A is For Alicia – Remembering When the Hurricane Hit Hard

Posted by Hildra Tague Aug 13, 2009

My husband and I roused suddenly before six to an unnatural stillness, stirring uneasiness, and odd smell. (Later I found out it was ozone.) Nothing was happening although the forecasts the night before had been fearsome. Yet we awoke to an ominous feeling neither of us could pinpoint. We looked around the house and the yard.

We couldn't sleep so we turned on the TV and saw we were in for some interesting weather. I have a friend who says the most terrible blessing of all is, "May you live through interesting times!" It seems that day in August of 1983 we were to do just that.

As my two teenage sons arose I mused how thankful was to insisst on settling many miles north of Houston "so I'd never have to really worry about hurricanes." My boys bemoaned the entrapment of bad weather and ate breakfast.

Within minutes we began to hear winds. The trees' swaying held a startling magnetism which kept pulling us to watch the gory show. One time we stepped outside and the neighbors were all looking at our place. I gulped as I silently wished we had topped our trees as one smart neighbor had. It was fascinating yet foreboding to watch the trees plunge deeply in all directions, surrounding us in fear.

Stepping back inside after hearing the well-wishes of neighbors provided little comfort. By then there was in all of us the urge to flee. We had, just weeks before, listened over breakfast to a relative's first-hand account of the famous Wichita Falls tornado, and the memories and realities of their house being split in half lingered all too near.

The four of us tried to pass the time. My sons busied themselves in their rooms, and we watched the TV, and the windows.

Having lived in Oklahoma (Tornado Alley) for years, storm safety came naturally. But as we stayed cool to analyze the safest place to go, we were eventually engulfed with the realization that there was no safe place inside our house, nor was it safe to venture out. There was at least one giant tree threatening to fall on each room, even all points of the inside hall.

Each time our hearts and voices would calm a bit we'd hear another crash. One son and I took turns dashing outside midst 70+ mph winds to move our respective cars out of the path of a falling tree, saving both from destruction by a matter of moments. My husband couldn't do much as he had recently endured a seriously broken leg.

As the minutes went into hours, the debris began to grow higher, almost up to our four-foot window ledges. The front yard was so full of pieces of mangled vegetation that one had to go far around to the side to get in and out of the house.

Word spread about our situation and some friends showed up to see if they could help. We had a gigantic tree a few feet from the house threatening to crash. They threw a rope up and managed to trim it a bit. Then someone noticed the trunk seemed to be breathing. It has sustained a huge diagonal crack several feet long, and as it swayed it opened and closed. I even stuck my hand in it as my mind just could not absorb the phenomenon!

Then the wind came up again – really roaring – and everyone rushed inside. By mid-morning we had watched our van split into, LENGTHWISE, by a tree, our boat crushed, our camper badly sideswiped, and our pickup hit (crushing the camper top completely). My younger son's car had several trees on it too. (Over the next few days scads of staring people drove up from Houston to see our place "where all the cars got hit and the yard filled up.")

During one particularly helpless moment, I noticed my spouse clutching a first-aid kit, a pitiful yet honest assessment of probability of impending disaster. Eons later, it subsided. We counted noses and were grateful to be alive yet we knew the damage was momentous.

My older son was summoned by a family friend and went over to help them remove a tree from a house. It was during this lull that I weakly collapsed on the couch, still having trouble absorbing all that had happened. Every few minutes, one of us would find new damage: windows, bricks yanked apart, cracked trees, etc. and always more astounding debris piled up everywhere.

The short respite was broken when the woodcutters returned and my son said, "Mother, I'm afraid we've got bad news. Kinda get ready. It's much worse at your school than here." My mind just wouldn't conceive of "worse than here."

I drug myself up on a new surge of adrenalin and leaped into the car that wasn't hit, tears and all. We had to cut down a few trees across the road just to gain access on the way to the small private school where I had moved in only a few days before.

When we finally arrived it was worse than I could ever have imagined. The one acre yard was so filled with tall trees leaning (various stages of falling) against one another that we had a hard time getting through to the bad part – the four gigantic trees on the school roof. Then there was the fence – all down and many times crushed with over a dozen trees from outside the property. (The final downed tree count was 31 at school and 16 at home. We only counted the really big trees.)

And the sizzling sound on one side of the schoolhouse was live wires scattered in the yard which had suddenly turned to swamp. Even after the electrician took care of the live wires, no one could walk around the building. The debris was too monumental for even the hardiest climber or jumper. I remember tromping through the deeper-than-ankle mud weeping and saying, "I won't be beat by trees!"

The next five days were laboriously spent and so were we. Several loyal parents showed up to hug and sweat as we tried to reach the shocking goal of just being able to walk from the road to the front door! One 12-hour day saw a crew of a dozen workers with half as many chain saws slave in the 40 x 50 foot area on the hardest hit side of the yard where the electric wires had lain sizzling. We would cut a bit on the trees which were virtually spradled out like Pick-up Sticks in the front yard, then we'd jump back as cutting would sometimes trigger the fall of an unstable tree leaning against it.

Our feet even blackened and became infected due to deep mud and no water for washing. I learned why they wear boots in the army as the stench of the deep mud told it all. Our family ran out of food and water but kept on as progress was all that gave us hope.

The storm taught me how important even small kindnesses can be. We were wearing down one day and a friend came by to offer consolation, a quart of icy water and another quart of chicken salad. I cried refreshing tears as we drank and plunged back into the abyss of limbs.

After school started the next week, my students did everything you could do to a log: rolling, jumping, hopping, and even passing them like an old-fashioned bucket brigade. What a live history lesson! The kids loved it when the hurricane cleanup crew arrived, only to discover one dump truck wouldn't haul off all our huge stumps. They even broke their wench trying to load just one stump, and made 16 trips before they managed to take all of them away. (It took an 18-wheeler wrecker to finish yanking them out of the ground first, as the stump grinder could not help due to excess mud and soil on the overturned stumps.)

My class estimated volume as we noticed my small car would easily fit into some of the holes left when the huge trees were gone. I also discovered to my chagrin there is no insurance allowance for "holes in the ground" and it took many trucks of soil to fill them in. That year I became well-schooled on the insurance term "acts of God" which was used for the many things insurance doesn't cover.

That year I saw fear firsthand and lived to grow from it. My family and students found that setbacks call for hope and lots of pulling together. We also learned to shut the drapes and "carry on" the day's task, returning to clean up and grieve when time and energy allowed. For quite a while, I'd work all day, then from 6:00-6:30 open the drapes and cry, gathering my resolve to go home and face more damage there while fixing supper.

We were also shown that "it could happen to us." Isn't this a good time to buy supplies, review safety tips, and cherish your next drink of water?