Naysayers become weather experts as fast as the weather develops. Hurricane Ida weaves her way toward our Gulf Coast, yet undecided exactly where she will bestow her wrath. But she’s coming and she’s gaining speed.
This is considered a big news day, weekend even, for reporters. And right on their heels are the people who know more about hurricanes than the Weather Channel. These naysayers claim reporters just want to scare people.
I have some experience in the news business and in the hurricane business.
For the news business, reporters try to keep people informed about what is happening, and in the case of hurricane, what probably will happen. We have wonderful technology that tracks hurricanes and technology that transmits information to people. Almost everyone has access to smartphones, these days. Once the information is out there, people can make their own decisions. But we know from current experience that you can’t scare people to act in their own self interests. You can, however, scare them into being foolish.
I trust my local NBC affiliate and like their new slogan. “We’re not trying to scare you. We’re trying to prepare you.” So I pay attention.
Floods have been chasing my family for generations. The two-year-old who would become my father and his 20-year-old mother were passengers on the last train leaving Greenville, Mississippi, because the town was flooded. When I was a baby, my father, mother, and I left Louisville, Kentucky, because the Ohio River was after us. The first two condominiums I owned as an adult were flooded in the great Nashville, Tennessee flood of 2010. Thankfully, I had moved years before.
None of these were caused by hurricanes, as far as I know. That changed when we moved to New Orleans.
I’ll never forget the first hurricane warnings we experienced, totally different weather that anything I’d ever been in. The atmosphere changed—you literally could feel it in the air. The tension level of an entire city, a city already floating below sea level, ramped up. Batteries, water, food staples, plywood flew off the shelves.
That hurricane missed New Orleans. We eventually moved away only to return to the magical Crescent City a few years later. We then met hurricanes and their destruction face to face.
My father pastored a church in the even then multi-cultural Lower Ninth Ward (on the same street where Fats Domino had a house!), and a hurricane decided to head our way during a revival meeting. My father cancelled services and took his family and the guest preacher to higher ground. His intention was to return Sunday morning in time for services. New Orleans did not take a direct hit, as I recall, but unstable weather continued. When we reached the causeway to cross Lake Pontchartrain into New Orleans, we were stopped and not allowed on the bridge. Winds were 60 miles an hour. We missed church that day.
Men in the church kidded my father, saying it was going to rain this weekend and asking if he would be at church. I recall his response was that if they had all ended sitting on the roofs of their houses, he would have been the smartest guy around.Then along came Betsy. My bags were packed and waiting on the floor of my bedroom because the next morning I was headed off to college, where I would gain a little expertise in being a journalist. Betsy had other ideas.
Brave Tempest
As this hurricane worsened, my father decided we should leave our wood frame house and go to our church, which had steel beams and perhaps better construction. Our house was two blocks from the Industrial Cannel. Our church was farther south in the Ninth Ward
Other church families had the same idea, and we all settled in to wait out the storm. Around midnight, water began seeping into the first floor of our educational building; we moved to the second floor.
Daylight came and we saw the water—water, water everywhere.
Looking out the upper floor windows, I watched the looting of a grocery store. At the time, I thought looting was awful. I’ve changed my mind. The people doing the looting had nothing before the flood and they would have even less after the flood. The products in the store would not be sellable after the flood crawled away, and the owner most likely had insurance.
While this was going on, my father was walking through flood waters, looking for dry ground and a telephone. Men from our church went in a pirogue to check on our house and the dog we had left behind. They had to reach into the water to put the key in the door lock to gain entrance. They found the dog floating, hanging onto a plastic (the then popular Naugahyde) couch cushion. At least five feet of water filled the house.
They brought the dog, aptly named Tempest, back to me. And that wet, frightened—she was in shock—dog became my responsibility.
Finding a working telephone, finally, my father called his brother to come get us. My uncle met us on the dry side of the St. Claude Avenue bridge, a bridge just down the block from our house and the bridge I crossed every day on my way to high school. But first, we had to get to the dry side.
Someone supplied a pirogue. My mother, my sister and the dog rode in the boat. My father and I walked alongside it. We made our way to the bridge. It must have been difficult walking in water above my knees for that distance, but my mind has hidden that experience.
What I do remember is standing on that bridge and looking at people behind us making their own way to dry land. So many had small children, clad only in their underpants. I knew right then that they had little, if any, hope coming out of that situation. I also knew the privilege I had because my father was educated and knew how to earn a living.
Irwin Thompson, a photographer for the Associated Press, took a photo 40 years later of people crossing the St. Claude bridge because of Katrina’s wrath. I found it recently in my files and had to check the date. It looked eerily like the day we crossed that bridge for the last time.
So on September 10, 1965, the day I was to make one’s iconic trip to college, my uncle took us to his house “up in Mississippi.” I carried a wet dog with me all the way, and she promptly threw up in my lap just as we arrived. I recall nothing else until I got to college.
After he got us to safety, my father visited the college, told them the situation and that he had the money for me to register; he just couldn’t get to it right then. The college let me register and gave me $60 toward books. I entered college with two dresses, two sweaters and one pair of shoes. I did not miss one day of college.
After Betsy
My parents returned to New Orleans to clean out and salvage what they could, but they spared me the details. That trunk of clothes that had been on my bedroom floor was “thrown to the curb,” as were most of our belongings. My mother did note that my love letters from my boyfriend were a “stinky,wet lot.”
But we survived. We did lose my little turtle that had been in a dish on my bedroom floor did not hang around. But he was uniquely equipped for the adventure ahead of him. I envision him living a life of luxury on some south sea island.
We lost a lot of other things. But we didn’t lose each other. None of us got sick or hurt from walking around in the murky waters of Old Man River.
On this occasion, my father proved to be one of the smartest men around. No one teased him about rain or hurricanes.
When Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans on September 9, 1965, as a category 3 hurricane, later upgraded to a category 4, it was the most costly and furious hurricane ever. There will never be another Betsy; her destruction so great that the name has been retired. Betsy’s claim to fame lasted 40 years, usurped only by Katrina.
I love New Orleans; it is a wonderful city with lots of good personal memories. These hurricanes brought this lovely, unique, vibrant city to its knees. But hurricanes don’t confine themselves to the city limits. They wreak havoc for as long and far as they can muster any strength.
I’m a believer in hurricanes. Don’t mess with them. This isn’t a game of chicken. Listen to the weather experts and take proper precautions. Leaving a hurricane’s path and having nothing happen is far, far more desirable that staying and having something happen.
As we wait for Ida to decide where she’ll land, I’ve been looking at pictures of Betsy’s flood waters covering the Ninth Ward. Fifty-six years later, fear almost overwhelms me, fear of what might have happened to us if my father had not paid attention.
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