On the April 29, 1892 an intense cyclone directly struck the island of Mauritius. The resulting devastation was considerable with over 1200 people killed, making it by far the deadliest cyclone in recorded Mauritian history. While this cyclone is commemorated in multiple places, the responses chosen (and rejected) at the time, their long term impacts, and their antecedent factors have never before been detailed.

This research draws from archive data in Mauritius to place the 1892 cyclone in its historical context. A context that includes uncovering the emergence of vulnerability within the early iterations of the cyclone early warning system in Mauritius (which is also revealed to likely be the world's first) before the 1892 cyclone and the failure of this warning system in 1892. This research details the consequences of the popular and prevalent discourses of the cyclone being ‘unprecedented’, ‘unpredictable’ and without warning signs, that were central to the way the cyclone was experienced, responded to, and the long term recovery.

This article goes on to detail the institutional decision not to address vulnerability in the early warning system in 1892 (shaped by competing interests, a number of misunderstandings, and a lack of memory) and how this decision determined one element of the experience of cyclones and the trajectories of vulnerability in Mauritius over the long term and up to today. This article therefore adds to calls to consider the long term nature of disasters as fundamental to understanding the creation and perpetuation of vulnerability (referred to as trajectories) over time, and that decisions made in the distant past may be critical to understanding vulnerability today.

1892 年 4 月 29 日，一场强烈的飓风直接袭击了毛里求斯岛。造成的破坏相当可观，造成 1200 多人丧生，使其成为迄今为止毛里求斯历史上最致命的飓风。虽然这个旋风在多个地方被纪念，但当时选择（和拒绝）的反应、它们的长期影响以及它们的先行因素以前从未被详细描述过。

这项研究利用毛里求斯的档案数据，将 1892 年的旋风置于其历史背景中。一个背景包括在 1892 年旋风和 1892 年该预警系统失败之前，在毛里求斯的旋风预警系统的早期迭代中发现脆弱性的出现（这也可能是世界上第一个）。这项研究详细信息旋风的流行和流行言论的后果是“史无前例的”、“不可预测的”且没有警告信号，这对旋风的经历、应对和长期恢复至关重要。

本文继续详细介绍不解决 1892 年早期预警系统中的脆弱性的机构决定（由相互竞争的利益、许多误解和缺乏记忆所决定）以及该决定如何确定旋风和毛里求斯从长期到今天的脆弱性轨迹。因此，本文增加了将灾害的长期性质视为理解脆弱性（称为轨迹）随时间推移产生和持续存在的基础的呼吁，并且在遥远的过去做出的决定可能对于理解今天的脆弱性至关重要。