We were living in Amelia when hurricane Audrey hit. We were all fairly young, but I remember helping my dad nail boards on the windows and back door of the house getting ready for riding the storm out. As the storm grew worse and the winds increased, more and more, all five of us children along with mom and dad spent a lot of time looking out the windows between the cracks at all the debri flying in the wind. There were full sheets of corrugated tin from roofs flying through the air like paper. Across the street Downey Homes had just finished roofing a recently framed new home. It colapsed under the driving winds. Our neighbor raised crickets for fish bait in a portable tin shed on skids, and at the height of the storm we watched it roll across our back yard and in to the ajacent vacant lot. Needless to say, the cricket inventory was lost. All the while the water was rising out in the yard. The level had reached the top of the blocks that the house was built on, and through the noise of the storm we could hear the cries of the mother cat, and her new litter of kittens, us children had for pets!! They new that the water rising to the top of the blocks, put them in danger of not suviving. All five of us kids were crying knowing they may not survive, so like a trooper our dear old dad weathered the storm and went out and knelt in the standing water and driving wind and rain, and one by one reached up under the house and ducked them one by one under water and out to safety. We rode out the storm with all of them in the house with us!! Now, after all these years, I found myself coming back to Beaumont to help my sister make repairs around her home brought on by hurricane Rita!!
__________________
Larry L. Dancer
happydancer2@gmail.com
dancer_larry@lacoe.edu
I was thirteen when Audry hit. I remember that on the night prior to the storm hitting all the kids in our neighborhood were out after dark running around in the gale force winds. After we went to bed, and this was before air conditioning, at about 4 AM we awoke to the cat howling and doors slamming. My father gathered us all up and put us in the car and we went to what was then Thomas Jefferson High School on twelth street in Port Arthur. We stayed on the second floor until about 11:30 that morning and things were looking much calmer. They told us that the worse had passed and it had hit at Cameron. We went home and at about 1:30 in the afternoor all heck broke loose. I remember sitting and looking out the front window watching objects from the neighbors behind us, flying from both sides of the house and then banging into each other in the middle of the street. Seems that that was all over about 3:30. Our willow tree in the back yard had fallen onto our kitchen but only did minor damage to the roof. The next day while my dad was at work, my brothers and myself were in the back yard clearing the tree when out mother told us to come in the house. She told us that she had heard that hundreds of people had died in Cameron and that we all shoud kneel and say a prayer before we went back to work. That, and the evacuation for Hurricane Carla (to Silsbee which we now know was not nearly far enough) was the beginning of my lifelong fascination with weather phenomonon.
I was 16 years old that summer. It was the first summer for me to work. I was working for my uncle, Steve OConor, who owned Beaumont Fire Extinguisher Service. We were located in the garage behind his home, just down the block from the Central Fire Station. Some may remember him as being Beaumonts Fire Chief for many years.
I remember standing at the window of my bedroom watching the fury of the storm that passed over Beaumont. The trees bending, swaying, rain pounding the window. Then there was the quiet time. Soon this was gone as the winds picked up again. After the storm had passed, I was called in to work. We were the franchise dealer for Spencer Chemical Co., a provider of dry ice, for an area extending down to Port Arthur and over to Lake Charles, La. We had a refrigerated rail car on a side track downtown that contained our bulk dry ice storage. I went out to that car alone, to load dry ice in the back of the company pickup. The ice came in 50# blocks. We had a band saw with a special blade for cutting the ice to size for customers. However, at this time, there was no electricity throughout Beaumont, so saws didnt work. In the 50s dry ice was used quite frequently for freezing and storage. We worked some long days after the storm, supplying ice to people around Beaumont. We couldnt saw the blocks, so were selling them in solid 50# blocks and people had to break it up to place in their freezers and refrigerators. When we couldnt get railcars in, the ice was trucked over from Houston, Texas. We practically sold it out of the back of the truck in the driveway. A few days after the storm the ice cream vendors started appearing again. Many may remember these trucks passing through their neighborhoods selling ice cream bars and sandwiches. Dry ice was used to keep the refrigerated containers cold. They were all complaining because we couldnt cut the ice in to thin slices to place on top of their products. The heavy stuff crushed their ice cream bars, so they complained. I had to chuckle today as I wrote this thinking, that a crushed ice cream bar was the least of many peoples worries at that time.
Except for myself and 2 other people, my uncle employed firemen as part-time help on their days off. It was, I believe, through the fire department network that we heard of a need for tires in Cameron Parish. We had a 2-1/2 ton flatbed truck we used for deliveries. We loaded this truck with old tires and one of the firemen drove the load to Louisiana. The urgent need for the tires? They were used to burn the massive amount of livestock that was lost in the storm. I understand large holes were dug and the animals burned in them.
I heard of finding people chained up in trees in an attempt to ride out the storm, only to be drowned. This, I dont recall, if was from news articles or came from word of mouth of those going into the devastated area.
My ancestors are habitants of Johnsons Bayou, La, dating back to the early 1800s. So they have had experience with many storms throughout the years along that coastline.
I thought of Audrey when Rita came roaring through. Beaumont will rebuild so will the Golden Triangle. The Louisiana and Texas coastline will rebuild. There are strong willed people in that area and they dont like being pushed around, especially by Mother Nature!
William P. OConor Houston, Texas Posted by BeaumontEnterprise.com with permission
Loretta Koonce Flowers (Vidor) & Betty Koonce Waller (Port Neches) formerly from Nederland
My sister & I were 16 & 14 at the time and were spending the summer with our Grandparents, Emanuel & Celema Miller, in Grand Chenier. We all went to bed feeling that all was well and we would only have bad weather the next day. We were awakened around 4:30 a.m. by howling winds. My Uncle, his wife and 3 babies walked over and we were listening to the news, before we lost electricity, and realized that things were going to get much worse than expected. We made plans to go to a nearby barn loft. We looked out the front door and saw water was rolling in with white caps. We quickly loaded everything on a long board and proceeded to walk the few feet to the barn. The water was knee deep already. Just as we got inside the barn, the corral broke from all the debris. We saw the water rise to 8' in less than 15 minutes. We could put our fingers through the floor of the loft and touch the water. We remained there until around 4:00 p.m. when the water began to recede, but only to about 3'. We set up in our Grandparent's home that was now off the blocks and slept a restless night. We were convinced that we were the only survivors and the Gulf had extended its boundries. The next day, another uncle had walked the 15 miles to check on different members of his family and informed us that everyone was meeting at a home nearby. We walked to this home and there we met the helicopter pilots that would take us to the old ferry landing and then bus us to McNeese. A couple from Lake Charles took all 8 of us in and our parents came after us the next day.
The good Lord took care of us that day, because there were many times that we thought the barn was going to go. The children were 2,1 & 3 months. We had one bottle and no food and they never cried or ask for anything to eat. We lost many members of our family that day. Our Mother is gone now and I guess that is a blessing, because what Audrey left, Rita took with no trace, and I don't know if she could have handled that.
Believe me, there are more details to this event and one day I will sit down and write the entire story.
Thanks,
Loretta FlowersPosted by BeaumontEnterprise with permission.
-- Edited by BeaumontEnterprise.com at 15:15, 2007-06-27
