January 12, 1888, became a fateful day for about 235 residents of the American prairie. On that warm winter day, a sudden onset of snowstorm caught many people outside of their houses. Most of these people were immigrants from Europe who came to America in search of a better life. They were attracted by the opportunity of getting the cheap land that was previously occupied by Indians. However, this land appeared to be not as welcoming as they might have expected. The blizzard of 1888 became, for some of the immigrants, the turning point that made them leave the American prairie. Yet, the question is, what factors made this blizzard so murderous as to kill more than two hundreds of people, many of whom were children. David Laskin provided the answers in his article, “Death on the Prairies: The Murderous Blizzard of 1888.” It turns out that unusually warm weather on that winter day, a lack of warning technology, and unfortunate timing contributed to the deadly effect of this natural disaster.
On January 12, 1888, the day began with warm weather, unlike the previous days of the week. The weather was so warm that the snow started melting, so the residents of the prairie assumed that the whole day would be just as fine. For this reason, many people left their houses, and they were not wearing coats, scarves, or gloves. Many farmers were taking care of their livestock or doing other chores outside of their houses. Others were doing errands in town or simply visiting their friends. Children were heading to schools that were located far away from their homes. Nothing indicated that this warm winter day would turn into a nightmare.
However, the snowstorm broke out suddenly, catching many people outside of any shelter. The temperature dropped dramatically, reaching about 40 degrees below zero in some places. It was a critical fall of the temperature for people who were dressed lightly and not wearing any cloaks, scarves, or gloves. Laskin recounts the story of two sisters, the older of which, Eda, had to take off her wrap and cover her younger sister to protect her from cold (46). Many people could not make it to the shelter, so they froze to death or were buried alive in heavy snow. Some of those who happened to survive suffered from the complications of frostbite.
The death toll in the blizzard could be much less if the disaster occurred at a different time. Yet, it began shortly after the afternoon, the busiest time of the day. Farmers were doing their work outside, and schoolchildren had just been released from school and were wending their way home. The weather began getting worse when the classes were coming to an end. Therefore, some teachers decided that it would be safer for children to wait out the storm at school. Others, on the contrary, thought that if they let children go, they would manage to get home before the storm broke out.
Unfortunately, the blizzard intensified so rapidly that it was nearly impossible to reach the shelter. Heavy snow swirled in the strong wind, reducing the visibility to zero-zero (Laskin 44). It means that anyone who happened to be outside during that snowstorm could see nothing in both horizontal and vertical directions. Moreover, at that time and place, there were no paved roads, street lights, or any other signs that could help travelers to find their way in such challenging conditions. People were going round in circles until they eventually managed to find some shelter or froze to death. Many children never returned home from school that day, which is why this disaster is often referred to as “the schoolchildren’s blizzard” (Laskin 44). The timing of the catastrophe appeared to be extremely unfortunate; if it happened, for example, at night, the number of victims could have been much lower.
People would have been more careful about leaving their houses that day if they had been warned. However, no one ever told them that the cold front was approaching and that it would result in a heavy snowstorm. Insufficient technological development was the reason for the absence of any public warning. First of all, weathermen did not have access to technology that would allow them to make precise weather forecasts. Such technology was available to the Army, but it did not consider the weather to be a priority, so it did not share information about oncoming storms with the public. As a result, weathermen managed to predict cold weather, but they failed to foresee the heavy blizzard that was going to occur.
The warning technology was also underdeveloped, so there was no way to rapidly notify people of the oncoming disaster. When weathermen needed to warn people about the bad weather, they would use a telegraph line to deliver the message. The telegraph transmitted the message through the wires located along the railroads. However, the railroad was miles away from the farms on which people lived, so they could not receive any warnings on time. Perhaps, the fact that most residents of the prairie were immigrants, not familiar with local weather patterns, also contributed to the number of casualties because people did not expect the weather to change so suddenly. Since people could not be aware of the oncoming blizzard beforehand, they underestimated its power. When the snowstorm began, some of them went outside in attempt to save their livestock and other property (Laskin 42). By doing so, they only increased the number of victims who died on that day.
On the morning of January 13, the search-and-rescue operation began to find survivors and collect bodies. A lot of frozen children’s bodies were found among the livestock. One survivor of the blizzard, Sadie Shaw, shared her experience with her relative in a letter: “Oh, it was terrible. I have often read about blizzards but they have to be seen to be fully realized” (Laskin 47). The high death toll makes the schoolchildren’s blizzard one of the deadliest and most remorseful natural disasters in US history.
The blizzard of 1888 showed how merciless nature could be if people did not pay enough attention to its signs and did not care about their safety in advance. Luckily, contemporary meteorology is capable of predicting the weather quite accurately, and the warning systems can alert the public early enough to let people prepare for a disaster and find shelter. The death toll on January 12 could have been much lower if people had modern technology at their disposal and had been warned.
Work Cited
Laskin, David. “Death on the Prairies: The Murderous Blizzard of 1888.” Portrait of America, edited by Steven B. Oates and Charles J. Errico, 10th ed., vol. 2, Wadsworth Publishing Co Inc., 2010, pp. 39-49.