~
Lovely Rita - Hurricane ~
10yrs.
Remembering
The question still remains as to whether the city turned off the
electricity as a precautionary measure, or the 50 to 70 mile per hour
winds took it out. Either way, we lost power just after 9:00 pm,
September 25th
2005.
The
TV, air conditioner and living room lamps hesitated once and then, in
that tiny identifying second, everything went black and silent; Rita
was about to swallow up Lake Charles.
“Okay
then, here we go,” I said, feeling like we had just been locked
into an untested roller-coaster ride.
“I’ve
got the matches,” Carl said, “I’ll light the candles.”
Debbie
giggled with nervous anxiety as she flipped on her flashlight and
moved to light the lantern. “Well, God, I hope you’re on our side
tonight,” she said while adjusting the height of the wick..
Carl
is from here and I met Debbie, also native Lake Charles, during the
caring of Katrina evacuees harbored in the mass shelter at the civic
center only 6 weeks before. Being an island girl, and first-timer to
all this Gulf storm stuff, and surely a force of this magnitude, I
chose to give the fight-or-flight judgment away to the experts. The
two veteran Cajuns had made the decision to get out of town the day
before. However, witnessing the horrendous and dire traffic troubles
that had been created along I10 from Houston to Baton Rouge by the
mandatory evacuation orders when Hurricane Rita decided to spin into
the gulf and veer to the east, made the home-grown pair think twice
about traveling.
A Bergeron, and a Bourgeois, would be the experienced voices of
reason; Cajuns to the core, they would decide whether to turn tail or
stay put. Being a transplanted Hawaiian neophyte I actually like
being out in the rain. But, when the news began its coverage about
10 mile drives taking four hours, overheating vehicles, people
running out of gas and water...
We
three opted to stay.
Debbie
prepared our Friday afternoon meal like a death-row chef. Carl put
up every spare scrap of wood he could find over the windows,
including parts of an old dismantled pool table. Carl's mom had been
out of town visiting grand kids in Alabama; I told him how cute he
looked, working diligently to save his mom’s house.
“I’m
not just saving the house,” Carl replied dryly, “I’m saving our
[rear ends].
By
early evening, the hurricane began her approach, rolling in as
accurately as the news had predicted. When the wind gusts reached 50
and and the rain started falling sideways, she blew out the
electricity, like a candle on a cupcake. Rita had arrived.
As
we three musketeers, or suicidal idiots, huddled in the candlelit
living room. Debbie and I felt a resigned optimism about surviving
the coming fury. Parked in our easy-chairs we discussed karma
points. Debbie and I had become fast friends in the civic center make
shift computer lab working for the Red Cross during the Katrina
episode connecting people that were looking for their families, or,
that were lost and needed to be found by family. So, that had to
count for something.
Except
for the wind howling outside, the house was strangely quiet for a
Friday night. No TV, no stereo, no AC, no fan or refrigerator or hum
of neon kitchen lighting, nothing, Only the lingering aroma of
Debbie’s earlier cooked dinner seemed normal.
To
think, just over 30 hours before we had been sleeping peacefully when
Carl’s friend Terry called the house.
“No
golf today bud,” said Terry.
“What,
you gotta work today?” Carl said.
“Nope,”
he said. “Mandatory evacuation, everything south of I-210.”
Originally
Corpus Christi’s hurricane, Rita veered to Galveston, and now,
preparing to lay panic to a geographical swath from Houston to Baton
Rouge. The Eye would eventually hit just west of Orange, Texas. Lake
Charles would receive the wrath of the east wall sometime after 2
a.m.
“Welcome
to Louisiana, D’Ellen,” Debbie would say. “How do you like it
so far?”
Carl and I had pulled up our Midwest stakes only five weeks prior,
moving from Chicago back to his hometown. We’d arrived just in time
for not one, but two of the most devastating hurricanes, the worst to
hit the Gulf Coast in recorded memory.
For
Carl, the move back home was supposed to be an inexpensive, relaxing
break that we would share, lay low, do some camping, that sort of
thing; decide what and where to go next.
However,
within thirteen days of our big move, over 8,000 residents from New
Orleans and its flooded surrounding area arrived in Lake Charles;
separated from family, pets, homes. Their new, temporary dwelling
was a basic cot on the main floor at one of the two mass shelters in
town and Burton Coliseum out by the airport. Against the backdrop of
one of the most devastating natural disasters America had seen, the
friendship Debbie and I found was kismet.
“First
Katrina, now it’s our turn.” Debbie had said as she and I
assisted the red cross and the last of the New Orleans evacuees onto
the buses, earlier that day, heading north to Shreveport, La. “It’s
just too sad; they lost everything they own, twice now!”
She
wept for them yet again.
It’s
hard to explain while waiting for merciless weather to come in and
move on, how a few well placed candles could be enough light to read
by, much less remain calm.
“Look
at him,” Debbie said in awe, pointing out Carl’s placid posture,
adorning his favorite chair. “He knows that we are going to live
through this! He’s sitting there calmly running his lines!”
Only
a few weeks before, Carl and snagged the part of Willie Loman in
‘Death of a
Salesman’, and
fully intended to deliver his stellar performance in November at the
Lake Charles Theatre.
Ugly
Rita’s evil eye churned nearer. Intensifying, by midnight the
assortment of wild wind had arrived. Blasts, bursts, gusts, gales,
twirls and whips of salted air and gnarly weather seemed to be at the
edge of town slamming the darkness between 70 to 90mph.
Sitting
alone,
each
in our own
comfortable
living chairs,
our
quiet panic
and
waves of wind
rolled
in and over the house.
With
the hardest gust, we could feel the ominous pressure puff in our
ears.
“That
was weird,” I’d say. When in actuality, a thousand times I was
ready to say, “HIT - THE - INTERIOR!”
But
nothing would happen. Well, not nothing. Windows didn’t crash out,
the second floor didn’t blow off, a tree didn’t crash in and
divide the house. We remained, at least on the exterior, calm.
Debbie and I talked, existentially of course, and Carl gave us
updates from his Walkman radio in between readings from various
literary works.
“…When
Radar O’Reilly graduated from high school he was offered several
jobs,” Carl recited. “Some of them legitimate . . .”
Carl’s
trivia performance was interrupted by a series of calls. I thought
it astounding that our cell phones performed perfectly throughout the
storm. Everybody who knew us, and cared, called in.
My
friend Nikki’s call came in from Atlanta at about 1:30a.m. Those
words will be, forever, indelibly imprinted in memory.
“The
eye is just west of you,” she said. “You’re going to get the
east wall around 2:30. Winds will be sustained at 100mph for 45
minutes and then it will be over – well, past you.”
“Is
that all?” I said.
We
chuckled. She had been watching the hurricane by Doppler on her
computer, and like most of our friends scattered across the states,
her calls got less the later it got, despite the approaching east
wall. Being the middle of the night in most places they were all
succumbing to sleep, but my family in Hawaii kept the lines open.
I
continued to be amazed at the resistance of our structure. Blast
after blast I anticipated the second floor to blow off like the
hatch off a ship. Yet it remained attached.
Restless
by simply listening to the storm, Debbie got up out of her ez chair.
The front door opened to the north side of the house, tucked in a
corner avoiding the full force wind; it created a kind of sheltered
alcove. With the guarded nerve of a curious, yet bored child Debbie
cautiously turned the knob.
“Oh
my God, D’Ellen…” she gasped.
I
hopped from my recliner, excited with the change of pace. We looked
out into the blackest black I’d ever seen. Black as ink, the fierce
storm sounded like mad tigers fighting to the death, and, you could
smell the ocean on the air as if you were standing on Holly beach. A
beach with no stars or waves or distant shore. And surely out of
the deep, dark black the tigers would leap into our faces. In a
moment of clear, saturated humility, we shut the door.
5
a.m. came with gray light. The wind puffed with resolve, as if on a
mission, like mother nature briskly combing the last of summer out of
her hair. I slept on the floor by the front door that had been
opened since 3:30, in the quiet calm that we had survived something
numbingly large.
A
week or so after the storm, Carl was asked by his friend Mike if he
was scared.
“I
might have been,” he said. “If the wind hadn’t created such a
‘white noise’ that we could have heard the trees snapping and
falling around us, yeah sure.”
Eleven
days without electricity in a sticky, steamy Louisiana setting can
make any dwelling pretty ripe. Added to that, with only candles for
light at night, if you were going to find anything misplaced, it was
better done before dark.
Debbie
had plans to work the Texas Renaissance Festival long before we met
or any visiting hurricanes came around. And, since there wasn't a
job to be had in L.C. unless you owned a chainsaw, I took off with
her to work the Renaissance; Carl stayed behind to hold down the
fort. I would come home during mid week to visit, bring necessities,
see if power had come back and hear his raw tales of living in Lake
Charles on limited amenities.
It
had been almost two weeks; Carl had been essentially primitive
camping in a house.
It
was my 2nd
mid-week visit, hot and irritated, one Wednesday afternoon, we had
been looking for something in different rooms before it was too dark
to find when 'the surge' came. Two people can have two different
experiences of a miracle moment. I thought, foolishly, my stepping
on a cable made the bedroom light blink. Without power, how does that
happen? Anyway, meanwhile, in a bedroom down the hall, Carl heard a
slight grown of an air-conditioner.
We
both said “Whoa!” and jumped into the hall.
“Did
you see that?” I said.
“Did
you hear that?” he said.
At
that gleeful moment, another power surge heaved and breathed life
into everything electric. Lights. Fan, fridge, AC all came up in a
glorious DC-juiced noise! We ran into the street. Dancing the
‘happy electricity dance’! Neighbors who were in their houses
oblivious with the grind of generator motors plowing in the back
yards came out to see why we were acting so nuts.
“Turn
off the damn generators! We have POWER!” Carl bellowed and sang
and leaped.
With
the return of the electricity back to Lake Charles so, slowly would
come back the people. No more tending to friends and family freezers
and fridges.
But,
that’s yet another story.
Remembered
by: D'Ellen Myers
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