A humanist in a hurricane

Humanist, Nov-Dec, 2005 by Steve Schlicht

ON AUGUST 29, 2005, at about 5:00 a.m. I awoke from a restless sleep and checked the Internet for the latest location of "the storm" In just a few hours Katrina had grown to something beyond anything I had ever seen in my many years of living through prior hurricanes along the Mississippi Gulf coast. Worse yet, there was no potential for this hurricane to lose much strength or track away from the community of my childhood, Gulfport, Mississippi.

I stared, mesmerized in the early morning solitude, at the radar image which was repeatedly displaying the map motion of this powerful force spinning toward us. Over and over again the image flickered, leaving no doubt where this huge storm took aim. And it occurred to me that, as I sat there on the ground in Biloxi, Mississippi, looking at information brought to me from the calm safety of a weather satellite above the fray, I was also looking at Biloxi going under Hurricane Katrina's ravaging blades.

After a few moments of this contemplation I found myself trying in futility to imagine Katrina projecting away from a direct hit in Mississippi. But each time I tried to impose some more hopeful track, rationality would intervene and make me realize that something perhaps never experienced was bearing down on us. Clearly, there was nothing more anyone could do. So I just hoped that the past few days of preparation would be enough.

At that moment, however, I was becoming more and more skeptical. My wife approached me quietly and said we should make some coffee, bacon, and biscuits while we still had power. Her calm suggestion seemed so reasonable and routine that I really welcomed the distraction. So I turned off the computer, unplugged the power strip, and went into the kitchen with her. After all, the sudden bursts of wind coursing around our home were a good indication that watching a computer monitor was no longer a necessary source of information on where Katrina was located.

As the food cooked I walked over to the back door with my coffee and watched as the strong wooden fence around the yard began to shudder back and forth. Daylight was breaking and our three children began to stir from the sofa mattresses we had set up on the floor of our family room. I turned to smile at them and gave them each a hug as they got up. Then, as that last normal moment left us, the power went out and the shuddering fence came splintering apart.

My wife rapidly moved our children from the kitchen and into the "safe room" located in the inner hallway bathroom away from the windows and outer doors. This little room had already been prepared with stuffed animals, their favorite blankets and pillows, and food supplies. She whispered words of encouragement and comfort to them as they settled in. Still, I thought to myself as I checked my watch, it wasn't even 7:00 a.m. and the eye wall wasn't forecast to arrive until later that afternoon.

Glancing at the pieces of fence skimming westbound across the yard with dread, however, I hastily put on my Gulfport Police Department uniform and prepared to call my captain. He had last directed me to make phone contact with him for further instructions depending upon conditions at the 8:00 a.m. shift change.

Normally he would answer his cell phone directly. But I got his voicemail. That wasn't good. After I left a brief message and hung up, the same question began to play itself again in my head: how could the hurricane be here already?

I switched on my police radio and heard the blaring sound of the emergency alert transmission indicating an officer needs immediate assistance. It was coming from a fellow detective sergeant of my division. He was reporting he was stranded in an inoperable vehicle while rescuing some others trapped in floodwaters. Dispatch was trying to direct backup to him. I looked again out of my back door window and watched siding, fascia, and wood flying by. There was no way I could ever hope to help him. At the rate of destruction I was witnessing, I'd be fortunate not to have to send an emergency alert myself.

Suddenly a piece of my own house began pounding on the dining room window, having been bent away and left swinging in the gusts. I chanced a run outside to pry the piece loose in order to keep it from shattering the glass. Three steps into the wind and I was almost lifted off my feet. I stopped to regain my footing as I leaned into the wind and was able to pull the strip of aluminum from the house. It flew from my hands as I made my way back inside.

I was toweling off from what would be a purposeless attempt to protect our home when we all heard it and then felt it. A roof came crashing across the backyard and my neighbor's new addition exploded in a field of debris that ripped into what was once the bedroom of my four-year-old son. The eastside wall of colorfully painted dinosaurs was breached and the frame was becoming exposed as the constant winds and rain tore apart the sheetrock.

It was only 8:30 a.m.

Water soon began to pour through and out of the power sockets and light fixtures. Even the tire alarms attached to the ceilings began to be ringed in water. It was rime to leave and go with the last plan offered, yet hardly seriously considered, until that moment.