perfect summer vacation spot, we will never know how many truly died in what remains the worst natural disaster in our history.

Despite being such a massive undertaking to succinctly lay out our five-hundred year history in relation to hurricanes, I feel Dolin has done a fantastic job with what must have been an overwhelming amount information to work with. With recovery after these major events, there are many societal issues raised as it quickly becomes obvious that there is inequality in the way resources are dispersed among various communities all devastated by the same storm. One must only look to Katrina to see this is full view.

Highly recommended.

NetGalley ARC | Teacher in Space: Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger Legacy

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I was only three years old when Challenger exploded, so I have no memories of my own in regards to this event. Yet it is one that has endlessly grabbed my attention when I learned about it years later. Even as an adult, I have never stopped learning about NASA, space travel, the discoveries made, and even the tragedies. Time and again we've risen up after falling, honoring those who gave their lives in the pursuit of knowledge by going even further.

Christa McAuliffe was killed along with the six crew members aboard Challenger on January 28th, 1986. She'd been one of 10,000 applicants vying for the spot, and finally was named the winner of the NASA Teacher in Space Project. She would be conducting experiments in space that would be shown in classrooms all across the US.

She would never get the chance, however, because a little over a minute after take-off massive explosions tore the Challenger apart in mid-air. The crew compartment remained intact and investigations have concluded that all seven were still alive when they hit the water - nearly three minutes after the initial explosions. There is no doubt for many who knew him that Michael J. Smith did his best to pilot the remainder of the craft  the entire way down in an attempt to save himself and his crew.

Though the book is new to me, it is a revised edition of the earlier text. I am not sure what information is new and what was written then, though I do know that it was updated in part to include the passing of McAuliffe's mother in 2018.

Christa's story is important, because it is truly a testament to a teacher's love for her students students across the country, and her chosen field. She embarked on a journey to broaden the horizons of many and though her dream was cut short, her legacy has made just such a thing possible.

Despite being such a short biography (around 100 pages), it is filled with so much detail and we really get to know McAuliffe, what drove her to apply, and why she was such a beloved teacher at Concord High School. She was incredibly dedicated and her passion for instilling knowledge into young minds was obvious.

Today there are about 40 schools all over the world named in honor of Christa McAuliffe, as well programs, fellowships, and more.

Book Review | The Beverly Hills Supper Club: The Untold Story Behind Kentucky's Worst Tragedy

This review may well end up being one of my longest ever. I had over 200 highlights by the time I was done and it has taken forever just to meander through those. But the story is worth it, I think. The victims and survivors deserve to know the truth about the fire that claimed so many lives that night, and I think the book does an excellent job of laying out what happened and how it was covered up.

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This story is legit bananas and has all the components needed for a great movie were it not so tragically true. I found this book by chance as I was browsing the Kindle Unlimited and had never heard of this event, so I gave it a try. Even though the writing itself leaves something to be desired, the story itself is incredible and one I will never forget. I can understand why the author wrote the way he did, because his passion for righting this wrong and wanting to hold the guilty accountable seeps through the pages. My usual pet peeves are found her by the dozens, so many exclamation points throughout and I just can not stand it. Especially in this book, the content itself is so shocking, the acts of sabotage are so obvious, that the exclamation points and bolded words were not necessary to convey a certain point. I find so many of those !!! to come across as amateurish and I do not want to take away from the author's years of research and hard work at all, but editing is necessary and must be done in order to make sure this is truly taken seriously. There were a few times when the tone got too conversational for s subject so serious, and even when the author responded sarcastically to a fact he had just stated. I mean, I get it, this impacted him deeply. But those kinds of issues do him a disservice as he states his case - and has more than enough evidence to back it up. The truth needs to be told, even if those responsible are never convicted in a court of law. The victims and survivors deserve that.

I ended up with over 200 notes/highlights. I hope I can do the story justice while condensing that information down, so this review does not become a book of its own.

So, what happened?

First we get an incredibly detailed history of the alleged mob activity in Newport, Kentucky. Spanning decades, no joke. I love mob history without a doubt, and even I was skimming after a while. However, this part is still important because it showed just how active the mob was in this area of Kentucky, especially from their base in Cleveland, and how that would go on to impact the club later. While we will likely never get any confirmation by those involved who are still alive, I do believe based on the evidence presented that the fire and ensuing cover-up went all the way to the top, straight to the governor.

"It is rumored that Newport is home to a little-known 'mafia graveyeard" at the end of Grandview Avenue. Legend is that, whenever necessary, mob members would telephone Newport Police and instruct them to 'stay off Grandview tonight.' The mob would then call on friends who owned an excavating company who would dig the appropriate hole. Once the mob filled the hole with a body or two, the workers would fill in the hole and leave the site. The police would then be informed that, 'Grandview is open again'" (8%).

The author shared many stories like the one above in order to drive home the point that this was a dangerous place. I feel like the information is necessary, even if it felt like it dragged on for a while, for people to understand that this is not just some crazy conspiracy theory. The mob was very active in the area. The club and other Schilling family properties had been threatened and/or damaged time and again.

"Why discuss so many details about various mob hits, high-profile murders, and undercover operations within the Cleveland mafia and other local syndicate organizations within this publication? As mentioned in chapter one, it is imperative that the reader understand  exactly how corrupt, how violent, how ruthless, and how cunning the mafia is. More importantly, to understand that this brutal, destructive behavior didn't just happen in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles - as many seem to believe" (% missing from notes).

Eventually we come to the week of the fire. It is noted by several of the supper club employees that maintenance men had been in and out of the building all week. They were seen by many employees, who would remark on this to investigators, but their statements were ignored. It is interesting to note that the Kentucky State Patrol were actually the ones in charge of the investigation - and not the fire department. Surely the fire marshal better understood how to conduct an investigation? More on this in a bit.

Then we get to the day of the fire. Employees have been arriving all day in order to prepare for a busy Saturday night. Two waitresses arrived to find the owner, Rick Schilling, Jr., in a conversation with two men. One of the waitresses went into the restroom while the second, Shirley Baker, waited. She was noticed by the two men and up until she finally moved away from the area, she consistently received threatening phone calls telling her to forget what she had seen. In a tragic turn of events, the other waitress was mixed up with Shirley by these men and the other woman's young son would later be murdered in an effort to keep Baker silent. On one such phone call in those following months, the caller realized they had 'the wrong one'; yet another young victim had been claimed by the fire, though he had not been at the supper club that night.

The Beverly Hills Supper Club was divided into several different rooms with varying capacities. The Zebra Room would be come a focal point as one employee, David Brock, would make its importance know years later when he found out he was not the only person to witness very strange events that day. Brock had been assigned to set up the room for a wedding reception that would be taking place that night, after the wedding itself occurred on the club grounds at the chapel. There were two maintenance men working in the room, in the ceiling for several hours. They claimed they were working on the air conditioning and this was the answer they gave every time Brock came in to check on their progress. He, and other employees who witnessed this and other people who did not belong at the club found it very odd that the Schillings would request any work be done, especially on a Saturday and especially so close to opening. The truth is, they hadn't. This would become painfully clear very soon after the fire, and employees began to realize they had witnessed people actively preparing the club to be destroyed.

More employees also witnessed another group of people who looked very out of place. A small group of men and women arrived at the club that afternoon, along with two young girls. While the children were instructed to sit down and not touch anything, the men and women set to work cleaning the north-south hallway walls. At least, that was their story whenever they were questioned. Yet to everyone who passed through the long hallway as they worked, many would say it appeared as though they were applying something to the walls, not cleaning anything off. Much like with the maintenance workers in the Zebra Room, employees thought it was odd for the owners to have workers coming in to clean, as that was not typically done on Saturdays - and again, so close to opening.

As early as 5:50-ish, when the first dinner guests start arriving, smoke is observed coming from the roof. Two guests, Mr. and Mrs. DeWalt, drive up and he notes a "neat column of smoke about six feet high" (29%). He points it out to his wife. Neither mention it to any staff members. It should be noted that this observation was made over three hours before the fire became apparent inside the building. I can not understand why these guests, or any of the others who later stated they also witnessed smoke when they arrived, why NOT ONE person said anything to a single staff members. This is all with the benefit of hindsight of course, but 169 lives were lost that night as the fire raged. Everyone could have been saved if just one person had mentioned the oddity to any of the employees.

"By 8:20 p.m., there would be a total of 18 people who would later tell investigators that they had seen smoke coming from the roof of the supper club. In every single case, nothing was reported" (29%).

So maddening. But again, hindsight is always 20/20. I just know for me personally, if I am entering a building that has unusual smoke coming from the roof, especially near the entrance, I am going to say something. And then leave.

Even as the fire was already quietly burning, more suspicious people are seen entering and leaving the club, giving the impression that they are maintenance workers.

"In the kitchen, Curtis Venice sees a man enter the club via the back kitchen door. he is wearing the uniform of a maintenance employee and carrying a tool bag over one shoulder. He walks directly past Venice and proceeds toward the stairs to the basement. Curtis often sees various workers in the club, but finds it extremely unusual to see one on a busy Saturday night" (29%).

Throughout the night, guests in the Zebra Room for the wedding reception reported to employees and later investigators that the room was very hot and getting hotter. This was thought to be odd, especially considering the maintenance men who were supposedly working on the AC in that very room, despite club employees being aware that there was no unit in the ceiling where the men had been working.

In other parts of the club, however, there is no indication that anything is amiss at that time - this includes the 1200 guests and staff in the Cabaret Room, on the other side of the building. Two shows were scheduled that night (I can't remember the singers name, sorry!) and there was an opening act as well. The room was filled, but time and again the majority who made it out of this part of the club estimated that the number was in the 800s or 900s. Later, it would be claimed by the half-assed initial investigation that, along with a myriad of other false claims by the team, the Schillings were guilty of filling the room over its capacity and that is why there were so many deaths.

We begin to get up to a minute-by-minute account once the fire is spotted. Calls are made to the fire department and employees begin evacuating patrons, and  others attempt to control the small blaze. Those on the other side of the building still in the Cabaret Room were told by one employee, Walter Bailey, that there was a fire and they needed to begin leaving. It is confusing as to why so many ignored his initial warning from the stage, where he had their attention. Of course, not all heeded the warning; some missed it all together as they were wrapped up in their own conversations, and others ignored it because he had described it as a small fire. Some in the press would later criticize him for his description, yet at the time he had not even seen an evidence of the actual fire. He had no idea how large it was actually growing.

To give you an idea of just how big the fire would become:

"Every fire department from Campbell Country had responded to the scene. Additionally, ambulances had been dispatched from 24 other departments in the region. Individual firefighters and departments from cities more than an hour away had driven to the supper club to help in any way possible. Eventually, 522 firefighters and rescue workers from 52 departments - manning 77 pieces of firefighting apparatus - would be engaged in a hell none would ever forget" (44%).

When the fire was finally out, a total of 169 people were dead. The cover-up would appear to have begun immediately and it seems obvious looking at it now that the governor was the one controlling it all. The mob didn't like that they weren't getting a cut of whatever the Schillings were raking in per week, month, year (and it was A LOT, given the expansions they continued to make to their club). The governor himself is implicated nearly every step of the way, and it is no secret that he had been in the company of some very questionable characters - and it also did not go unnoticed that in the days after the fire he suddenly had three times the usual amount of security with him.

In addition to the lies about the Cabaret Room being over-capacity, there were several other false reports as well. One example pertains to the sprinkler system - or lack of. This was made known that Sunday within hours of the blaze finally being extinguished and the smear campaign was on. Except, the club was not actually required at that time to have a sprinkler system, though that would not come out until much later.

Another event also occurred that Sunday that practically defies belief. State Troopers arrived at Schilling's home that night, letting him know that the cause of the fire was not arson, and the property would be bulldozed starting Monday, the very next day - Governor Carroll's orders.

"Very little, if any, investigative work had been done by Sunday evening (not even 24 hours later), and a full team of investigators from the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) had not yet arrived on the scene" (47%).

Suspicious, no? The author also notes that in an interview in 2009, the former governor refused to say why he ordered the site to be demolished.

"In fact, he scoffed at reports that a good portion of the building was destroyed on Monday. This account is easily proven, however, with the numerous photographs that had been taken that day. Carroll also stated during the interview he did not remember ordering the building's destruction, yet he is clearly seen in the various photographs - complete with hardhat - standing next to one of the bulldozers" (47%).

It is not outside the realm of possibility that Governor Carroll was helping out his buddies by covering up the true cause of the fire. There were reports of Carroll often being in Newport, according to the former mayor of the city. He even recalled seeing Carroll a few months before the fire at a Christmas party - a party hosted by Sam Schraeder, called a "local gangster and Cleveland mafia main-man" (48%) by the author. It was also reported that he was investigated on at least three separate occasions for involvement with the maob.

The investigators from the NFPA who did manage to arrive before the building was entirely demolished on that Monday were told rather quickly, by Carroll no less, to "look for another cause" (48%) beyond arson. The governor also pushed for all kinds of theories to be reported, such as an exploding oil generator. When the generator was found undamaged, he switched gears again, off on some other theory, but continuing to push the idea that the fire started in the basement. As the bulldozers went to work on Monday afternoon, the Zebra Room seemed to become the main target.

"It appeared that crews had been told to deliberately destroy the specific area of the building where the fire had supposedly started. In fact, by the end of the day Monday, any trace of evidence in the Zebra Room was gone" (49%).

To prove how utterly insane this was, the author notes that he conducted research of his own and spoke with experts in the field of fire investigations. He states that all "were shocked to discover that the entire site was not roped off at daybreak Sunday, allowing investigators to work through the debris piece-by-piece, for weeks if necessary, in order to find out an exact cause for such a large-scale disaster. They added that even the most extremely basic fire investigation would generally take a minimum of five to seven days" (49%).

By Tuesday the investigators on the scene were not allowed to enter the basement of the club. It seems most likely that the fire started in the Zebra Room, yet that room was completely demolished by Monday night, and all access to the section of the basement beneath it was pretty much off-limits to anyone but the Kentucky State Police. It is also incredibly suspicious when the author reports that of all the photos taken by the state police, there were fewer than twenty images total of the Zebra Room, and even less of that section of basement below.

A new investigation into the fire was opened during Governor Steve Beshear's time in office, yet according to the author, "His task force included...no experts in the field of fire investigations. no one with expertise in fire behavior, building construction, electrical engineering, or fire protection engineering" (74%).

This too struck me as odd. It was also at this time that it was discovered how much evidence was missing from the original files. The author stated that it was discovered that many of the large crates had indexes that listed what could be found within a given crate. Yet, various items were missing, the most notable being "hundreds of photographs and color slides, the majority of which were to be of the basement area of the club" (77%).

So photos remain missing, employee statements about the suspicious persons were completely ignored, and somehow in all of this, the fact was overlooked that no aluminum wiring had been found anywhere near the Zebra Room, despite that being the determination of the investigators from the Kentucky State Police. It truly looks like Carroll pushed hard to get the investigators to lay blame squarely at the feet of the Schillings, though there were records that refuted everything the original report said. The owners were blamed "for a variety of negligent acts including gross overcrowding, code violations, and a failure to immediately report the fire" (77%), even though none of that was found to be true when a grand jury investigated.

There s truly so much more I want to share about this whole tragic event, but I feel like that would then perhaps dissuade anyone reading this from seeking out this volume to discover the rest of story for themselves. The story is completely engrossing and I could not put it down once I got through the slow beginning about the history of mob activity in the area. It is clear to me that the fire was deliberately set, and a cover-up attempted to ensure that no one would ever figure out what really happened that night. Luckily, there are former employees and survivors who won't give up until the truth is told.

Recommended.

Book Review | Disaster in Lawrence: The Fall of the Pemberton Mill

Rating ⭐⭐⭐

So I am continuing with my perusal of material on man-mad and natural disasters because Kindle Unlimited hooked me by giving me another month free.

This was yet another disaster I had never heard of, but a horrific one none the less. Much like with the many train wrecks I read about in the past few weeks that were new to me, I feel like there were so many factory accidents in that same era, that many of those are not well-known as well. I think Triangle is probably the most well-known, and easily one of the worst in history. Even so, just because the accidents were common does not mean the victims and survivors are any less worthy of being remembered.

This story had heap upon heap of tragedy. First, there was the fact that child labor was rampant. Secondly, the factory collapsed and trapped many workers, primarily women and children. Thirdly, during the rescue operations lanterns were dropped and thus set the wreckage aflame. I can't even imagine attempting to rescue someone as flames inched ever so much closer, and having to accept the fact that you could not save everyone. Not only that, but you would hear every last scream of all those you could not save.

I reviewed another of the author's works here, regarding the hurricane that hit Cedar Keys in 1896. Like that one, this is a short but factual account of the disaster. I imagine it would be rather difficult to write a large volume about an event that was probably not that well-documented once those days of recovery passed. This is to be expected, as the collapse occurred in 1860.

I appreciated the many photos used to guide the reader. There were also flyers and newspaper articles to accompany the text, along with sketches and photos from the period.

It will come as no to surprise to anyone that no one was ever truly held responsible for such a terrible event. Nor was the cause ever determined with any certainty. it is true that machinery was being moved about that day, and some speculated that without the factory floors being properly supported with appropriate-sized load-bearing beams, that is what lead to the disaster. It is as good a guess as any.

Here are a few quotes I found of interest:

"In the end, the average person's opinion was as good as any expert's opinion. There were no further inquiries, no criminal court actions. The men involved in creating and managing the Pemberton Mill went about their lives. Lowell, Bigelow, Putnam, Howe, Nevins - none was punished for any actions they had taken, or had failed to take. Compound that with the families who were burdened with the finality of death, the decision-makers had been simply inconvenienced" (88%).

"An accurate final count of casualties is not likely to ever be known. The Pemberton and City of Lawrence records in the American Textile History Museum at Loewell indicates that 96 employees were killed in the disaster. Newspaper stories in the days after the disaster listed 83 deaths and later five deaths from injuries, a total of 88 dead and missing. Of 275 who were hurt, 116 were listed with serious injuries. By that count, 307 escaped unhurt from the collapsing factory. In addition, 248 Pemberton employees were considered 'not in danger' by reason of working in outbuildings or absent that day" (91%).

"In 1973, a reporter equated the Lawrence tragedy to 'the Great Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake and Boston's Cocoanut Grove Fire'. The Pemberton collapse may have developed a similar contemporary public interest but, unlike the others, the Lawrence events did not lead directly or immediately to laws protecting people in their workplace" (93%).

I feel like that last quote is especially important to consider and mull over. The author spends a bit of time on this point and it is true that no meaningful change, no change at all, came about in order to prevent another disaster like this from occurring. It took so long for factory workers, coal miners, and a myriad of other workers to get any kind of protections.

Perhaps if more attention was paid to this one, later disasters like Triangle could have been avoided. Imagine how many people might have been saved from horrific and untimely deaths had we learned our lessons the first time or two around.

Mini Reviews | Man-Made Disasters

I have been on a man-made disaster binge lately and I mentioned before that I think it is partly because of the disaster all around us right now that is also man-made; our idiot-in-chief is certainly not helping here in the US, and is in fact out-right LYING - as is his cheering squad over at Faux News.

 Reading about past pandemics would make me feel worse, so instead I have found books involving other kinds of disasters - train wrecks, explosions, fires. Even so, in these stories there is hope because there are always people willing to help, to put themselves in harm's way to save the life of another, even if that person is a complete stranger. Despite the loss of life in these true stories, we can take hope from them as well. If everyone does their part and what they are supposed to do, we will be okay.

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Here is another event that I knew nothing about, which surprised me given the time period that it happened in - 1944. The loss of life was quite large, and so many were children. Nearly 7,000 fans had entered the big top, ready for a fun afternoon provided by the Ringling Brothers. Somehow, and the cause is discussed but never 100% determined, the tent caught fire and panic set in. There were not enough exits for the thousands of spectators, and one of the exits was even blocked by an animal ramp so people were having to try to climb over, which slowed so many down and increased the number dead. Then the whole tent itself collapsed and anyone still alive perished within minutes. 168 people died that day, with hundreds more injured.

This is a quick read of only 144 pages, but it is packed with information. The author uses so many sources, including firsthand accounts given by witnesses, as well as interviews with survivors. I was also impressed with the exhaustive amount of photos and diagrams included, as they greatly aided in telling the dramatic and terrifying story.

Roughly 40% of the book is dedicated to identifying the victims. This is the best I have seen done in any of the disaster books I have read lately, because here the victims are identified by name and, when available, photographs. As happens all too often, victims get lumped together and lose their identity. Not so in this case and for that I am grateful because those who died deserve to be remembered. What made this section so overwhelming, however, is that the majority of the victims were children. This is a crucial, but devastating, section of the story.

Random Fact: Charles Nelson Reilly was at the circus that day and escaped the tent before it collapsed.

Overall I found this to be a concise and factual account of a major tragedy. I appreciate that the space today is marked with a monument to the victims, located at exactly the point where the middle tent post stood. This memorial was unveiled on the 60th anniversary of the fire. It lists the names of all those who died, accompanied by a diagram of the tent.

One thing that is frustrating here, is that no cause was ever determined. The farthest any investigation got was that it started near the men's restroom, which was attached to the main tent. There was a man who confessed to starting the fire, but recanted, and there are a whole slew of reasons he should and should not be believed. It is thought that a dropped cigarette could have started the blaze, but it is unlikely we will ever know for sure what caused the fire that terrible day.

Recommended.

 ⭐⭐⭐

On June 23rd, 1900 Engine #7 and its passengers were due in Atlanta. The problem was, a massive storm was raging and the train waited for quite some time before finally being given the green-light to continue on its way from McDonough. This area of Georgia had seen rainstorms for WEEKS. With one storm after another filling rivers and creeks beyond capacity, on this night disaster struck. The water in the Camp Creek had rushed forward so quickly, it had eroded the bridge supports holding the tracks in place. As Engine #7 crossed the bridge, it gave way. Only nine people aboard survived, the rest were killed in the wreck, the ensuing fire, or the creek itself.

So I am kind of perplexed with this one and how to truly rate it, because author perspective does matter. An Author's perspective dictates how he or she writes. In giving a history of the area prior to the crash, the author relates how the town came to be a suburb of Atlanta over decades. It is when he is describing the Civil War that troubles me however, because in one of the many photos provided throughout the book, one is captions as "A nighttime view of the monument of Colonel Charles T. Zachry, Civil War hero of McDonough, located in the square downtown" (15%).

Hold up a second. You don't get to call someone a "Civil War Hero" if they fought for the South. You can call someone a dirty treasonous traitor, which is accurate. Never a hero. NEVER. Don't come at with the "States' rights" bullshit argument. Yes, the Civil War was about states' rights. STATES' RIGHTS TO OWN SLAVES. Fuck off with every other pathetic argument, good-bye.

So, back to the book.

This gave me pause because I wondered how the rest of the story would then be told, and what kind of bias there might be, intended or otherwise. I did not seem to find any, and in fact found the author gave explicit praise to various African Americans for their acts that night. He first mentions a railroad employee by the name of T.C. Carter who aided survivors in escaping the rail cars, all while dealing with the intense pain of a dislocated hip. He also wrote of how the train's flagman, J.J. Quinlan was able to scale the embankment - no easy task as the ground continued to give way beneath him - and alert people along the way that there had been a wreck and they needed help.

"As he made his way up the track, he passed the houses of several African American families. Waking them up, he told them of the wreck and said that their help was needed to rescue survivors. He instructed them to gather all of the rope they could find and take it with them to the washout. Quinlan knew this was the only way the survivors could be pulled out of the chasm below the tracks. Although unnamed, these African American residents neat McDonough responded quickly and heroically" (40%).

So, I don't really know what else to say about this, except that calling confederates 'Civil War heroes' really bothers me.

One of the great mysteries of this wreck is the story of a mother and babe who perished. Or didn't. No one really knows for sure. What is known is that there was a woman and her infant on board the train, and that they were thought to have left that train before the stop at McDonough. Yet there were reports of a clothe diaper found downstream, still pinned, indicating it had been washed off the child.

"Why did the rescuers report seeing a woman and baby lifeless on the creek bank and then washed downstream? were they delirious from their work, or is it possible that there was another woman onboard in another car? Perhaps we will never know if this woman was involved in the crash. Several bodies were never recovered, and it might be that she and her baby were two of them" (49%).

Subplots like this one make these disasters stories so much worse, because there is that aspect of not knowing. To me it is a terrible thing to have potential victims never able to be acknowledged because we know nothing about them, their names, or if they are even real. The only survivors of this wreck were those in the back, in the Pullman car. Those in the locomotive and first two train cars were killed in a variety of horrible ways, and in most cases were unable to be identified by sight. The dead were not able to recovered until the fire was out, which was not until the following morning. Those still within the wreck and not washed away by the rushing water were disfigured and/or burned beyond recognition, so they had to be identified by whatever documents or paper that were in their pockets. Who really knows then how many bodies were never recovered?

All in all, this is quick read about another disaster that was not entirely preventable. It was preventable in terms of having workers out constantly checking the bridge supports during the string of such terrible storms, but on that specific night it would have been impossible to be monitoring due to the heavy winds and rain.

Recommended.