Hurricane Katrina, August 2005

by Jack Vondell

a fictionalized account, 1650 words

Andy Gordon and his wife Jean awoke the morning the hurricane was to make landfall in their south Mississippi home area. She turned on the TV weather channel and gasped, waking Andy.

        "Look!" She exclaimed. "The storm fills the entire Gulf of Mexico. It's Category Five. We have to evacuate now. How long will it take to board the windows?"

        "About twenty minutes," Andy replied groggily.

        He looked out the front window and froze. It was so foggy he could barely see the house across the street. But there were eerie ugly looking paramilitary characters with guns cruising the street in pickup Humvees forcing people back into their driveways as they tried to evacuate. He walked out to ask what was happening. The figure pointed his rifle at him and motioned to get back inside. The wind was blowing the fog, but Andy still got a glimpse of the soldier's face and hands. It didn't look human. Andy moved quickly to his house, too afraid to look at that face any longer."

        His neighbor stepped out and began putting boards on his front window. The paramilitary figure shot him down  and another figure ran over and dragged him back and dumped him in the Humvee. Andy quickly entered his house and began loading his guns.

        "What's happening?" Jean cried. "Who are those guys?"

        "What are those guys is a better question. I'm not sure but the one guy's face looked like it had a beak like a hawk and his hands looked like claws. But I was scared to look long enough to really know."

        "Well, the power is out. No TV, to radio, no computer, no phone. What do we do now?"

        "Hunker down and hope for the best," Andy said.

        Humvees cruised the neighborhood over and over as the storm winds picked up speed and rain fell harder. Then came the storm surge from the bayou only a block away. Water streamed up the bayou street and then receded, each time a little farther and faster. Over and over as residents watched. Finally, the water roared up the street like a raging creek, this time up Andy's neighbor's driveway, smashing through the garage door and bending it at the middle.

        Being on a cross street, the Gordon's house was not yet wet. But fifteen minutes later, the water roared up the bayou street again and spread. Now it came onto their lawn and receded. Over and over every fifteen  minutes it came a little closer to their house. It didn't matter that their lot was sixteen feet above the large bayou. The waster, connected to  a coastal river, was rising anyway with each surge. At last the water streamed under their front door and garage door. Their floors were getting wet. Yet the ghastly paramilitary vehicles kept cruising the flooded neighborhood streets.  Vinyl siding was ripped from houses and blown away in the wind as roofing shingles fell on front yards.

        Water streamed into the Gordon's house again, this time four inches deep.  As it receded, it floated shoes from closets, upset garage contents, soaked carpets, covered stove, dishwasher, and refrigerator electrical wires and motors with the salty, brackish, stinking water.  Fifteen minutes later the water rose through the streets and toward the house one more time but receded before arriving. The storm was passing but not yet over. Trees were down, debris lay in the streets and yards, snakes and crabs were everywhere. An hour later, the wind died down, the rain slowed to a drizzle, the fog lifted, the paramilitary vehicles and their occupants faded away, and the sun began to peek though some clouds.  A half hour after that, people began to cautiously step out onto their porches.              

        Houses a block away on the bayou shore flooded with four to eight feet of water. Some residents and their pets drowned. Local police began cruising, stopping to check houses. They were confused when people asked about the solders in Army vehicles. There were none, the officers declared, adding that the National Guard would be out later with food and water.

        Hours later, power came back on and television stations told of reports that there were military people cruising streets during the storm. Newscasters emphasized that police were investigating those reports, but there were no known military personnel on the streets during the storm. By the next day, things were somewhat calmer. But damage was still widespread.

        The area stank. the bayou, a fancy Louisiana French name for a disgusting, marshy, southeastern swamp,  contained a mix of salt water, fresh but stagnant brackish water, dead crabs, rotted fish, snakes, and toxic stuff from the local oil refineries,  reminding one of why you see bayous in creature-in-the-black-lagoon horror movies. In humid climates like the Alabama-Mississippi-Louisiana Gulf Coast, this stuff not only smells like a sewer in a fish camp but also quickly causes mold rot in your walls, carpet, and furniture if it touches it, not to mention quickly corroding computer wires, electrical outlets, and low lying electric motors in  dishwashers and refrigerators. Your car's affected under-body wiring then makes it do funny things like turn on your windshield wipes when you step on your brake pedal. Of course, all that is if your house and car didn't get floated away to parts unknown.

        The entire Gulf Coast was devastated. The storm surge wave in the Gulf was 20+ feet high and that wall of water left little but matchsticks and memories for six blocks or so inland from the Alabama line to the Louisiana line and on to New Orleans. A railroad had rails lifted from ties and hauntingly twisted. Much of the landscape looked like the Europe and Japan of those old World War II newsreel films. Of course, phone and internet networks were out for several days along with roads and bridges.

        Traffic on Interstate 10 barely crept. The storm surge broke a barge loose and ran it up the river where it smashed into the Interstate bridge leaving the eastbound section unusable. Thus the traffic backup either direction was incredibly long. On other parts of rivers, large boats were deposited onto land eight to ten feet above the normal water level. A gambling casino, built on a huge barge, was raised by the surge wave, carried across the six lane shoreline US highway 90, and deposited atop building ruins on the other side. Internally, several main roads and bridges were destroyed or nearly so. Getting around from one place to another has become a slow major undertaking. A long bridge between two towns was uplifted and road parts were left standing in the water  looking like a long row of  half fallen dominoes.

        Most disgusting of all were the insurance companies. A few months before , mortgage companies required hurricane insurance and the mortgage rates went up by $100 a month. But every hurricane involves a storm surge and some water damage. However, the insurance companies just now colluded to do some weasel work, defining hurricane-driven water as a "flood." That meant that, since very few people would need flood insurance, their water damages would now not be covered! Despite the tsk- tsk-ing you heard on TV about how hurt and sorry the insurance folks were, most everyone here suddenly had more respect for crack dealers in a school yard than they had for insurance people.

        Many local lawyers were ready to do vigilante bounty hunting and the state attorney made public noises about taking the insurance companies to court. One local lawyer lost his house and his two law offices. He didn't have the right kind of "flood insurance" either. This pleasant, genteel man now has the face of a soldier of fortune spoiling for a war.

        There was a lot of anger here. One night the sky lit up red-orange as a mob marched carrying torches, gas cans, flashlights, and rifles. Anyone connected with insurance companies fled northward under threats of lynching. Somehow it all calmed down without much damage except for a few insurance buildings set aflame.

        Some days later, police were called to the neighborhood to investigate a dead body inside a storm damaged discarded refrigerator. The body was identified as a State Farm insurance agent. Most folks were determined to make insurance agents' lives miserable by making them define nearly every word in the policy before they commit to even a dime. There haven't been so many people so angry over an issue in a lot of years. But then, a great many people have lost everything and their insurance policies proved virtually worthless.

        Following only a couple weeks from the world's worst hurricane disaster in history, crazy global warming science fiction writers warned that this is merely the first of many yet to come. End times preachers touted the beginnings of the Tribulation. City councils say this is merely a fluke happening and will never occur again. The advertisers and politicians said the Gulf Coast would soon rise again, bigger and better than ever. But it took a generation to just get back to the point it was before this monster storm.  Meanwhile like everyone else, Andy and Jean Gordon struggle to put there home and lives back together. Police never located the mysterious paramilitary that roamed the streets during the storm. And as you look around this gloomy and cloudy place, you can see the souls of the dead residents and drowned victims reaching out for even a piece of cloud to cling to.

        And that's the way it was.