SLSL "TSR" -- hurricane and plot plausibility - part 2

[pynchonoid]

http://www.americanpress.com/columns/beam/docs/2002_1003.htm

" [...] I will never forget the way I found out about
Hurricane Audrey hitting this area in 1957. 

While serving on the short side of a two-year tour of
duty at Fort Benning, I was assigned as officer of the
day in late June and had to spend the night at
battalion headquarters.

I got a telephone call in the middle of the night — I
don’t remember from whom — telling me a terrible
hurricane had hit Cameron Parish and that two of my
uncles and an aunt had perished in the devastating
storm.

When I woke up the next morning, I wondered whether it
was a just a bad dream or whether it really happened?
I had to call home to verify it wasn’t a nightmare
after all.

The Army gave me emergency leave to return home to
survey the damage and check on loved ones. My
immediate family had stayed home during the storm, and
escaped with some tree and roof damage. However, some
of them said it was a scary time.

My mother was a native of Cameron, and many members of
her family were living there when a storm surge
preceding Hurricane Audrey arrived on shore earlier
than expected.

Audrey was described on Wednesday, June 26, as a “big
and fierce lady” that was born in the Gulf of Mexico
two days earlier. It was reported to have winds of 100
mph at its center and to be some 350 miles south of
the city at 4 a.m. that morning, “and headed straight
this way.”

The full force of the hurricane wasn’t expected to hit
Lake Charles until Friday morning. Tides were reported
to be two to three feet above normal, but weathermen
said it would take 4-foot tides to put water in the
streets of Cameron.

As everyone is well aware of now, those predictions
were way off base. Residents of Cameron Parish went to
sleep the night of June 26 thinking they could get up
the next day and head for safer ground. A gigantic
storm surge caught them off guard in the middle of the
night, and those who survived relived their nightmares
for years.

The death toll eventually exceeded 500, and Audrey has
become the storm by which all others are measured by
the people who lived through it.

Communications to Cameron were lost about 7 a.m.
Thursday, June 27. Damaging winds of 75 mph with gusts
up to 100 mph hit Lake Charles just before noon.

Telephone and electric services were quickly
disrupted. Only six telephone poles were still
standing between Jennings and Welsh. All areas between
Sulphur and Lafayette were without power. Many roads
were closed.

Most homes and businesses had some damage, and there
were hundreds of fallen trees.

The late Doug McFillen of Lake Charles flew a KAOK
Radio reporter over Cameron, and the two men described
what they saw.

“As we came over Big Lake we first began to realize
the immensity of Hurricane Audrey,” they told the
American Press. “The shores of Big Lake were littered
with dead animals — cows, horses and all types of
livestock.

“We counted six or eight houses still standing in the
Big Lake community. The rest of the houses were
completely demolished.”

The two men flew from the western end of Cameron for
50 miles to Pecan Island. They saw 75- and 100-foot
boats hundreds of yards inland. A drilling barge was
resting across the highway. Only the foundations or
pillars of homes remained in most places. 

Bill Mertena of the American Press flew to Cameron on
an Air Force helicopter and talked to survivors. He
said the Mermentau River bridge had been swept away.

Death and destruction were no more evident than on
“The Ridge,” a strip of land higher than the rest that
runs along the Gulf Coast from the Sabine River
eastward. That is where my relatives lived, and those
who survived told harrowing stories about the dark
night they spent in raging waters.

A huge hole in the ground was all that remained of my
grandfather’s two-story home, a place where we spent
many enjoyable hours when we were youngsters. 

Geneva Griffith, well-known Cameron journalist, said
she had to wait 10 years before she could describe the
nightmare. And when she did, it was a chilling account
of how Hurricane Audrey changed lives forever. [...] "



Tornadoes are also associated with hurricanes, another
way that massive destruction can happen in minutes
without much if any warning.  I visited the town of
Kaplan, Louisiana, in the early 60s, not long after a
tornado hit, in the midst of a hurricane that was
sweeping in across the Louisiana coast.  Amazing
destruction, for which the people were almost
completely unprepared.

-Doug






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