1935 Labor Day Hurricane: Hemingway Slammed New Deal Ineptitude

NewsBusters ^ | September 7, 2015 | P.J. Gladnick

[PJ-Comix]

It was the most powerful hurricane to hit the United States. No, not Katrina whose tenth anniversary was recently widely noted. This was a much more more powerful hurricane with a much higher death toll. It was the hurricane that hit the Middle Keys of Florida 80 Labor Days ago on September 2, 1935 and since hurricanes back then had no names, it was known as the Labor Day Hurricane. There were over 400 official deaths, most of them World War I veterans working in three CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps building the overseas highway. Most of those deaths could have been easily prevented but due to New Deal ineptitude, they met an avoidable fate in the Keys.

Few today have heard about this tragedy in part because the government ineptitude in question was Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal but less than two weeks after the Labor Day Hurricane hit, novelist Ernest Hemingway, who was living in Key West at the time, wrote an essay about it called Who Murdered the Vets? Even if you are not a fan of Hemingway's fiction, you will find his facts about this hurricane tragedy quite interesting.

[Fiji Hill]

On September 2, 1935, Labor Day, the hurricane reached a peak intensity of 892 mb.

I wonder how that measurement was made?

A barometer at the scene--I don't know how it could have survived--at one point read 26.35 inches of mercury, the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded on a land-based barometer. At the time, there were probably not a whole lot of metric barometers in this country, and I doubt if there were any at the scene.

[txhurl]

I’ve seen some Jamaican sharks’-oil gauges that are sworn to be accurate... they’ve used them even after mercury was harnessed.

[Popman]

The Labor Day Hurricane caused massive amounts of destruction and had a fairly high death toll. This image shows men standing near a large stack of coffins during the cleanup following the storm. Source: Florida State Archives

[MinuteGal]

Hemingway and I graduated from the same high school (in Oak Park, Illinois). Not at the same time, though, lol...he was born in 1899.

After graduating he immediately left town and voted never to return to the upscale but rather staid and unexciting suburb just west of Chicago.

He never did return except for one family member's funeral.

Then he was off to the Spanish Civil War, the bull fights, the plane crashes, the four wives, the Normandy landings, the Liberation of Paris, the Key West deep-sea fishing and six-toed pet cats, the alcoholism...and then the suicide.

I never cared all that much for his novels, many of them a little too tedious for me. But the magnificent story lines he wove made some of the most fascinating, captivating, colorful, exciting and popular movies in cinema annals.

I've seen every Hemingway film at one time or another, and loved them all. The greatest stars of the Golden Age of Movies were in every one of them!

Leni

[Fightin Whitey]

September 8, 1900

I didn't even know they HAD climate change back then!!!

[Moonman62]

The lack of evacuation of the Keys in general and of the Vets in particular was due to the poor forecast by the U.S. Weather Bureau, which did not recognize the devastating strength of the storm and wrongly forecast that it would hit Cuba instead of the Keys. In fairness to the Weather Bureau, hurricane forecasting was then in its infancy, and even today, hurricane forecasting has a residual element of uncertainty as to strength and track that can have tragic consequences.

...

Hemingway’s point was that they shouldn’t have been there at all during the hurricane months of August, September, and October.

[Moonman62]

OK, but they say the measurement was made before landfall. Was the barometer on a buoy, or what?

[txhurl]

http://bermudasun.bm/Content/HURRICANE-WATCH/Hurricane-Watch/Article/Using-shark-oil-to-keep-tabs-on-Igor/149/906/48088

....Although her barometer showed no change yesterday, Mrs. Chameau said the telltale signs would only reveal themselves as a hurricane came within 200 miles.

Google sharks oil barometer

[klgator]

In fairness to the Weather Bureau, hurricane forecasting was then in its infancy, and even today, hurricane forecasting has a residual element of uncertainty as to strength and track that can have tragic consequences.

You might say just like climatology today?

[Charles Martel]

OK, but they say the measurement was made before landfall. Was the barometer on a buoy, or what?

That is possible. Maritime barometers are built to withstand a lot of abuse, even the shiny brass one on the wall of the captain's cabin.

There were spring-wound recording barometers back then, that printed out readings at certain time increments on a roll of paper. The Navy certainly could've put something like that in a buoy.

[thackney]

Ships? UnfortunTe ships?

Or perhaps that was the measurement on land while the eye was still offshore?

[txhurl]

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Labor_Day_hurricane_1935-09-04_weather_map.gif

[Moonman62]

Well, I found out where the barometric reading was taken, at what’s now known as Craig Key, a small island constructed for the railroad. The reading was either taken out in the open or in a dry docked boat, according to two different accounts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Key

And at the following link the measurement is described in item 7.

http://www.keyshistory.org/35-hurr-war-dept.html

[thackney]

Interesting, thanks

[ru4liberty]

My great-grandmother perished in that storm.