Experiencing a major natural disaster, like Hurricane Katrina first-hand, and writing an accurate account of what happened will always differ from the person who experienced it with you. That’s not to say that your perspective or theirs is the correct one, it is to say that as individuals we all see and react to situations differently and that determines how we see things.
Also, I know that the events I am about to describe caused me to have, as I later learned, PTSD symptoms. The events especially in the house before we left, I recalled automatically many times during each day for at least six months-time.
I guess the first, and logical question directed toward us would be, “WHY IN HELL DIDN’T YOU GET OUT OF THERE BEFORE THE HURRICANE STRUCK.” A very good and very sensible question, which of course has for an answer, not a very logical answer after the fact.
We have to go back two days, and thoughts of one year ago, to explain why we stayed and did not evacuate, while prompted by friends to do just that. Our first encounter with a hurricane threatening Biloxi and the Gulf Coast came a year before. Hurricane Ivan was approaching the Gulf Coast as we were sitting in the Grand Casino coffee shop. The television reporter announced that there was a mandatory evacuation for all residents from the beach to Pass-road which is the only other east to west road on the Biloxi/Gulfport barrier island.
Since this was our first Gulf Coast hurricane, we frantically rushed home, packed all essential items and headed off to Jackson, the Mississippi capital, where friends invited us to stay with them. We never got there. We never got close. Due to horrendous traffic, it took us seven and a half hours to go sixty miles to Hattiesburg where we were running out of gas, could go no further. and were lucky enough to get the last motel room. We stayed several days, spent more money that we had, and found out upon return to our home, that Ivan really fizzled.
So here we are one year later with similar circumstances, and similar choices. Our choice to stay was compounded by the fact that Kim had just spent a week in Minnesota, at a very important training, and returned very tired and not feeling well. Before Kim left for the training seminar, she said I should do something fun for myself. I said no it was the perfect time to clean the house, and the storage shed out back. Little did I know, how Katrina was going to clean everything we owned off the map. In retrospect, these probably weren’t the best reasons for staying, but at the time it made perfect sense.
We decided that we could ride out Katrina. I had prepared for the storm, boarded up the windows, tied down everything that could fly away, had batteries, water, etc. Family and friends urged us to leave. Of course, I had the New York City arrogance about hurricanes. They’re only little storms up there.
On Monday morning we got up a six o’clock. The electricity was still on so we watched the weather channel, and saw that Katrina was a category four with the eye headed to Bay St. Louis about thirty miles to the west, which meant we were on the eastern side of the storm, we were in deep shit. The wind started to pick up, and then the electricity went out about seven. We stayed in our bedroom until the one-hundred-foot oak trees at the back of the house, which along with the house went through Hurricane Camille, started coming down, smashing the sheds, car and the house. That part frightened me the most. Before the last tree came down, we moved to the living room in the front of the house. No sooner had we moved the last tree came and smashed the roof or our bedroom.
For some reason I assembled our wet suits, and some of my other diving gear in the living room. We listened to the increasing wind speed. I opened the door and saw the water from the Gulf coming up the street; we were only one-half block from the beach.
When I told Kim, she responded in the typical New Orleans fashion, put a towel under the door. I said, I think it’s going to take more than a towel. I told her to get into her wet suit, which she protested as being too tight. Once we were suited up about ten minutes later water started coming through all four walls of the house. Being a diver, and sailor I always knew the power of water, but I had never experienced this. Our huge refrigerator, which I in my best physical condition I could not move, the two feet of water now in the house picked it up and tossed it over. We were now in a survival mode, getting together as many things as possible, and to get out. We moved through the house getting the essentials, Kim her medications, bag of papers, me my passport, wallet and eyeglasses which I put in a zip-lock bag and tucked into my wet suit. As we went through the house the water was rising. The house had wall-to-wall carpet, which unfortunately became a danger. The carpet which is tacked down on all four sides allows the water to billow up in the center creating a water bed effect, which has all the furniture against the walls to suddenly topple on to you. When we were in the office, I watched the water topple all the computers, all forty years of photography, cameras, tape recorders, editing equipment, books, all smashed.
Now we were at the front door. The wind is really up, maybe one hundred miles an hour. We open the front door holding our few possessions. The front screen-in porch was washed away. The wind and water pulled Kim out, she screamed, she dropped all her medication, I grabbed her and pulled back inside the house. The door shut. We tried opening the front door but couldn’t. The water pressure outside was greater than the water pressure inside. Kim said, you better open this door. With all the windows boarded up we had to wait for the water pressure to equalize, then the door opened. The wind was howling, the water was five and a half feet deep, there was a Lincoln Town car floating in the storm surge, the water was full of downed trees, parts of buildings, also there was a pelican floating along, which I said, wow there’s a pelican, Kim’s comment, what are you talking about, let’s get out of here.
We swam out of the house into the storm surge, I was holding Kim up. We decided to swim across the street to our neighbor’s two-story house, maybe we could get up-stairs. The house was boarded up so I carried her up the street out of the water trying to find a safe place. The air was filled with all kinds of flying debris. Around the corner was a brick elementary school, which of course was locked. We found a walkway with a brick wall facing the water. We sat there, covering ourselves with any debris for warmth, and watched the storm for eight hours. By four in the afternoon hypothermia was setting in and we had to move. The storm had substantially subsided, Kim got on my back and we walked two blocks away from the water. The police picked us up and took us to the middle school which was the temporary shelter.
We left the house at eight in the morning, by eight thirty, the house was crushed and with our car pushed up the street to our neighbor’s brick house, and acted as a dam for protection.
At the school shelter Kim was lucky. A woman gave her a shirt, shorts and underwear, no shoes. Now with the storm over it was hot, we stripped off the wet suits and slept on them in the school hallway. There was no electricity, water, toilets or food. The next morning, I walked back to our house clad only in my bathing suit and dive boots. The house was gone, just the slab. I found in the sand near the slab my Emmy, badly beaten but intact. It seems that when the house was crushed and moved off the slab, anything with weight sank into the sand. I found thirty pounds of dive weight, further near the crushed house was a life jacket. Later in the week as I kept returning to the house, my neighbor in the brick house said, I think I have something of yours. In his devastated living room, I found my neatly wrapped inflatable dive kayak, which came through his window. Nothing else was salvaged. Yes, we were very lucky to have lived through it.
