The year is 1900. The people of Galveston, Texas, work night and day. They clear away rubble. Every few minutes, a wagon full of dead bodies passes by. Few buildings remain standing. People spend the night in the streets. They have no light to see by, very little to eat, and no water to drink. They have survived the worst hurricane in U.S. history. Many more would have survived, too—if someone had warned them the hurricane was coming.

The famous Galveston hurricane of 1900 killed somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 people. In today’s dollars, it did more than $700 million worth of damage. Who is responsible for the disaster? Some would blame the director of the United States Weather Bureau, Willis Moore.

The storm struck very soon after the end of the Spanish American War. In those days, some people in America were still very angry at people in Cuba. But the people in Cuba were great at predicting hurricanes. Weather predictors in stormy Cuba got lots of practice. By the time of the Galveston hurricane, they knew how to tell when a hurricane had formed. They knew how to calculate how far away it was. They knew how fast it moved. They could even tell what path it would take. If you lived in a place prone to hurricanes, you should have wanted Cuban weathermen on your side!

But Willis Moore didn’t want Cubans on his side. He worked to make sure Cuban weather reports didn’t reach American people. In fact, Mr. Moore didn’t let printed weather reports use the words ‘tornado,’ ‘cyclone,’ or ‘hurricane’ at all! He thought those words would make people worry too much.

But worrying is just what the people of Galveston should have been doing. The Cubans tried to get warning messages to the United States. But no one listened—until it was too late.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. — Proverbs 16:18