I was sixteen years old, the same age as my daughter is now, but I remember that night like it was yesterday. And it still makes me cry.
In fact, I remember the entire week.
A week before this picture was taken, (photo credit: NOAA) I had major surgery. My appendix was removed as was part of my abdominal muscles where the appendix had slowly ruptured and healed over and over creating scar tissue fused to the muscle. Pretty nasty stuff. I was confined to my bed, unable to get myself up without significant help from my parents. Lousy when you're a sixteen year old girl. I just laid in my room, watching squirrels play on the rough bark of the 40 foot pine tree just outside my bedroom window.
On my dresser was a small black and white tv set. I didn't need color to see what was coming. For a week, I did what all of us in south Louisiana do during hurricane season: I watched the storm coverage as Andrew tore across the Atlantic. Then, watched in horror as it leveled Florida. Then, finally watched in terror as Andrew took aim at us.
I lived in Baton Rouge, where New Orleanians go to evacuate, so we had no plans of leaving. The storms usually die back enough to not do us much harm there. Usually. Andrew had other ideas.
During the night, I woke up sweaty realizing the power had gone out taking the air conditioning with it. The sound outside was horrible. Wind howled, rain slammed into the windows in sheets, the whole house shuddered. A few minutes later, a light streamed through a crack in my bedroom door. Daddy was coming with a flashlight. "It's ok, baby girl, we're just going to the hallway." Putting the flashlight between his teeth, he slid his arms under me and carried me to the hall of our '60s ranch house where he had put the twin mattress off of our guest bed.
In the dark, we listened. Branches and debris banged into windows and skittered off the brick. The stop sign at the t-junction at the end of our driveway rattled until it came loose and hit the house. The aluminum awning on our back patio heaved and groaned in the wind. Rain thundered on the metal. It seemed like hours that we laid there, silent, listening, eyes too frightened to blink, much less sleep.
There were so many sounds that night. The only thing we saw of Hurricane Andrew was the lightning. As we eventually became used to, if not comfortable with, the sounds of the wind and rain, the sounds changed. Deafening pops, like gun shots, came from the back corner of the house where my room was, just on the other side of the thin veneer of the bedroom door from where I lay. A different sound added to the cacophony. Deep groans, like a dragon in pain.
Mom and Daddy pulled my little brother and I close as we all realized what that sound was. The 40 foot pine that stood outside my window had been whipping in the growing wind, and now the whip motion had stressed the tree too much.
Blind to what was happening, we listened to the sound of what could very well be the last minutes of our lives as we sat in the dark knowing that the tree was coming down. And come down it did. The groans, creaks, and pops were tremendous. Protesting loudly in the raging wind and rain. It fell: parallel to the length of our house. Never will I forget that sound. Never will I forget what it felt like to know that we may not survive the next few minutes. Andrew spared us. Had the tree fell across the house, we would have certainly been added to the toll Andrew took on Florida and Louisiana that August in 1992.
I'm far from a weather pansy having grown up where I did, but let me be very clear: I have a healthy respect for a storm like that.
Years later, I would watch in tears as Katrina destroyed New Orleans. Then watch with pride as she rose from the grave. This week, I've watched Florence setting her sights on the Carolinas.
Just because a storm isn't aimed at me, it doesn't make it easier to watch it bear down on others. I know what that feels like. I've felt that fear, that loss, that pain. Wind doesn't have to be the biggest culprit for a hurricane to take so much from so many. Water is a powerful foe, too. To those in the path of Hurricane Florence, this Louisiana girl is keeping you close to my heart.