Reflections on Rita

Well, here we are yet again. At the end of yet another major hurricane in Louisiana.

I have to say, I've had it. I'm done. Really. No more.

Here's a brief history. The first hurricane I remember was Danny, back in the 80's. I was a kid. I was freakin' terrified. I'd long been terrified of severe weather. My dad dragged us all to a horse show in Texas one year, and I remember to this day waking up from a nap in the back seat to a terrifying sight: night-black skies in the middle of the day.

We were driving through an area during an outbreak of tornadic activity. We didn't see any tornadoes, but I was forever scarred by incident. As the years went by, anytime an ominous cloud appeared, I was scared spitless.

Then came Hurricane Andrew. Need I say more? We were all affected by this storm, and even today still feel its effects. My father, who is against any form of evacuation, decided that we weren't going anywhere. I wasn't old enough to do anything about his decision, so I was stuck. We boarded up the windows and then waited. My father pontificated about the storm. His non-meterological background made it hard to be comforted. I still remember getting home from school earlier that day and laying on the floor in our living room. I looked up at the ceiling tile and thought "This is it. I'm going to die. This is the end." This was reinforced by a talk I had on the phone just after returning home with a friend from school. Margaret was not really one to ever show her fear of anything. Yet I could hear in her voice that she was worried about this hurricane. She finally admitted she was scared. That, I figured, might as well have been a death warrant, signed by a wet and windy finger from the Gulf. We sat in the dark and tried not to wonder what was richoting off our roof and the facade of the house. We survived, but were forever changed.

I remember driving home after having dinner with my friend Roy and his cousin Howard. I'd been accepted as a seminarian for the Diocese of Lafayette only weeks before. We were meeting to talk about seminary, since Roy had gone in a year before I did.

The weather was not a concern, as I was enjoying spending time with my friends. As we finished dinner at Duffy's Diner in New Iberia, the skies darkened, and I realized I needed to go. I bolted out of "The Berry" and was confronted with twisting, roiling clouds. I started praying and hit 80 just before making it to Delcambre. Thankfully, I avoided the severe weather that would break out later on in isolated areas.

Next came Tropical Storm Alison. Not a big deal for me at the time. Just a lot of rain. I ordered a pizza (the comfort food I eat even when I don't need comfort) and settled in for a few days of rain. It was great.

Then Lili came a'knockin. She was quite the bitch. I had been dating Ali, who would become my wife a little over a year later, and she decided she wasn't staying in Lafayette. "Great," I remember thinking, "I'm not staying either. Let's go to Mississippi, or northern Louisiana. You. Me. Anyone who wants to join us. No storm. Fun."

Ali had already made up her mind that she wanted to go and be with her family in Crowley. "Crowley," I remember thinking. "That's still in Louisiana, right?" Ali freed my up from any feelings of committment, telling me it was alright if I wanted to evacuate.

I was in love, so what was I going to do? After writing a brief will (yeah, I know, I wrote a will) and going to Confession, Ali and I taped up her windows and we were off to The Rice Capital of the World. Yay. Rice. At least we'll have something to eat if we don't die first.

Lili was hell in more ways than one. It did startling damage to Abbeville, Crowley, Duson, Rayne, Lafayette, and other places. At Ali's brother-in-law's, we sat and waited. I tried to be strong, but my mental vision becomes very focused in situations where a wind-tossed tree might rapidly and noisily stop this nice little thing I do called breathing.

The wind scraped its nails against the boards on the windows and the exterior of the house. We'd lost power the night before, beginning the greatest asset to comfort known: exceptional heat and humidity. I love smelling like a cheap gas station burrito, how about everyone else?

We watched the next day as a tree began to show signs of being uprooted. An hour or so later, it was, and it came crashing into my brother-and-law's house. "Chris, we're going outside to look around. Wanna come?" Uh, sure. I'm not doing anything else today but staying alive. Let's roll. Jeremy didn't really come out and ask me to go out there with him and Ali's uncle John, but I almost felt obliged. It's in the non-verbal agreement you make when you take up shelter during severe weather in someone else's house. "The undersigned will agree to subject themselves to clearly foolish and damned illogical activity, i.e., going out in sustained winds of thirty mph while also weathering 60 mph gusts. The undersigned should remember to bring a raincoat and a black suit for the nigh-inevitable burial later on."

At any rate, Lili didn't harm us too much, but the psychological strain of hearing winds droning like the damned in Hell and crashes that make your skin crawl has never left me.

Which brings us to three days ago. Southern Louisiana is in something called a "cone of uncertainty." These now infamous words kind of nipped at the confidence we had knowing that Katrina wouldn't really affect us. But worse than Rita's uncertain path was the fact that we would be on her east side. Everyone knows that's not where you want to be in a hurricane. Just look at what used to be the Mississippi coastline, to say nothing of the areas east of New Orleans.

My wife and I couldn't agree on what to do. I'd made up my mind during Lili that we'd not stay through such a storm ever again. But Katrina's wrath had assured that we'd not find room in the inn. So we were decided: we'd stay in the Lafayette area, taking refuge at the house of our friends Charles and Mandy Jaubert.

I took an anxiety pill at ten o'clock Thursday night, after removing and securing anything in our yard that might be a potential projectile. I slept like a log left over from Lili. But Ali tossed and turned and awoke every three hours. At 0515 Friday morning, she pokes me in that gentle way she has when waking me up and says, "I want to go to Baton Rouge."

I responded with "Okay," and that was it. Two hours later we made a surprisingly pleasant trek east, to stay with friends of Ali. We arrived and after eating breakfast and a nearby McDonald's, took a nice nap and watched the coverage of Rita.

Over all, our stay in Baton Rouge wasn't bad. But we lost power around 11: 30 PM last night, and had a sticky and frightful night of wondering if embedded tornadoes were going to toss tree limbs (or road signs or bicycles) through the windows or into the windshield of our car. I left my glasses at home, so after taking out my contacts, almost hardened by being worn too late, I went through Rita's landfall during nightfall almost blind. It's not something I recommend.

This morning we ventured out for coffee and breakfast. Our spirits high because the sun was out and it seemed that the worst was over. Then the skies darkened at 11 or so, and the winds came. We went back to our friends' home and waited. We awoke from naps an hour or so later to find the wind almost calm and roads dry. We decided to make the westward journey to home.

In Lobdell, the winds came again, this time with teeth fully bared. We watched as a lightpole at a fast food restaurant almost fell and collided with the children's playground out front. Ten minutes later, we drove slowly through forty mph gusts as a convoy of Army National Guardsmen headed towards ravaged Vermilion Parish. A Lafayette meterologist warned of approaching bands carrying with them embedded tornadic potential.

We prayed a Rosary and drove carefully but quickly across the Atchafalaya Basin. The wind swatted at us like someone does at a fly they only half care about killing. I was tempted to look at the twisting tendrils of cloud to the south of us, where I was sure I'd see the snaking form of a funnel cloud, ready to toss us off the basin bridge to certain death.

But we made it through, by the grace of God. We're home now, surprised to learn that neither we nor our neighbors ever lost power. We could have stayed, but the psychological strain would have been worse than it was in Baton Rouge.

And that's the whole point of all of this. I'm done, as I said at the beginning. No more. I've written some hurricane prepardness plans for our family. They're probably a little nerdy, as I used some color-coded "conditions" and "alerts" to gauge our levels of preparedness. But Ali and I are at least agreed that next time, if we're in that infamous cone, we're going to "err on the side of more," as Fr. Hampton "Padre" Davis used to tell me when I was his sacristan in college.

We might be wasting a few hundred bucks to stay in a hotel and get away. The next hurricane (and oh yeah buddy, there WILL be another one) might not even threaten us in any way. But we'll have peace of mind. And I find that I'd rather have that than a night of terrors, fraught with uncertainty and anxiety.

For a breakdown of our Meaux Family Hurricane Preparedness Plans, click here.

Chris