This account is copied, as written, from my journal of a trip home in April 2006. These are the observations six-months after the storm.
Hurricane Rita: 2005 track
The Ruby Tuesday closes every day at two in the afternoon because there are not enough workers. Most of the apartment buildings in Lake Charles are closed pending repairs. All the fast food signs are gone. It is six-months since Hurricane Rita hit and the casinos are up and running for the Texans looking for the good life, even if that good life is arrears in rent.
Dad and I left town at eight in the morning heading down LA 27 out of Calcasieu Parish for a tour of Cameron Parish. If the damage in Calcasieu is readily apparent, Cameron is a different planet. Hackberry, the last town before the parish line, and the Catholic church looks like an open-air pavilion. The east side is missing, scooped out like a melon.
Crossing the intracoastal we stop and inspect a construction project dad is working. At this juncture in our trip the devastation becomes complete. Cars stand on end in canals. Mattresses are suspended in branches of Live Oak trees. Houses rest a mile out in the marsh or prairie. Whole commercial buildings blown astride the highway have been bulldozed into the adjoining ditches. Shrimp boats and oil tenders lay at crazy angles on dry land. A coke machine, upright and ready for customers rests on a clump of sawgrass fifty yards from the road. Every line of trees is packed with fragments of lumber and personal belongings. Mile after mile, nothing is left, and nothing changes.
The prairie and marsh grasses are dead, killed by the surge of saltwater. The roads are packed with dump trucks and commercial traffic. The sides of the road are equally packed with families fishing or netting crabs. Life goes on.
Holly Beach on the coast is vacant of any surviving structure. We drove through a few miles of neatly laid out streets with drives leading to concrete slabs. Often a couple of cinderblocks are used to prop up an American flag. No debris clean up was needed. The hurricane blew the town twenty miles and scattered it among the marsh. One elderly woman (it was reported) found her home fourteen miles away with all the family pictures in place on the walls.
Driving the coastal road, we arrived in Cameron, the parish seat, after a wait for a ferry across the Calcasieu River. Cameron had one structure survive, the courthouse. A few well-made brick homes initially appeared to have survived. Closer inspection showed the interior gutted by the surge and the telltale eastern side shorn away.
Everywhere we looked the landscape was dotted with debris. As we exited Cameron the debris from the town had been piled twenty feet high and covered an area of several football fields.
A few miles on and more concrete slabs indicated the small town of Creole. Home of the Tarpon Freezo, where we often stopped for malts after a days fishing in the Gulf. Oak Grove, two miles south, was the same, wiped clean. As was Grand Chenier, twelve miles east.
We turned around and drove back to Lake Charles.
Be appreciative of what you have.
Whew, that’s a vivid and bleak picture you’ve painted. Wonder how life has gone on 19 years after.
Yes, one might wonder just that. And can anyone compare and contrast how infrastructure compares between February 2006 and February 2019? Have building codes been modified (a band aid perhaps, but at least a nod toward the immense powers of Nature)?
Be appreciative of what you have, – while you have it.
Hmmmm – sloppy typing. I meant Feb 2005 (not 2006) – months before the storm when no sense of the impending devastation was apparent.
A quick search and here is your answer: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/22/hurricane-rita-10-year-anniversary/72577748/
Thanks kind sir. The southernmost TX county response looks interesting – build dome shaped structures on the coast.
A takeaway from another hurricane (Katrina perhaps?) was that Gulf hypoxia has compromised levels of phytomass in the Gulf beyond the delta proper. If memory serves there are expectations that storm surge along the coast can be ameliorated by a healthier zone beyond the delta. Hypoxia is related to loading of N and P in the river upstream… but storm intensity is related to water temp in the Atlantic and the Gulf. Simple stuff (not).
Thank you for this post Brian.Vivid indeed. The picture created by your words will always be with me. We don’t watch commercial news on TV or internet, but from glimpses of video clips on the weather sites I visit I imagine there is a lot of video out there of Rita’s devastation. I wonder sometimes if continual exposure to weather news (storms with their own branding!) numbs people to the reality of what they are watching, making it a story to thrill to more than anything else, before moving on to the next drama. Your simple observations are so powerful, beyond drama, just real.
And yes, I am grateful. Every day. Consciously acknowledging the shelter and beauty of our simple house, the hot water coming out of the tap, the fire in the woodstove…more. It’s a delicate balance, because that practice, that awareness of the fragility of everything, can easily slip into anxiety and fear of loss. But I’d rather be aware even so.
Sarah,
There are a couple of things you wrote that I wanted to comment on. The first is about news numbing us to tragedies. I agree. News outlets seem to highlight weather disasters as entertainment. And when they do people become numb to the reality. We may think we know what the victims are going through but our imagined “disaster” is not a real disaster. I think of it as “disaster-tainment”. It’s a bad practice! So I tend to change channels when it appears.
The second thing I want to respond to is being grateful for the simple beauty of our house and all that it entails. The sense of gratitude is often missing in most people’s life. When I was a child my parents taught us to say “grace” at every meal. Whether one is a Christian or not, the act of expressing gratitude for the food we are about to consume….is a good practice. I don’t even care if one believes in “God” or not. Just the act of saying thank you to the universe for “what we about to receive” is good for us!
We take so much for granted in life. If we stop for 10 seconds and mentally acknowledge thankfulness we are better for it.
cheers,
Jody
Jody,
I read your comments last night and was mulling them over this morning as I did my morning routine while another snowstorm blows outside. I thought about simple joy as a component of gratitude. Or at least a bit of wry humor–which definitely helps when more snow is being added to the 15″ we already had on the ground. I think joy deepens the practice and the gift to ourselves and those around us, human and otherwise. So much more nourishing a foundation than fear.
Funny, upon reading again this morning, I was surprised to find that you hadn’t mentioned joy at all! But that is the feeling I got from your words.
Cheers to you as well,
Sarah
Excellent addition Sarah. And it’s just struck me – you can’t spell Jody without joy. Did her folks intend that?
Sarah,
You are very perceptive! Rereading my comment I realized that when I say thankful I feel joy filling my heart.
Clem,
My parents named my older sister Joy! Strangely enough I often find myself typing Joy and have to correct myself. Joy and love are so often twos dimensions of what we feel in our heart. Love seems to flow outward towards the world and joy flows inward from the world. I don’t think we can have one without the other!
Brian,
That must have been a very interesting experience. Thanks for your description.
Jody
Thanks everyone for the comments. I’ve been busy building an ark this week. Just what is a cubit?
A little soaked are we? If you finish an ark in a week you really are something.
The neighbor across the pond when I was growing up had an old mare he called Cue… and of course he would wait for the knowing smile every time he introduced her with reins in place. “What’s that in her mouth?”…