Storms that we remember

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It’s not big news that the experts say we can expect a hurricane this storm season. You learn to be expect one every year when you live near the Gulf.
The average is one in every four years, but that’s just an average. Some years we will see no storms, some years more than one; sometimes we get them several years in a row, or we can go several years without one. We know the big storms began visiting on a regular basis a long time before we got here and are going to keep coming when you and I are long gone.
Scientists boring deep holes along the Gulf coast found silt left by storm surges thousands of years ago. The first Gulf coast hurricane we know about for certain struck at Pensacola Bay on Sept. 19, 1559. Spanish explorers were anchored there and the storm sank their ships.
What may have been the first recorded Louisiana hurricane struck in October 1527. Part of another Spanish expedition had sailed out into the Gulf to get away from hostile Indians. They were just passing the mouth of the Mississippi River when a violent storm wrecked their boats.
Old records show that two places got hammered regularly during the 1700s, after the French began to settle Louisiana. The first was New Orleans. It was struck by a powerful storm in 1722, while it was still being built, and regularly throughout the century. The storm that hit the town in 1780 was so bad that the Spanish, who were in control by then, seriously considered not even trying to rebuild.
The second early target was La Balize, a little fort at the mouth of the Mississippi about where Pilottown is today. It was knocked down and rebuilt time and again.
One of the memorable storms of the 1800s may have changed the course of history. That one blew across the Gulf in 1812, and scattered a fleet of British ships gathering to attack New Orleans. As a result, the British did not try to attack the city until 1815, only to be beaten back by a motley group of pirates and patriots. Many historians say the War of 1812 could have had a far different outcome if the British had controlled the Mississippi River early in the fighting.
The story of the hurricane that killed hundreds of people at the resort of Last Island in August 1856 has been the basis of novels and of movies. The one that struck Cheniere Caminada in October 1893 is less well known, but was far more deadly.
Weather officials later admitted they had no idea that a big storm was about to come ashore. In fact, the Gulf coast forecast on the day of the storm was for fair weather with a small chance of light showers. The storm that forecasters overlooked devastated 500 miles of coastline from southeast Louisiana to Pensacola. More than 800 people were killed in less than three hours at Cheniere Caminada, most of them drowned by a 16-foot storm surge.
A powerful surge was also the big killer in the storm that struck at Sabine Pass in 1886, wiping out Sabine City on the Texas side and Johnsons Bayou in Louisiana. More than 100 people were killed. That storm was talked about for generations in southwest Louisiana, and today every family with long south Louisiana roots has a story about a memorable hurricane.
My grandfather remembered the storm of 1918. I can still hear in my mind’s ear his recollection of how “the old Borealis Rex,” the mail boat that ran between Lake Charles and Cameron, was battered by the storm. My dad vividly recalled the 1940 storm that brought torrential rainfall and drove thousands of people from flooded homes in Crowley, Gueydan, Lafayette, and elsewhere.
Audrey is my storm. Our house was on the lakefront between the port of Lake Charles and St. Patrick’s hospital. Ambulance sirens began to wail when the first boatload of refugees finally made it upriver from Cameron. The sirens did not stop for days.
Other, more recent, storms have become the never-to-be forgotten memories of others — Betsy, Andrew, Rita, Lili, and, of course, Katrina. It’s the memory of storms like these that cause us to keep a worried weather eye on the Gulf during the summer and early fall — no matter what the experts predict.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

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