I really don't know where to begin but I guess that I'll start by saying that on the morning of August 29th 2005 life as we all knew it on the Mississippi Gulf Coast ended. Hurricane Katrina, the most devastating hurricane in the history of the United States, ploughed into the Mississippi - Louisiana marshland with the eye coming over Pearlington and Ansley, Mississippi. Waveland, where my family and I live, was directly within the eastern eyewall of the storm (the absolute worst place that we could have been in). Usually when a hurricane strikes and the eye passes over there is a calm before the other side of the storm comes through. There was no calm this day. The winds howled for more than seven hours straight with no break. I foolishly put my family's life on the line with my " Hurricane Camile Steel Balls" attitude. I'd ridden Hurricane Camille out, I could ride any storm out. This was a common attitude here on the coast and it was an that attitude got a lot of folks killed. We falsely believed that our home located a half mile off of the beach and behind a levee formed by the CSX railroad tracks, was safe. After all, there had been no water back here in Hurricane Camille. We were in a FEMA flood zone C, not a flood hazzard area, or so the government and insurance industry said. WRONG!!!
By 9:30 am that morning, the wind had been howling with trees blowing down and snapping off for well over three hours. My daughter was lying across the bed in the master bedroom looking out into the back yard. She said to me "Daddy there's water in the yard". I looked and water was creeping ever so slowly out of the swamp on the rear of my property and up onto the higher ground. I began to worry. It kept creeping right up to the pad below the back steps. From this point it seems like a bad dream. Thirty seconds later the water was coming in under the back door. I yelled that we had water coming in and for my wife's elderly parents to go up the stairs to the second floor. My wife, my daughter and myself were scrambling trying to pick up computers, photo albums, wedding pictures, etc putting them up on whatever we could find. I glanced at a window and the water outside was almost two feet higher than it was inside the house and rising rapidly. I yelled for everyone to get up the stairs as the windows and rear door split out from the pressure of the water outside and inundated the bottom floor of the house.
I stood at the landing at the top of the stairs looking out of a window. The water was covering everything and it was still rising. Our four automobiles were literally floating around out in the yard. I looked out at the studio building where ALL of the band's equipment was located and watched as it was rapidly covered by water. My main attention was focused on the water creeping up the stairwell to the second floor of the house!! I just kept telling myself that it would stop, that it couldn't get any higher. Then I'd think that I had no way of knowing how high it might get!! Bottom line I was terrified and blaming myself for putting the ones I loved in this perilous situation. The water kept rising and we kept praying. I must have said the rosary five times on one hand asking for God's help. The house was moving from the wind and the flood waters and I began planning to move everyone out of the window and onto the roof in case the house fell apart. Just before we moved out onto the roof, the water stopped rising. It would be another hour before it ever so slowly began to go down. This would have been about one thirty in the afternoon. My daughter had a throw away underwater camera upstairs. I stuck it out the window as my wife held the sash of the window to keep the wind from ripping it off. Miraculously the photos came out and are chilling reminder of those terrifying hours.
My neighbor Ernie , his wife and sister in law came wading through chest deep water and climbing over downed trees trying to get to my house. They had to swim underwater out of their house and hang on up in the trees. When the water got down to where they could touch the ground they came over to my house. My in laws are both in their eighties and, along with my neighbor Ernie who is diabetic, needed medical attention badly. My wife and daughter tried to get out late that afternoon but could only get down to the corner because of downed trees and still flowing flood waters. We spent that first night with eight of us sleeping on the floor of my daughters bedroom upstairs in the house. The next morning I was able to clear a path through the mud and debris in my kitchen and living room to the front porch. I got everybody downstairs and out onto the front porch. The whole front door unit including sidelites and transom was blown out and lying on the floor of the front porch. My daughters jeep had floated and was wedged between an oak tree and a porch column and was sitting on the front porch steps. My wife and daughter left again first thing that morning on a mission to get somebody to cut us out and get my in laws and neighbors to the hospital. God heard our prayers because within about two hours she was back with two guys with chainsaws and a tractor and an hour later our people were on the way to the hospital! (thank you Kendal and Jarrod Marquar and Ed Richardson, our heros!!)
Musical equipment is absurdly expensive to insure when it is used professionally to make money. The band lost about $30,000 of uninsured equipment including all of my vintage instruments and amplifiers. When I finally did go out to the studio building where the band equipment was it looked like a bomb had gone off. The windows and doors along with an entire section of wall were blown out from the force of the water. Everything was piled on top of the other with about six inches of mud and debris mixed in. There was green pine branches hanging from the ceiling! Our home, as I mentioned was not in a flood zone so we did not carry flood insurance (along with about 90% of other folks in a flood zone C) My family basically lost everything that we owned in the gutted first floor of the house (including all of our art, music memorabelia, old photos, music collection, household furnishings and clothing. The water got up into the first floor ceiling. We were lucky though, we still had a structure that could be rebuilt and are planning on staying right here and rebuilding.
I've learned a lot of lessons since Katrina struck but I think that the most valuable lesson was that life is precious. When I was standing in that stairwell looking out at everything that I knew and loved being inundated by the water, I thought that my family and I were going to die. After I finally realized that the water had stopped rising and that we had been spared, the fact that my home and possessions, all of my musical equipment and the life that I had known were gone just didn't seem that important to me. I turned and looked at my wife Candy and said " I guess this is God's way of telling me that I had too much stuff!!
Father Sebastian, our parish priest at St. Rose de Lima, in one of his sermons said that these type of catasrophies either bring out the best or the worst in people. He also said that times like these either make your heart grow or your heart shrink. Fortunately for us Katrina has brought out the best in most of us and our hearts have grown from the experience. Goodness and generosity have come pouring into the area from all over the world and I am in constant awe of the generosity and good deeds that I have witnessed. My neighbor, Richard Hubbard, took in five families including mine to live at his house for over six weeks. Church groups and relief organizations have hit the ground running with food kitchens, relief supplies and work groups from all parts of the country. These folks are the ones who have really made the difference for our area and are continuing to do so.
I'm not sure when the Gulf Coast will be back up to speed. I'm sure that it will be years in the making but we all are completely confident that we will rebound from this and be back better than ever. The experience has been horrible yet, in many, many ways, it has been a very positive one. Mississippi Gulf Coast folks have always been a resiliant bunch!!
(Footnote)
As a follow up, it is now almost four and a half years later and a sense of normalcy has returned to our lives here. We are now living in our renovated home. Our home is nicer than it was before thanks to an SBA loan and a Mississippi Homeowners Grant. Both bands are playing again (thanks to equipment bought with an SBA business loan) and while there aren't a lot of venues to play in we are playing and doing our share of gigs. Over four years after Hurricane Katrina I am still filled with pride for the resiliency and tenaciousness of my fellow south Mississippians. Many areas are still deserted and look like a war zone but for the most part, it is cleaned up and folks are rebuilding. A ride down highway 90 in Waveland and Bay St. Louis, for the most part, would give no indication of the total devistation that took place in 2005. The Highway 90 bridge over the Bay of St. Louis was completed two years ago and is an engineering wonder. It is truly beautiful. Life here on the gulf coast is not the same and NEVER will be the same as it was before Katrina. In many ways things are better than before. Untold billions of dollars are being spent by the federal government on local construction projects. As I mentioned earlier, the homeowners grant that we received to renovate our home was federally generated through the state of Mississippi and is the ONLY thing that saved us from bankruptcy but ultimately all of this will have to be paid for through increased taxes for generations to come. I'd go back to pre 2005 in a second however, that's not an option. Peace.
