In 1891, the chief weatherman of Galveston, Texas, confidently published an article declaring it an "absurd delusion" to believe a hurricane could ever destroy his city. At the turn of the century, Galveston was a booming, wealthy metropolis known as the "Wall Street of the Southwest," situated on a low, flat sandbar with a maximum elevation of just 8.7 feet. Blinded by prolonged prosperity, developers actively dismantled the island's only natural defenses, cutting down coastal sand dunes to fill in low-lying residential areas. Exactly nine years after the weatherman’s declaration, this profound complacency collided with a monster storm, creating the deadliest natural disaster in United States history.

The tragedy was severely compounded by a petty bureaucratic rivalry within the federal government. Willis Luther Moore, the director of the  ...