Author: Kim Cross
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
Erratum:
Page 109 "...right bicep..." should be "...right biceps..."
Most of what I review is fiction, however rooted in reality it night be, but occasionally I review non-fiction where I think it’s important, and those reviews tend mostly towards books about the environment. This one falls into that category and it’s the first one of which I haven't felt merited a passing grade.
Wikipedia has a brief introduction to this storm, but author Kim Cross (not to be confused with author Kimberley Cross Teter) makes it personal and goes much deeper so you get a real feel for what it might have been like to be there as this storm was brewing. There is a problem with this approach, however, in that a certain amount of fiction, however unintended, necessarily creeps into a story written this way. In my opinion, this fictional element detracted from the humanization of the story.
For example, a lot of conversations are reported where those conversations were not recorded as they happened, and are clearly made-up. By made-up, I mean reconstructed, not made-up to distort or misrepresent. They're constructed to convey what people were saying and feeling, and even though they're based on personal recollections, no one can recall verbatim what was precisely said and exactly felt at times like those. It’s interesting and important to know how people felt looking back, of course, but it’s also rather misleading to present recollection as though it was 'happening live".
Where we don’t have actual texts or recordings, these recollections are necessarily based upon what people reported after the fact, but they nevertheless are to one extent or another a fictional representation of events and conversations which are in this case and in my opinion, biased towards the emotional. For me, I felt that the story was emotional enough without this "augmentation", and while a tedious recital of plain facts would have done an equal disservice, I'm by no means convinced that this was the smartest approach to reporting these particular stories.
I know that the author comes from a journalistic background and journalists are all-but-brainwashed into going after the human angle, but in this day and age, people are more mature in their view of stories (although nonetheless gullible, unfortunately) and don’t necessarily respond in the same way to a traditional journalistic approach. The author does tell us that the quotations were taken from recordings in some cases and eye-witnesses in others, but eye-witness testimony is the most unreliable of all evidence.
I don’t doubt that the author conveyed her interviews accurately, and I don’t doubt that people told it they way they remembered it without consciously changing anything, but memory is an extraordinarily malleable entity. I don't believe that these people accurately recalled precise reactions and verbatim conversations from times when they were highly (and understandably) emotional and to represent it here as though they did seems unfortunately misleading at best.
It's not that they were lying or attempting to mislead or obfuscate, but the fact is that no-one save an eidetic can accurately report word-for-word conversations, especially not from traumatic events like these. I felt that the reporting here ought to have striven for less "verbatim" and more general representation of how people behaved, what they thought, and how they felt and reacted. For me that would have made a more authentic story and it would have been better for it.
The story is split into three parts: the storm, the aftermath, and picking up the pieces. We follow not only the people it affected, but also the weather forecasters who were trying to predict what it would do, and when and where, and the rescuers who had to find the victims after the storm passed. There had already been an outbreak earlier that same month - indeed, April 2011 currently holds the record for most prolific tornado month with a total of 757 reported overall. In the outbreak of 25 -27 April, 348 people died, 316 of these on April 27th, which spawned four EF5 tornadoes. The writer tells us that "Only one EF5 is reported in the United States in a typical year. In 2011 there were six. Four of these struck on April 27th." It’s pretty scary stuff even when stated baldly like that.
This was an horrific event by any measure. Or series of events more accurately. The storm-front spewed-out tornado after tornado, some of those splitting themselves. At least one of those which didn’t split grew to be a mile wide. When people thought it had passed, it meant only that they were in the eye (and remember this is a tornado, not a hurricane!), and the winds would come again, this time in the opposite direction, finishing off damage which the first massive wall of wind had begun.
A power transmission tower was literally bent in half, a school bus was stripped to its chassis. Not only were homes removed, but the concrete slabs beneath them were lifted. Motor vehicles took to the air. Entire apartment complexes were raised. It was lifting asphalt off the roads. It was lifting bulldozers and dump trucks. It lifted an SUV into a water tower. Community after community was savaged. In addition to the irreplaceable lives lost, property damage totaled eleven billion dollars.
The story mentions many forecasters and storm-chasers, but the weather forecasters it focuses most strongly on are James Spann and Jason Simpson, and there's some back story on Spann, which I skipped since it wasn't interesting to me. It may be more interesting to people who watch these guys on TV (apparently they have quite a following). I was much more interested in exactly what happened that day, and that's pretty gripping. Frankly I’d have preferred it if that story had not been broken-up with flashbacks. I’d also have preferred it if we had learned much more about it. To me this was one of several lost opportunities in this book.
The book focused tightly on people and personal experiences, and I can see why a journalist would take that approach, but in doing so, a much bigger and ultimately more important picture was missed in my opinion. The bigger picture concerns climate change, and personal safety in the event of a natural disaster. There was also a bigger picture in other dimensions, too. In focusing on people, nature was missed. We learn nothing of animals - wildlife, domesticated animals, and pets - it’s like they didn’t exist in this book. We learn something of damage to trees, but only in passing, and nothing of how nature suffered and eventually recovered afterwards. I was sad that all of this was lost in a welter of personal stories, important as those are.
Even on that personal level we missed a golden teaching opportunity to wise-up readers on how to avoid the mistakes and about poor decisions which people can make during catastrophes like this one. I can see how this would conflict with telling a tale of loss and tragedy: no one wants to say "your child/sibling/parent/relative died because they made bad decisions." Of course not, but people even in their best light do not act rationally when understandably overwhelming disasters envelop them.
Ultimately it’s more important and practical to try to prevent deaths than it is to dwell on the past, tragic as it was, and painful and meaningful as those losses were. A chapter on what might have been done to prevent, to ameliorate, to avoid, wouldn't have been out of place in this book. The author does touch on these things in a rather half-hearted and widely-scattered manner, but a solid statement in a chapter of its own would have been more useful and practical. How did those who survived actually survive? Why didn't those who died actually survive? People always ask "Why me?" after events like this, but this book not only fails to offer answers, it doesn't even attempt them. I think that was a sad omission and a disservice to those who died and those who survived them.
I think the role of religion was overplayed here too. Yes, churches do contribute in important ways at times like these, but that's the church. No god did anything to save lives here, and while a small issue was made out of a stained glass window which withstood the storm, four churches were completely demolished in one community (as well as others elsewhere, no doubt), yet this was rather glossed over because that one window was what stands in a storm! I found that distasteful.
Climate change, aka 'global warming' doesn’t necessarily account for every super-storm which breaks out, but what we can count on is that climate change will without a doubt exacerbate such storms; winters will become more harsh, summers will become more baking, and hurricanes and tornadoes will become more prevalent and stronger. This is why this is important, because instead of being a rarity, the events of late April 2011 could become the norm. I felt that a valuable educational opportunity was squandered when this book didn’t even mention climate, climate change, or global warming - not even once.
Be forewarned that a lot of this story is going to be really hard to read. It doesn't matter that this isn’t a news item on TV, that's it’s 'past history' - it was only three years ago and there are people out there still living with this as fresh and raw on their minds and hearts as if it happened this morning. The description of the tornado assault in part one is very well done, but I wished that there was more of it and more explanation for what it did and how it did it so people can understand it better and be better prepared for the future.
It’s the rescue stories afterwards - specifically the rescues that were already too late before the rescue teams even set out - that grab you, though. It’s the babies in the rubble and the loved ones lost, where not even experience can prepare you for the next one you find. And the next one. If we don’t want ever more of this in the future we need to start fighting now: fighting against climate change and fighting for safer buildings and a better educated public. I just wish the author had come down stronger on that.
As it is, I can't recommend this book. I think it got off to a strong start, but it faded quickly and became lost, for me, in parts two and three. The winds may blow differently for you.
