Fifteen Hurricanes That Changed the Carolinas: Powerful Storms, Climate Change, and What We Do Next by Jay Barnes

Abstract

Reviewed by: Fifteen Hurricanes That Changed the Carolinas: Powerful Storms, Climate Change, and What We Do Next by Jay Barnes R. Scott Huffard Jr. Fifteen Hurricanes That Changed the Carolinas: Powerful Storms, Climate Change, and What We Do Next. By Jay Barnes. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Pp. x, 374. Paper, $27.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-6630-3.) Historians of the South know that this region is haunted by disaster, and they know that these tragedies are more than just intriguing stories—they can reveal and exacerbate existing social tensions. In Fifteen Hurricanes That Changed the Carolinas: Powerful Storms, Climate Change, and What We Do Next, Jay Barnes, the author of several previous books on hurricane history, adds to our understanding of the past, present, and future of one of the most brutal of these southern disasters—the hurricane. Barnes picks fifteen storms from the voluminous historical record and tells the stories of hurricanes including Hazel, Donna, and Hugo—names that, even decades after landfall, still make Carolinians shudder. His prose is accessible and clear, and he skillfully balances the big picture—including the track and meteorological data for each of the selected storms—with gripping personal stories of heroism and tragedy that humanize these disasters. As Barnes notes, impacts from these storms were felt not just on the coasts but also far inland, where heavy rains triggered events like the Asheville Flood of 1916. With an eye to the future, every chapter concludes with a helpful series of “takeaways,” or lessons from each storm. As Fifteen Hurricanes That Changed the Carolinas moves chronologically through the presented storms, Barnes offers a narrative of progress in improved warning systems, forecasting, and state and federal responses. Yet despite all [End Page 402] of these advancements, the book is striking in the continuities it presents. As they have historically, Carolina hurricanes disproportionately impact poorer southerners and communities of color. Barnes describes an 1804 storm that turned slave quarters in the Lowcountry into “hurricane death traps,” and he discusses the Sea Island Hurricane of 1893, which killed thousands of African Americans on coastal islands (p. 39). He also highlights how the endless rains from Hurricanes Florence and Matthew swamped eastern North Carolina’s poorer communities in 2016 and 2018. Poverty has always dictated one’s ability to evacuate or to live outside a floodplain or dangerous river corridor. Perhaps the greatest continuity of all is that Carolinians continue to build and cluster on the coasts even as hurricanes continue to menace the region. Coastal populations and sea levels are rising, all while warming oceans threaten to make future storms even worse. In the final chapter, Barnes delves into the complex debate about climate change and the strength of storms. Conclusions here are understandably murky and potentially ominous, but, sounding a note of optimism, he emphasizes the growing trend toward “resiliency” (p. 339). Those seeking to further investigate these stories may take issue with the absence of footnotes and in-text references. But Barnes does usually try to name newspapers and sources in the prose, so it should not be an onerous task to track down these stories. Historians might also wish for a little more historical context in Barnes’s presentation of storms from before the twentieth century. This narrative is heavily weighted toward more recent hurricanes, so perhaps more engagement with the secondary literature would help better situate earlier storms in their contemporary contexts, more fully explaining how race and class shaped the experiences of Carolinians in these storms. All in all, Fifteen Hurricanes That Changed the Carolinas should serve as an invitation for future scholarship on the impact of hurricanes on southern history. Every one of these storms could conceivably be the focus of a compelling and relevant dissertation or monograph. And as the Carolinas continue to be challenged by tropical weather in an era of climate change, heeding the lessons of the past will be even more important. [End Page 403] R. Scott Huffard Jr. Lees-McRae College Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association