Posted by:
Dave the Atheist
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Date: August 26, 2020 04:21PM
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Road to 1 Escondido writes ...
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"Talk about flashbacks. Fifty years ago this month a hurricane was bearing down on Corpus Christi just like Hurricane Laura is bearing down today on the Texas Coast.
If I could offer advice to anyone in Hurricane Laura’s predicted path, it would be to board up your home and leave. On Aug. 5, 1970, my family chose to ride out the storm. Subsequently, we nearly joined the 27 people who lost their lives in Hurricane Celia.
I wonder today why the Old Master Chief trusted the advice of our new neighbors more than that of civil and military authorities. We should have evacuated inland, or at least headed to nearby Corpus Christi Naval Air Station to hunker down in military buildings designed to weather a major storm. But my old man had ridden out storms at sea aboard tiny Navy destroyers. Therefore, neither my 9-year-old sister, nor our stepmother, nor I doubted the Old Master Chief.
I will give him this: In 1970, before weather satellites, hurricane prediction was more art than science. There were no photos taken from space to show Celia’s size and position, no 24-hour weather channel monitoring storms nationwide, and no computer programs to predict a storm’s path.
But in retrospect, the Old Master Chief wagered his and his family’s lives that the storm would miss Corpus Christi. It did not.
A Navy life is a nomad’s life. And that summer we were new to Corpus Christi. In fact, we were somewhat disappointed to be there at all. Months previous, the Old Master Chief had received orders to report for duty at Naval Station Gaeta, Italy. To say we were fired up for three years in an Italian resort city between Rome and Naples would be a massive understatement.
But plans for Italy were scuttled when the Pentagon changed course and shipped the Old Master Chief, with family in tow, to enroll in the Navy Associates Degree Completion Program at Del Mar College, .
Civilian housing was inexpensive in Corpus Christi. So instead of moving into base housing, the Old Master Chief and his 7-month’s pregnant wife rented for us a four-bedroom, modern-style home on Rio Vista Drive. It featured floor-to-ceiling picture windows in front and a shady back yard with a magnificent Satsuma orange tree surrounded by a 6-foot wooden privacy fence. Mature palm trees and mesquite trees shaded the front yard.
There had once been an open breezeway between the house and garage. The owner had enclosed the breezeway to turn it into a family room. The floor in the former breezeway was sunken one step below the level of the rest of the house.
Our new home was a significant upgrade from our previous place. Yet it did not have a basement, which in retrospect would not have made things less terrifying Aug. 5.
We were not prepared for Celia. Oh, we had a refrigerator full of food, and we had stacked moving boxes in front of the tall windows facing the street. But we did not board up the windows like many of our neighbors. Nor had we purchased ice or filled up the car with gas.
As the sky grew dark on the morning of Aug. 5, we watched the local news on TV. Outside, rain began to fall -- first straight down and then sideways as the wind began to gust and howl.
Things got ominous when our TV could no longer pick up the signal, and worse still when the house lights shut off at once. Outside we could see palm fronds, tree branches and metal trashcans blowing willy-nilly in the intensifying wind. Electrical wires snapped and snaked in the tempest.
We learned later that Celia had packed sustained winds of 125 mph. The anemometer at the Naval air station read 135 mph when it snapped off, and there had been recorded wind gusts of up to 180 mph.
The sound of rattling windowpanes and wind-blown objects slamming into the house was unsettling. But it wasn’t the shrieking wind that caused immediate concern.
Rio Vista Drive was just blocks from Corpus Christi Bay. Storm surge soon flooded the street. Water slowly rose in the front yard, flowing closer and closer to the house. We were trapped by the ferocity of the storm as water began to seep into the sunken family room.
By then, the four of us were sitting on the floor in the kitchen with our backs to the cabinets facing the rising water. My stepmother held her pregnant belly. The Old Master Chief’s face was ghostly pale. My sister covered her ears to shut out the shrieking wind. This was no longer an adventure. It was terrifying.
Suddenly it stopped. The wind died, the rain abated and the sun broke through the clouds. Carefully, we crossed the kitchen to look outside. We looked down at the floodwater lapping at the foundation , and then up at towering white clouds in the strangely blue sky. The calm lasted maybe 10 minutes as the eye of the storm passed directly over us.
Then, bam! Celia came roaring back to life. The 30-foot palm trees in the front yard bent over nearly parallel with the ground in the opposite direction they had bowed just minutes before.
It was after the eye had passed when we heard a crash in the master bedroom. A section of fence had smashed through the window. Rain was blowing onto the hardwood floor. Rainwater mixed with shards of glass.
In the sunken family room, the water was rising again. It was only an inch from flooding into the rest of the house.
Time dragged on. The wind slowed. About five hours passed since the lights had gone out.
The Old Master Chief decided that things had calmed enough so that he and I could take a 4x8-foot sheet of plywood from the garage into the back yard to nail over the smashed bedroom window. As soon as we exited the garage door a wind gust lifted the plywood, with us holding on for dear life. The plywood tore from our hands and sailed away like a kite. We stood astonished as wind-whipped rain stung our eyes.
In the yard two mesquite trees had toppled to the ground. There was no sign of the wooden fence, and there wasn’t a leaf left on the orange tree.
Looking up, we could see the elderly couple next door clambering out from the debris of their collapsed house. Across the street, the neighbors’ garage - and the 20-foot fishing boat that had been inside – had vanished.
In front, as far as the eye could see, were mounds of wind-blown debris. Telephone and electrical wires, roof shingles, tree limbs, patio covers, broken drywall, children’s toys, anything and everything, blocking the streets.
There are scenes etched forever in my memory:
* A week without power, meaning no air-conditioning in the sweltering South Texas summer. And my sister screaming in delight when she saw that the light in the refrigerator, standing open to air out, was shining.
* Standing water everywhere, and consequently clouds of mosquitos forcing people inside at sunset when it otherwise would have been pleasant to be outside.
* People queued up for blocks in South Texas heat waiting for trucks delivering fresh water and ice. Without power, nothing was as precious as ice to keep food from spoiling in homes with no refrigeration.
* National Guardsmen patrolling streets and enforcing a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
* Dropping from heat prostration while helping the Old Master Chief in the heat to clean up the mess inside and outside.
* Neighbors banding together to help each other make repairs and clean up debris.
* Seeing one greedy neighbor who refused to donate the side of beef in his freezer throw out the spoiled meat after several days without power.
* The damage everywhere. Eighty-percent of the structures in the city received damage, and 30 percent of all homes had been flattened.
* But the most uplifting memory is from Aug. 6, the day after the storm. Celia had toppled telephone poles citywide, cutting off Corpus Christi from the outside world. There was no way at home to call family to reassure them we were alive and well.
So the Old Master Chief and I piled into the Plymouth station wagon to drive through debris-clogged streets, past National Guard troops maintaining order, to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi. A U.S. Marine waved us through the gate.
Celia had not spared the base. Where once had stood attractive new enlisted and officer’s housing there was instead a jumble or masonry, drywall, lumber and insulation.
Our eyes fell upon a strange sight, a line of people snaking away from a single wall left standing in the midst of the destruction. On it there hung a telephone. Miraculously, the phone worked. Military personnel and their spouses stood in line waiting patiently their turn to tell family back home they had survived. The Old Master Chief got in line to call his mom, and then his mother-in-law. It was surreal."
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2020 04:23PM by Dave the Atheist.