Toilin Taplin, GPC Student
Talking with my mother-in-law is always very interesting. She likes to tell stories about when she was growing up and all the things she has seen. Being a native of Mississippi, a state full of dramatic history, she has seen a lot of amazing things. I like to think of her as a walking, talking American history book. Recently she told me the story about Hurricane Camille. Hurricane Camille happened in the year 1969. It was a category five storm, the highest category a hurricane can reach. It destroyed the Gulf Coast beachfront from New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama. There were a lot of destruction and lives lost due to Hurricane Camille and my mother-in-law lived through all of it.
On the fateful night of Sunday, August 17, 1969, my mother-in-law was expecting the storm of winds and rains that the news was forecasting for the past twenty-four hours. After putting her four boys to sleep, she sat awake waiting for the storm to pass. To her surprise, this was not going to be an ordinary storm. The two story, four-unit raggedy apartment dwelling that she lived in rocked on its foundation from side to side as if it was to be lifted up in the winds and carried away like a feather. The sounds of the winds were like a multitude of raging locomotives traveling at a high rate speed on the steel tracks of doom with their horns’ wildly blowing to warn any living being in its path. The rain was gushing and pounding against the windows and the doors as if it were trying to force its way into her apartment. The lights quickly flickered then dimmed slowly into complete darkness. All at once she began to get nervous and rushed into the bedroom where the boys were soundly sleeping. She pushed all the beds together into the corner of the room and crawled into one of the beds with her youngest and began praying. Wondering what was going on outside, she closed her eyes shut and repeated to herself over and over again, “If I just go to sleep, it will be over in the morning.” She eventually drifted off to sleep while the storm raged on outside.
The next morning, while the boys were still sleeping, she decided to take a survey of damage to her apartment. While she quietly thanked God for letting her live through the nightmare of the night before, she walked slowly through the apartment. She had three inches of rainwater on the floor of her second floor apartment! The winds were so strong they had pounded rain into her apartment horizontally. She was amazed! The only other damage was a small leak in the bathroom. She was thankful that she had such little damage to worry about.
Others were not as lucky as she was. After doing the brief survey of her apartment, she decided to go outside and see what kind of damage was done. After leaving her kids with a neighbor, she ventured to take a walk around the small town of Gulfport. She could not believe the mass destruction she saw. It was utter chaos! Brick houses were totally destroyed, trees were uprooted, garbage and debris was everywhere, and sand from the beach covered the streets and the roofs of the houses that were left standing like a tan blanket. Many of the houses that were demolished had nothing left but the steps that at one time lead into the front doors of the house. The streets were partially flooded with snakes swimming in the flooded areas. Down on the main highway near the beachfront was unbelievable also. All the local area businesses were gone! There was nothing left but outlines in the ground where the foundations once belonged. Barges that weighed tons washed up on the main highway and sailboats had been blown into some of the beachfront homes. People were walking the streets and crying out for the family members they had lost. Some had warned her not to go into certain areas of the town because bodies that had been recently buried washed up and was floating around in those areas. The destruction she had seen that day was too horrific for words to describe.
She also suffered a great loss of friends as a result of Hurricane Camille. A family that lived a couple of doors down the street from her, that she was close friends with, lost most of their members. They decided to try to find a safe haven in one of the local churches in the area. Unfortunately, the storm hit that particular area the hardest and the church had been demolished. The tide was so strong and high that it gutted out the church and every time the tide came inland, it pulled people out of the church into the ocean. Out of a family of eleven, they only had four members left. Another family had decided to have a hurricane party without realizing the level of severity the storm was to become. The home they had the party in was a beachfront home and it was also demolished. All the people that had attended the party had perished. Nothing was left of the home but the front concrete steps. Now the losses from the hurricane had escalated into more than just material things, people had lost loved ones.
My mother-in-law talked about that hurricane with a blank stare as if she was reliving it. She said that the States of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama got a lot of government aid from FEMA, Red Cross and different agencies. It was over a week before any power was restored to the area and months before order was regained and rebuilding began. Although there has not been another category five storm that has hit the Gulf Coast since 1969, she is still very watchful. She says that it was not luck that spared them, but it was divine intervention. Hearing her talk about how all the concrete and brick houses were destroyed around her and how the raggedy, old, two-story dwelling that she lived in escaped with minor damages, makes me inclined to believe her. Nevertheless, whenever she is willing to tell the story again of how she survived Hurricane Camille, I will sit quietly and listen with great interest.