Category 5: The Story of Camille, Lessons Unlearned from America's Most Violent Hurricane

10. Dawn

CHAPTER 10 Dawn Pass Christian, Monday, August 18, 1969 Around 4:30 a.m., with the wind diminished to a stiff breeze, Ben saw strange ›ashes of light below him. He thought he was dreaming before he realized it was a group of men who wielded ›ashlights, beckoning him down from the tree. His nearly naked body was peppered with cuts and bruises, one leg sporting a nasty gash. His wristwatch and his college ring were gone. It took a few moments for his sluggish brain to register that the ›ood had receded. His aching muscles trembling as much from the cold as from the ordeal, he started to shinny down the slime-covered trunk. His tightest grip wasn’t enough to keep from accelerating toward the ground. Two brawny arms grabbed him around the pelvis and broke the fall. A pair of muscular hands steadied him on the mushy ground. The big black man turned to his companions. “This child, he cole.” Heaps of debris sparkled in the ›ashlight beams; everything was littered with shards of broken glass. Someone draped a soggy throw rug over Ben’s bare shoulders. Words were exchanged that he didn’t quite decipher. He felt himself being hoisted onto someone’s shoulders . His mind was too numb to ask where he was being carried. In the morning twilight, a burly black man trudged up to the white high school with a young white guy slung over his back. He handed Ben over to a relief worker and then left to resume his search for “his people.” Nobody bothered to ask his name. The school was pandemonium. Some victims had terrible injuries, others appeared dead, and a few were dead. Frenzied women screamed for lost children, and children cried for lost parents. There 130 were no doctors. It wasn’t apparent who among the volunteers were licensed nurses. Frantic survivors continued to arrive as some of the injured left without telling anyone. Nobody was keeping records about anything. A woman led Ben to the science room, gave him a blanket, told him to lie down on one of the black slab tables, and then left. Ben tried to doze off but couldn’t. Somehow, he felt compelled to return to the apartment. Rather than struggle through the throng of humanity in the hall, he climbed out one of the classroom’s broken windows. Not a single building within sight had escaped damage, and the spectacle of devastation only worsened as Ben approached the Gulf. In places, the wreckages of homes, smashed cars, and splintered boats were heaped twenty feet high. Downed trees blocked every road, and as he crawled over and through them, he reopened some of his wounds. His entire sense of place was fractured. The single landmark he did recognize was the concrete seawall—still intact only because it had been submerged so far below the waves that it escaped their scouring action. There he saw a man with a camera, a young boy beside him. “Hey, Dad,” the youngster shouted, “look at that guy! Get a picture! Get a picture!” He trudged west, mechanically stepping over and around the jetsam , his mind still foggy, the cuts on his bare legs and feet oozing fresh blood. He bypassed the site of the Richelieu before he realized he’d gone too far. He turned around, while trying to reestablish his bearings, and bumped into a disheveled blonde woman who was crying uncontrollably. He’d shed a few tears himself when he was up in the tree during the worst of the storm, and at one point he’d even prayed to God to take him, but right now he wasn’t much interested in crying or seeing anyone else do so. Numbly, he ignored the woman and staggered on. He spied a cluster of bent and truncated piping jutting eerily into the air from a concrete slab, and then he recognized the swimming pool. His ‹rst impulse was to look for “stuff,” but he couldn’t decide what stuff or where to start. He noticed someone hobbling around on a makeshift crutch fashioned from a tree branch. He squinted, trying to compensate for his lost glasses. It was Rick Keller. Ben ran over and tried to hug him, but Rick wasn’t interested. 131 Dawn CATEGORY 5 132 “Where’s Luane?” Rick asked. “Have you seen Luane?” Ben shook his head. Rick...