People just died. Seriously, a lot of people just died. Entire cultures would be wiped out, and if they never made anything out of a material more durable than wood then we might never find any record of their existence.

The benefit of being able to predict weather events like we can today really can’t be overstated. In the past, storms would appear with no warning and there would never be time to prepare.

In the present we can build permanent structures like storm shelters, wrap items in plastic to keep them useful even after being fully submerged in water, and we have an incredible capacity for mobility so it’s actually possible to get away from a disaster before it strikes. Compared to previous centuries, what we can do now is practically magic.

I highly recommend Fall of Civilizations. There are a lot of cultures that were wiped out, sometimes by natural disasters, sometimes through gradual degradation, and in many cases for reasons that we don’t fully understand because any records are long rotted away.

They just died in massive numbers. There was no way to predict an ocean being sprayed on your head at then-unimaginable wind speeds.

And it wasn’t just these Caribbean hurricanes; the PNW ”Big One” magnitude 8 earthquake of 1700, whose tsunamis were felt all the way in Japan that year, lowered forests into lakes and the sea, and indigenous legends tell stories of whole villages from Vancouver Island to what is now Olympia getting obliterated by tsunamis without a trace, or just lowered into the sound completely. Not to mention the 1755 Lisbon earthquake that ended with basically the whole city having to be rebuilt, and Mt. Vesuvius erupting in the first century.

Not exactly what you’ve asked, but I’ve seen and spoke to people about this while traveling.

It absolutely still happens in many places that use more primitive construction methods. I’ve visited places in Belize where locals told me about devastation after hurricanes. It can flatten entire areas, especially the poorest ones. I’ve also witnessed it in parts of Mexico, although steel and concrete construction is much more common. Thatched roofs can be found in certain areas, and of course, people without means still use anything they can get their hands on to build homes - like thin metal sheets. A bad storm can destroy many homes, if not entire communities. Roads wash out and make transportation extremely challenging.

Sometimes people come together to rebuild. It might be as easy as taking down more local trees or gathering the materials that the wind threw everywhere. It’s still a pain, especially when most people capable of laboring would rather be working for income instead of rebuilding their home.

The unfortunate reality of today is that these events often cause mass exodus. People don’t have insurance, and the literal land they have might be the only asset between them and absolutely nothing.

This is when predatory investors can come in, offer pennies on the dollar for land, and grab up large sections for almost nothing. Then the people use whatever they get to try to make a fresh start, quite often in a different location where housing already exists, like the closest city. It would be possible for this to be a mutually-beneficial exchange, but it’s more often predatory as hell with extremely desperate sellers and buyers who don’t offer anywhere close to actual market value in a normal time.

Seeing this devastation makes you quite thankful for things like disaster relief, disaster loans, emergency responses on a large scale, and insurance. None of those programs are perfect, but the alternative is tragic (unless you’re wealthy and don’t care about the well being of others).

I think in a lot of cases they would have been looking out for the signs of one coming and moved to higher/safer areas. They would have passed around knowledge on how to cope, and especially focus on survival and rebuilding later on. I wish I knew more. But I don’t think they cared as much for the destruction of their structures as they would for moving the community elsewhere to survive the storm and rebuild.