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Tampa tribune reporter Baird Helgeson files a web log in the rising sunlight on the deck of a fortunate Dauphin Island home. Crystal Lauderdale/Tribune |
It’s tough to imagine a more beautiful morning. The sun is edging its way over the horizon creating a canvas of lavender, pink and blue. A slight breeze off the southern Alabama shore has given the Gulf of Mexico a slight, glimmering chop.
A soft pastel haze gives the destroyed homes on Dauphin Island an almost dreamy feel.
Photographer Crystal Lauderdale said her night sleeping on a deck 12 feet over the sand and water was better than in the hotel the night before. It’s easy to love the sound of the water lapping against the beaches, and birds frolicking above.
We need to get on the move fast. Amid the ruin of dozens of homes, we are staying with the only resident on the west end if the island who decided to stay in his home for the night.
Our Ford Expedition barely got through all the sand to get us out to this remote sandy outpost. Now the rising tide threatens to cut off our last sliver of dry ground.
We’ve already seen enough cars submerged in the water. We don’t want to be the next.
It’s possible to fool yourself into thinking Hurricane Katrina wasn’t that bad until you see Dauphin Island, just off Mobile, Ala.
The west end of the 14-mile long island is a wasteland of homes that were ripped from their pilings and wiped into the sea. Others are so steeply raked that it appears a change in wind direction will send them crashing down. Sometimes a toilet seat or a piece of siding is the only evidence a home was once nearby.
A Chevrolet pickup and a Subaru wagon poked out of the water 50 feet off the island as a token reminder of the power of storm surge.
A few four-wheeling residents who were able to traverse the sand dunes that replaced washed out roads kept asking, “Where are the homes?â€
Photographer Crystal Lauderdale and I found a nice man on the very edge of the island who agreed to let us stay with him for the night. He’s believed to be the only person staying on the west half of the island.
The house is hot, so we are sitting on a deck that is about 12 feet over the water and sand. The only sounds are of the waves washing against the beach, and a gentle breeze coming off the water.
The peace is shattered only by authorities racing around on ATVs enforcing the curfew, or the occasional boat or air craft.
Tonight, I will sleep under the stars, a block from the water and miles from the nearest people.
Reporter Ben Montgomery and photographer Kathy Moore blog on Katrina’s aftermath from areas devastated by the storm.
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Tampa Tribune staff photographer Crystal L. Lauderdale sits atop the team’s Ford Expedition to shoot video footage of storm-ravaged Dauphin Island. Baird Helgeson/Tribune |
Photographer Crystal Lauderdale and I got on the road later than expected. Around 4 p.m. was the dream, but 7 p.m. was the reality.
I was mostly to blame for the late departure. I had no idea I was going to cover Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath when I came to work in the morning, but Crystal had been packed for at least two days waiting for the call to go.
Katrina’s is on everyone’s mind, in Tampa and elsewhere. A photographer friend in Raleigh called during the drive to tell me about the latest reports of the slow-rising waters in New Orleans. He described what he saw on television - submerged homes, heroic rescues and looting. He talked about reports of the dead floating in the brownish flood water. He said he had to stop watching the television because it made him crazy not to be there. He and I are wired that way. We both love to be there.
Crystal and I stopped for dinner at the Outback Steakhouse in Ocala. We were tired and punchy. There were two TVs over the rear of the bar. One was tuned to the Florida Marlin’s baseball game and the other had CNN’s coverage of flooding in Louisiana.
Crystal noted the strange dichotomy on the television screens.
The waitress asked where we were headed.
“We are off for a romantic get-away in New Orleans,’’ I said in a deadpan style that my friends hate.
The waitress looked mortified, like we didn’t know what had happened.
I let her off the hook with a laugh, and Crystal quickly followed.
“Are you going to help?” she asked.
In a way, I said. We are going to help by telling the untold stories that Katrina left behind.
I drove into Pensacola and the downtown flooding has receded, except for a very large puddle that had the road closed under the 17th Avenue train trestle (a.k.a. Graffiti Bridge). I also ran into some family friends in the grocery store. They live on the water and said they were “shoveling out again.” Though the storm wasn’t too bad here, particularly in light of the horrible pictures out of Louisiana and Mississippi, for many in the Pensacola area, it was a dash of salt in a not-quite-healed wound.
My power is back, so I can stop whining and stop eating ice cream. This concludes my 7th hurricane in 26 years as a Floridian. Fittingly, I am moving out of state in 4 days - to Chicago. They don’t make cones of uncertainty for snow storms, do they?
We’ve been without power for 26 hours now. Part of Gulf Breeze (just south of Pensacola) got it back early this morning, however, so I’m able seek refuge from the heat, humidity and lack of internet connection at another house. The bridges are reopened too, so I can finally leave the isolation of this peninsula.
Thankfully, damage is not bad here, but I’ve seen some of the same pictures everyone else has, so I know that downtown Pensacola flooded.
A few thoughts on powerlessness:
- Don’t you hate it when the power’s out, but you still flip the light switch every time you walk in or out of a room and you instantly feel both foolish and disappointed, as if there was a brief moment of hope that the lights might actually work?
- I made a grand sacrifice and finished the ice cream in the freezer before it melted and went to waste. Someone had to do it.
- Generators frighten cats.
- I’m going stir crazy.
It was another day without power in our hotel in Mobile. And believe it or not, I got back in the elevator. But this time the elevator was manually operated, so we didn’t get stuck. This morning we are heading back toward Pensacola to check out the area.
There’s a reporter at our paper who dreams of covering a hurricane from under a bridge. I came as close today as I ever want to again.
Once things calmed down in Mobile, we headed about 30 miles west to Pascagoula. Things were not calm there. Bands brought huge gusts that tore off roof tops and sent debris flying by the car. We decided to take cover under an Interstate overpass.
We sat there for two hours as the car rocked and we saw light posts sway in the wind. I tried to get out of the car at one point. That didn’t work out too well. Luckily, I managed to keep from falling down.
My photographer lost his glasses in the wind while taking a picture. He said that’s like me losing my only pen only worse because I can get another pen easier than he get new glasses.
Once we got out from under the bridge, we spent the day dodging flooded roads and debris. We made it back to Mobile. I worked at a television station owned by the same company that owns Media General. They were so great to us. They provided us electricity, a dry place to work and hot food.
I even picked up a little television secret. Have you ever wondered how those reporters stand out in those storms? I caught one doing a report out back. She was tied to a pole and had a sandbag nearby. The things we do for news.
It was a lovely morning for a drive.
Photographer Colin Hackley and I headed out this morning to sightsee along the east coast of Mobile Bay. We saw a quaint little bait and tackle shop along the Mobile Bay causeway rapidly slipping under the water. We continued down the causeway until we hit a river of water rushing over it. (“I have reverse, and I know how to use it,” Colin declared earlier as he apparently read a trace of dread in my otherwise confident demeanor.)
The rain was something. At times it seemed almost like one of those 1970s-era rock shows with the dry-ice fog drifting across the stage. It was that thick. And it was as if people were standing by the side of the road every 20 feet or so with five-gallon buckets of water, pelting our windshield regularly.
We saw a few downed trees and power lines, but nothing too shocking. A Fairchild cop eventually pulled up next to us and rolled down his window: “There’s a curfew. We’re enforcing it,” he said. A couple blocks down the road, a second cop gave us the blue lights. Sheesh. No respect for the First Amendment around here. We returned to the hotel, although we knew there ain’t a jail in all of Baldwin County, Ala. that could hold us.
The bad news here is rising water. Mobile Bay has overtaken the swamp as well as our parking lot. The “IVAN” buoy is long gone. And the mystery gator, boosted by the rising tide, splashed over the curb and into the parking lot a while back, to the bemusement of a couple dozen guests gathered in the lobby. The hotel manager told Colin he’s never seen the water so high.
We lost power in the hotel about 8:30 a.m., and it’s getting hot and stuffy. And the battery is dying.
Here’s a little hurricane tip. If you’re going to stay in a hotel room during a hurricane, try not to stay on one on the 16th floor. We were in the lobby when the power went off and heard people stuck in the elevator. That’s when I declared the stairs was the only way to travel. Luckily for those people, the power came back on.
Sixteen flights later and one lost lung, I decided this wasn’t going to work. I brought my luggage to the bell man on the first floor in case we had to make a quick dash out. The hotel manager assured me that if the power went out the elevators automatically go to the first floor. So I reluctantly gave them a try with my photographer and another reporter. About six floors up, the power went out again and guess what? We didn’t drop anywhere, we were stuck. The power came back on moments later, so it’s the stairs from here on out.
The wind is a little stronger now and waterfront portions of Gulf Breeze are flooded, but they’re used to that by now. I went to drive around, but I can’t go anywhere but Gulf Breeze because the bridges are closed. I noticed that I was the only one on the road not driving a truck or SUV, but then this is suburbia and everyone drives SUV’s. The roads weren’t hazardous except for one limb across one road that forced me to turn around.
I heard on the radio that there are power outages around the area, but our power stays on except for a few brief cut-outs.
It’s raining pretty hard just before sunrise. Obviously, I still have electricity and an internet connection. My hotel looks out over Mobile Bay, and I can see the lights of Mobile across the water. Interstate 10 over the bay is deserted; I’ve only seen three or four cars making the crossing.
I stepped out onto the balcony a few minutes ago. Steady rain, very little wind at this point. Mobile Bay is supposed to get some ungodly storm surge, like 20 feet or something. The water is already rising. Someone stuck a sea buoy into the marshy area between the parking lot and the bay with “IVAN” painted on it; I assume that may have been the high-water level when Hurricane Ivan struck here last year. The water this morning is well past that marker and lapping at the back parking lot.
I watched as a cop pulled into the lot. He (or she) fired up the car’s spotlight and did a very thorough check of the rising water and the mangroves. When we were here last month during Hurricane Dennis, I noticed a special guest of the hotel resting comfortably in the muck—an alligator. I’m guessing that cop and a few hotel employees might be wondering where that gator is going to end up.
The TV is blasting a seven-tone alert indicating that we are officially under a tornado warning. Of course, everyone here has the Weather Channel on. It’s a little strange when they break away from the studio or the live beach shots and run “Your Local Forecast” and the statistics. That soothing computerized voice-over comes on and says, “Winds southeast at 60 to 80 miles per hour.”
So I awoke this morning to learn that Katrina has made landfall in southeast Louisiana. Outside the winds are gusting and rain is beating against my window. As I’m writing this, I’ve just seen an explosion of light outside my window, most likely a transformer blowing. At times, my windows are vibrating. The few pieces of plywood on the windows are starting to peel off. I’m told it’s only go to get worse from here on out. By 10 a.m. local time we’ll be getting the worse winds which are expected to be between 80 and 100 mph. Our big problem will be tornados because we are on the northeast side of the storm. We’ve had our first tornado warning and I’m sure there are many more to come.
The wind is making a fair amount of noise here near Pensacola, but when I went outside it didn’t feel as strong as it sounded. One big gust pushed me back a step, but mostly it’s just sending the trees dancing. There’s not much rain, either.
I’ll get out to other parts of the area later, but this neighborhood (which made it through Ivan and Dennis pretty well) will probably just be raking up pine needles and branches and not much more.
It’s raining pretty hard just before sunrise. Obviously, I still have electricity and an internet connection. My hotel looks out over Mobile Bay, and I can see the lights of Mobile across the water. Interstate 10 over the bay is deserted; I’ve only seen three or four cars making the crossing.
I stepped out onto the balcony a few minutes ago. Steady rain, very little wind at this point. Mobile Bay is supposed to get some ungodly storm surge, like 20 feet or something. The water is already rising. Someone stuck a sea buoy into the marshy area between the parking lot and the bay with “IVAN” painted on it; I assume that may have been the high-water level when Hurricane Ivan struck here last year. The water this morning is well past that marker and lapping at the back parking lot.
I watched as a cop pulled into the lot. He (or she) fired up the car’s spotlight and did a very thorough check of the rising water and the mangroves. When we were here last month during Hurricane Dennis, I noticed a special guest of the hotel resting comfortably in the muck—an alligator. I’m guessing that cop and a few hotel employees might be wondering where that gator is going to end up.
The TV is blasting a seven-tone alert indicating that we are officially under a tornado warning. Of course, everyone here has the Weather Channel on. It’s a little strange when they break away from the studio or the live beach shots and run “Your Local Forecast” and the statistics. That soothing computerized voice-over comes on and says, “Winds southeast at 60 to 80 miles per hour.”
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