Camille Was No Lady

nationalreview.com ^ | 8/18/2014 | Quin Hillyer

[rktman]

Forty-five years ago this very day, it took my Aunt Penny nearly ten hours to weave her way around downed trees, flooded roads, ruined bridges, snapped telephone poles, and live wires between New Orleans and Pass Christian, Miss. It’s usually just a one-hour drive. But this was in the immediate, same-day wake of Hurricane Camille, still the strongest named storm in U.S. history.

Her parents (my grandparents) had been traveling, and they had returned to their Pass Christian home just the evening before. When Penny spoke to them from her New Orleans apartment as the storm bore in, they were frantically putting their silver and other valuables in the attic in case floodwaters seeped into the house, which fronted the highway right along the beach. They would stay with friends six miles inland, in an unincorporated hamlet called DeLisle.

[Vinnie]

IIRC they measured the storm surge at 20+ ft on some bridges in the area.

[Mears]

I live in MA and remember it well.

This incident really horrified me.

http://camille.passchristian.net/hurricane_party.htm.

.

[Lil Flower]

BTTT

[CatherineofAragon]

You and I grew up in the same town. Now I’m just a few miles east, halfway between Lynchburg and Appomattox.

Wow, I didn’t know about the body in Newport News. Massies Mill was just about ground zero for Camille, wasn’t it?

[CatherineofAragon]

Glad you got out of there OK.

[Think free or die]

"I was six years old then, so I don’t remember much, but two days later Camille hit Nelson County, Virginia, which is just north of us (we’re in Campbell County). The storm dropped a total of 37 inches of rain (27 of those in the first three hours). I’ve read that animals drowned in trees. Communities were wiped out. Many people (bodies) have never been found."

I was living in Michigan when Camille hit, so although it looked horrible, it was far away. Ten years later, I moved to Albemarle County, Virginia. I was stunned by the tracks of Camille along the ridges and valleys of Nelson County. Many areas were still bare, and evidence of rock slides and washouts was still very obvious. Camille's impact on the gulf was so dramatic that the damage in Virginia was pushed out of the news.

[Steven Scharf]

“Wasn’t weather associated with Camille what rained out the Woodstock concerts?”

By all accounts I have herad in my life, Woodstock was successful in spite of the rain. Woodstok’s biggest problem was that it was over run oy 1,000s of non paying people and did not have the means to feed and take care of sanitary needs of such a large crowd. Ohh, and there was some bad weed going around.

[Old Forester]

I was in tech school at Keesler AFB during Camile. We spent a lot of time afterward helping with clean-up. I still remember seeing the waterline 20’ up in the trees and, like someone mentioned, a lot of concrete slabs and with a set of steps and nothing else. The houses were all in a long line of debris about a quarter mile inland. I have a picture of a sailboat sitting on top of a gas station...

[Romulus]

Camille makes Katrina look like an afternoon thunderstorm.

BS. Many structures along the front survived Camille with heavy damage. Other than steel reinforced concrete, did ANY structures from Waveland to PC survive Katrina's surge? Where is Beauvoir now? My grandmother's house in Waveland -- one block from the beach -- was fully restored after Camille, complete with original furniture. After Katrina it was difficult even to find the lot. My's boss's house in Bay St. Louis was a pile of sticks. His parents' house, high above East Beach Drive in PC, was a scrape. Same with my sister's in-laws place on Wolf River. Camille was a terrible storm with record winds, but it was compact. We rode it out in NOLA with minimal ill effects. Katrina made landfall almost the exact same area, and my uptown home near St. Charles was uninhabitable for a month.

[rktman]

Camille was very compact and fast moving and hit just east of Pass Christian so Waveland and BSL weren’t as badly affected but Katrina went in around Pearlington and east of there was pretty much toast. Regardelss, if either one had been just a little west of NOLA, they city would have really been flattened and the levee system along the lake wouldn’t have helped with either one. Either way, they both sucked. Glad you got back in your house in the Garden district(?)okay.

[Romulus]

LOL, no not Garden District. Only democrats have that kind of money. Mrs Romulus and I live near the Latter library.

[EDINVA]

Friends of ours still speak of it as if it were yesterday, it had such an enormous impact. They lost the wife’s grandfather’s home in Biloxi. An expert sport sailor friend was thought missing but 3 days later emerged from a very far backwater. The same family’s daughter lost her home @ Bay St Louis with Katrina, and another daughter lost her NOLA home as well.

[rktman]

LOL! Oh, just “regular” uptown St.Charles. :>}

[higgmeister]

We lived in Waynesboro and my younger brother helped with the cleanup there in Nelson County. He saw a locomotive lifted 100 yards off the track. Mountain sides were washed down into the valley. I stayed in Waynesboro cleaning up at a house that had the basement wall caved in along the whole back at ground level and filled with water. When the water was pumped out there was a foot of muck that we had to shovel out.

[wardaddy]

It was likely one of top 5-6 most profound times of my life
We toured the damage immediately... dad’s company was hired out for clean up with his heavy construction equipment

We had a place in Waveland for a year after the storm

Camille was deadly with super high winds..245 offshore

But slower weaker Katrina was worse..much worse

95% total concrete slab and dirt where pavement was destruction from Ocean Springs to Biloxi to Gulfport to Long Beach/Mississippi city to Pass Christian to Bay St Louis and Waveland

25 miles of beach front lost from US 90 inland for 2-400 yards

Amazing...like Dresden....at least in 2006 and 2007

Don’t know how it is now

Camille was bad but recovery happened...back to lush normal in 10-15 years plus the old live oaks and homes survived... not with Katrina

Few buildings....Beauvoir and I think the old Nunnery...a few others

Beauvoir is well built....it breathes they say.....

[dixiechick2000]

“During Katrina the entitled class, created by the democrats expected everything from everybody else.”

I have to say upfront that these were two very different storms, in two very different centuries. And...

I have to respectfully disagree, WRT Mississippi.

Sorry for pinpointing your post. But, some history has to be shared, and yours was the first post I found to share it. ;o)

No one remembered that the eye of the storm hit the MS coast, instead of NOLA. In fact, few even reported on it. It was a factoid that was reported in real time, and not much after that.

NOLA’s problems happened a couple of days later, when the defective levees broke.

Everything was fine in NOLA until then, and then Shep’s and Geraldo’s hysteria ensued. Lordy! Have you ever seen so many reports to be so wrong?

The folks on the MS coast were left to their own devices in the aftermath of Katrina mostly because help was hard pressed to get within 150 miles of there. There were many roads/interstates closed due to the downing of millions of trees.

Staging for relief was at the Naval Air Station, in Meridian. That’s as far as Anderson Cooper, whose father is a Meridian native, could get. So.......not much reporting from that fearless CNN guy. I believe he enjoyed the food, though.

The storm surge in Katrina at 35 feet beat Camille’s 18 feet. Katrina was, also, very large and slow moving. That’s where so much of the damage occurred.

I have friends on the coast who describe it as being in a tornado for 12 hours.

OTOH, Camille was extremely strong, yet compact compared to Katrina.

Camille hit Jackson, 150 miles inland, and did some damage.

Katrina caused over half of the counties in MS to be declared a federal disaster area. My hometown is 150 miles inland, and it was much, much worse during Katrina.

[dixiechick2000]

“Slept thru Camille in Ocean Springs, and wanted to go fishing the next day, boy was I a goober, 12, but still......”

Not a goober, just young. ;o)

[dixiechick2000]

My daddy was a meteorologist, so he wasn’t at home. He was helping with Camille.

My mother had a bad case of bronchitis, and was on some really good drugs.

I asked her during her drugged state if my sister and I could go check on the boats at the lake house. She said we could.

lol

So we did. My VW bug was almost blown off of the road several times. When we reached the lake house we found at least a thousand seagulls! 150 miles inland!

We went out to check on the boats, and the wind was so bad that that we were, both, almost blown off of the dock.

My daddy didn’t know about it, and my mother doesn’t remember it.

My sister and I, however, had boatloads of excitement!

wardaddy, your description of Camille and Katrina is excellent.

[dixiechick2000]

Oooh! I forgot to tell you about the guy I was dating who was from LSU, was visiting me, and drove home the day Camille hit.

He made it, but it was a hairy ride.

[mitch5501]

Where I live the strongest wind gusts might reach 70 mph.I can’t begin to imagine experiencing 180 mph.It sounds almost Biblical.