You were in C.C. then? Yeah. It was a mess. There was much damage and no lights or phones for many days. I remember when the last local radio station on the air announced 160 mph sustained winds then a 210 mph gust just before losing its wind gauge and going off the air.
The damage wasn’t as bad in our neighborhood as many of the others (frame houses in our neighborhood built for hurricanes), but a nearby neighborhood with brick veneered houses was flattened. Interestingly, everyone in the flattened area had evacuated. Several of my own neighbors stayed and boarded windows like us, having learned before and during hurricane Beulah, that they might go through the frustrating, costly and tiring experience of evacuation for a hurricane that slows down before arriving.
Well, Celia looked harmless, until it made landfall and sped up instead of slowing down. Quite an experience. Then it wound up, with everything (rain, debris, etc.) going sideways, until it was intense enough that nothing could be seen at all. Then the eye passed, and everything went the other way. The rumble was so loud, that I could only hear someone else in the house, if they screamed. Sheets of water oozed under the pulsating walls (concrete slab foundations).
Many roofs were lost. The privacy fences went away. Cars moved. Tall palms laid flat against the ground. Other trees uprooted and flew away. Power and telephone poles and lines on the ground everywhere. Many of the commercial buildings many blocks away were destroyed, because they were taller and more rigid. The drivein theaters blew down. Afterwards, a sign at one of them said, “Gone with the Wind.”
Neighbors were great and generous with each other, though. The National Guard was great. We rebuilt it all very quickly.
Celia wasn’t as much of an insurance and political event as a more publicized, weaker hurricane elsewhere exaggerated much about a few years later, but it was a monster indeed.
Our truck was moved down the driveway about 10 feet, and part of the garage roof fell on my aunt’s car-the house itself was a frame one on a slab with wood siding and some brick trim, built in about 1960. Water blew in everywhere when some windows broke, but it remained intact. After all was said and done, we swept several inches of water out, and the first person to show up 2 days later was my aunt’s insurance agent. The whole interior had to be redone, plus new windows and two doors.
We’d been in hurricanes when my dad was stationed in PR years earlier, but nothing like that-I really can’t believe Katrina was that much worse-just bigger...