Who is old enough to remember and share their experience with us? It was way before I was born. But my mom was a teenager and remembers it well. She rode it out in Thibodaux and said the winds got up to 150 mph. She said it was scary and the winds sounded like a freight train all night. They had no power or running water for over 2 weeks. My dad lived down the bayou in Cut Off. They left for the storm. Came back to heavy damage. No power, water, or phone service for 3 weeks.
Post by weatherfrog on Sept 9, 2013 20:45:00 GMT -6
I was 5 years old, but I remember I couldn't sleep with the noise of the wind so my mama held me on her lap in the living room as the door to the outside rattled with the wind. That's all I remember, but its a vivid memory. We lived in uptown NOLA. Betsy also destroyed our fishing camp on Lake Catherine.
Post by bayoubelle on Sept 9, 2013 21:32:25 GMT -6
I wasn't born until a month after Camille, but DH was 6yrs old when Betsy hit. He remembers it vividly and says they lost everything and built back only to have Camille wipe it away again. DH is from St. Bernard and lived in Hopedale for Betsy and Yscloskey for Camille.
Who is old enough to remember and share their experience with us? It was way before I was born. But my mom was a teenager and remembers it well. She rode it out in Thibodaux and said the winds got up to 150 mph. She said it was scary and the winds sounded like a freight train all night. They had no power or running water for over 2 weeks. My dad lived down the bayou in Cut Off. They left for the storm. Came back to heavy damage. No power, water, or phone service for 3 weeks.
It was the best of times and yet, yea, it was the best of times
Well, I was in either 4th or 5th grade. While Betsy was not my 1st storm, it was the 1st one that I remember being so exciting. I remember the preperations and the hub bub going on in the house the day of the storm. Of course back then, you didn't evacuate out of town, you went to a school or such. My parents had moved to River Ridge back in 55, 3 days before I was born. They moved there because it was the highest land they could find. They had been flooded in the 47 storm and had 30+ inches of water in the house for about 3 months, located on Severn and St. Rene.
Back then, River Ridge was New Orleans 23 and was still mostly woods, chicken farms and a few houses. We lived on Citrus Road. It was a dead end "shell" road back then. I do remember the flaps for the attic fan opening and slamming closed until dad went into the attic and fixed them in the open position. I also remember sitting around the table listening to the transistor radio listening to the reports from all over the area by the light of the hurricane lamp. We had heard several reports from Grand Isle....maybe the police / fire dept ? and on the last report from them there was a very bizarre sound as they were blown off the air in the middle of the report.
At some point I remember us all following dad into the den to look at the back windows when he herded us back to the dining room because 2 trees had fallen on the roof. ( those damn Hackberrys ) The wind had been so loud that we didn't hear the trees crash on the house. While I'm pretty sure the eye passed way to the West, there was a lull when my father went out to help the neighbor do something to their roof that was blowing off. The number of trees falling sounded like New Years eve with a bunch of people with M-80 and cherry bombs.
The next morning, you could hardly see the street because of all the trees down. The radio reports were not much since communications were limited. Most info was word of mouth from neighbors. The 1st day or so was dedicated to trying to take some of the weight off the roof from the trees and eliminating any danger on the block.
My parents had "the" gas stove on the block so all the women were using our kitchen to cook. By the 2nd day the neighbors moved picnic tables/chairs/ lamps/ torches to our front yard for the nightly "get togeathers". There was no way to drive because o the trees down so people would walk when they got bored. Word came back about Jefferson Highway being covered by the roof of Hazel Park school that had been taken off by a tornado and about ships and barges being up on the batture..........HOLY COW ! dad, cand we go ? please PLEASE ?
Long story short, there were over 30 ships and over 250 barges that had broken loose and were pushed upriver from their moorings. Some from Avondale were pushed up the river well into St. Charles parish. We were out of school for 5 weeks, out of electricy for 3+ weeks, but it was the best time of my life....well until Katrina. The sense of togetherness in the neighborhood was fantastic. Everyone worked together as one for everyones benifit. As the freezers thawed we all ate like kings before tuna fish and crackers. Fathers took turns staying up at night to watch the neighborhood.
Our "luck" was that the street behind us got power back after about a week and we were able to run an extension cord over the back fence to plug in the ice box so that when the store opened, we cold get things that needed to be cold. The grocery had emermency "hand cranks" for the registers ( like a kid today would know what those were ). Betsy led me to my first job as a "helper" at the local hardware store. When Mr Phillips had been able to get there he was by himself. Since dad always took me there I knew where most of the things were. He didn't have cash on hand so you gave people what they needed and wrote their name and how much they owed on a tablet to be paid later.
Until Katrina, Betsy was for me, the standard bearer for how people SHOULD act in a neighborhood.. As I stood in a friends backyard during Katrina in River Ridge talking with my brother in Houston, he said, " well, I guess you're happy with your birthday present?". As Agnes the wonder dog and I stood in the wind and rain with a Salem Light in my mouth and a matrini in the hand that wasn't holding the phone................Jim, this is as good as it gets without being a kid during Betsy".
If I owned Baskins & Robbins, I would feature a special at all stores in a storms path. It would be a double scoop for the price of a single, but it would be two different flavors of the largest in inventory. Since this would be the servers decision........why of course, it would be called ........................"The Cone of Uncertainity"
Who is old enough to remember and share their experience with us? It was way before I was born. But my mom was a teenager and remembers it well. She rode it out in Thibodaux and said the winds got up to 150 mph. She said it was scary and the winds sounded like a freight train all night. They had no power or running water for over 2 weeks. My dad lived down the bayou in Cut Off. They left for the storm. Came back to heavy damage. No power, water, or phone service for 3 weeks.
It was the best of times and yet, yea, it was the best of times
Well, I was in either 4th or 5th grade. While Betsy was not my 1st storm, it was the 1st one that I remember being so exciting. I remember the preperations and the hub bub going on in the house the day of the storm. Of course back then, you didn't evacuate out of town, you went to a school or such. My parents had moved to River Ridge back in 55, 3 days before I was born. They moved there because it was the highest land they could find. They had been flooded in the 47 storm and had 30+ inches of water in the house for about 3 months, located on Severn and St. Rene.
Back then, River Ridge was New Orleans 23 and was still mostly woods, chicken farms and a few houses. We lived on Citrus Road. It was a dead end "shell" road back then. I do remember the flaps for the attic fan opening and slamming closed until dad went into the attic and fixed them in the open position. I also remember sitting around the table listening to the transistor radio listening to the reports from all over the area by the light of the hurricane lamp. We had heard several reports from Grand Isle....maybe the police / fire dept ? and on the last report from them there was a very bizarre sound as they were blown off the air in the middle of the report.
At some point I remember us all following dad into the den to look at the back windows when he herded us back to the dining room because 2 trees had fallen on the roof. ( those damn Hackberrys ) The wind had been so loud that we didn't hear the trees crash on the house. While I'm pretty sure the eye passed way to the West, there was a lull when my father went out to help the neighbor do something to their roof that was blowing off. The number of trees falling sounded like New Years eve with a bunch of people with M-80 and cherry bombs.
The next morning, you could hardly see the street because of all the trees down. The radio reports were not much since communications were limited. Most info was word of mouth from neighbors. The 1st day or so was dedicated to trying to take some of the weight off the roof from the trees and eliminating any danger on the block.
My parents had "the" gas stove on the block so all the women were using our kitchen to cook. By the 2nd day the neighbors moved picnic tables/chairs/ lamps/ torches to our front yard for the nightly "get togeathers". There was no way to drive because o the trees down so people would walk when they got bored. Word came back about Jefferson Highway being covered by the roof of Hazel Park school that had been taken off by a tornado and about ships and barges being up on the batture..........HOLY COW ! dad, cand we go ? please PLEASE ?
Long story short, there were over 30 ships and over 250 barges that had broken loose and were pushed upriver from their moorings. Some from Avondale were pushed up the river well into St. Charles parish. We were out of school for 5 weeks, out of electricy for 3+ weeks, but it was the best time of my life....well until Katrina. The sense of togetherness in the neighborhood was fantastic. Everyone worked together as one for everyones benifit. As the freezers thawed we all ate like kings before tuna fish and crackers. Fathers took turns staying up at night to watch the neighborhood.
Our "luck" was that the street behind us got power back after about a week and we were able to run an extension cord over the back fence to plug in the ice box so that when the store opened, we cold get things that needed to be cold. The grocery had emermency "hand cranks" for the registers ( like a kid today would know what those were ). Betsy led me to my first job as a "helper" at the local hardware store. When Mr Phillips had been able to get there he was by himself. Since dad always took me there I knew where most of the things were. He didn't have cash on hand so you gave people what they needed and wrote their name and how much they owed on a tablet to be paid later.
Until Katrina, Betsy was for me, the standard bearer for how people SHOULD act in a neighborhood.. As I stood in a friends backyard during Katrina in River Ridge talking with my brother in Houston, he said, " well, I guess you're happy with your birthday present?". As Agnes the wonder dog and I stood in the wind and rain with a Salem Light in my mouth and a matrini in the hand that wasn't holding the phone................Jim, this is as good as it gets without being a kid during Betsy".
If I owned Baskins & Robbins, I would feature a special at all stores in a storms path. It would be a double scoop for the price of a single, but it would be two different flavors of the largest in inventory. Since this would be the servers decision........why of course, it would be called ........................"The Cone of Uncertainity"
Post by caneobsessor on Sept 12, 2013 10:15:32 GMT -6
I am possibly the oldest member of this forum, so, yes, I remember Betsy. I'm sure I've told my story before, but here is it, again.
My husband, my 3 month old daughter and I were living in a tiny rental home in Harahan. I've always said Betsy would have had to use tweezers to pick us out between our two neighbors. On one side there was a family of devout Catholics, who spent the storm on their knees in their hallway saying the rosary. On the other side were staunch Baptists, who were gathered around the mother in the den as she read the Bible. The only damage done to the property was minor. A young Chinese elm tree was blown over on our front porch and, like the rest of the area, we were without power. We did have a gas stove. We were one of the first streets to have the power restored and were able to run a line to our backyard neighbors to operate their freezer.
Over the years, the details of the storm as I experienced it in Harahan have dimmed, because of my dad's experiences in Happy Jack (above Port Sulphur in Plaquemines Parish). Daddy was retired from his regular job, but had taken a part time job with the parish, operating a drainage pump behind his subdivision. He was almost 67 years old at the time. My siblings and I believed he had evacuated, because someone said they saw him leaving the parish,but we could not locate him. We later found that he had started to leave and decided they needed him to man the pumps and he turned around. The storm hit on a Thursday night and we didn't know he had survived it until that Saturday. Not only was I dealing with a newborn baby, but had had an emergency appendectomy when she was just 9 weeks old and was just recovering from that. To say I was a basket case is a gross understatement.
My brother worked for the gas company and was one of the first people allowed back into the parish. He located my Dad and brought him to my house. When I saw him, he didn't look like himself. He looked frail and he could hardly speak. His hoarseness was caused by a combination of emotion and trying to talk over the noise of the storm. He said they were told to operate the pumps at a moderate speed to avoid burning them up. With him in the pumping station were another man who was near my dad's age and two teenage boys. One of the boys would have been sucked out the door, if my dad had not been standing nearby and caught him. At one point they looked out the door and saw the water in the ditch rising. My dad told the other man the water was rising a foot at a time and one of the boys said, "But Mr. Gonzales, that's river water!" They realized at that time that the levee had been breached. My dad decided to run the pumps at full speed, knowing it was the only chance to save some of the houses. If they didn't run the pumps fast enough, it would be no different than if they burned up and couldn't run them at all.
He said throughout the night they were hearing a "pinging" sound and didn't know what it was. The next day they saw that the pressure in the storm had been so low, it was popping the steel rivets out of the structure. Dad became a hero to the neighbors, since his actions did save many homes from flooding.
My sister lived across the highway from my dad's house. As she saw others boarding up their homes to evacuate, she said she wasn't going to board up her windows. She said she didn't have flood insurance and if she was flooded, she would throw something through her windows and say it was water from above. She moved all her furniture to the middle of the rooms to get it away from the windows. A small tornado took much of her roof off and filled the attic with water. The weakest part of the ceiling is the center, soooooooooooo, all of her furniture got dumped on when the ceilings collapsed. She and my brother, who lived in the Buras/Boothville area, lost all they owned to the storm.
By the way, my oldest sister was known as "Betty," but was sometimes called, "Betsy." She was a force to be reckoned with, also.
I'm hoping not to be making any dramatic memories of this hurricane season.
Betsy was the second storm I went through - Hurricane Hilda affected the area the previous October and I was excited about getting a day off from school and having the power going off for a few hours. Hah!
On September 9 we got the word at my Gentilly school that were going home early. We in my third grade class stacked the textbooks on the shelves and moved the desks to the center of the room (the classrooms were surrounded by glass). We took all workbooks, pens/pencils, etc., home.
Oh it was so exciting - until I saw the alert on the TV that our area needed to evacuate in case the London Avenue Canal gave way. Right after that, the power went off. I was scared to death. It was too windy to leave, so we went to the second floor and rode it out. We listened on the radio as one by one, the stations lost power. I remember the whistling wind and the periodic "BOOM". The booms were from all the oak trees that went down.
At daylight I finally got the nerve to go downstairs and go outside. No flooding, but huge trees and power lines down everywhere. By some miracle, all of the trees fell away from the houses (as opposed to what I saw from Katrina in Pearl River County and Washington Parish, where trees fell on houses and chopped them in half).
Some "shock and awe" - one oak tree was uprooted and ended up 100 plus feet away, across the street. Wow!
We were without electricity for some time. Our poor neighbors across the street had boasted earlier about having an "all-electric" house - not very practical. Their refrigerator was some newfangled model that operated electronically - when the electricity went out, they were unable to open it!
I must say that the night of September 9 was the scariest time of my life, until Katrina topped it.
Who is old enough to remember and share their experience with us? It was way before I was born. But my mom was a teenager and remembers it well. She rode it out in Thibodaux and said the winds got up to 150 mph. She said it was scary and the winds sounded like a freight train all night. They had no power or running water for over 2 weeks. My dad lived down the bayou in Cut Off. They left for the storm. Came back to heavy damage. No power, water, or phone service for 3 weeks.
I lived in East New Orleans in a small home in 1964 and 1965. I was born in 1960, so, I recall Hilda and Betsy as a normal 4 or 5 year old would remember.
Hilda was easy on East NOLA. I remember staying home for Hilda and experiencing some wind on our next door neighbor's screen porch.
For Betsy, my family evacuated to the second floor of the Sears building in Gentilly Woods. The streets of East NOLA were mildly flooded. The water reached to about four feet from the front doors of the neighborhood homes. I remember the National Guard driving down the street in an Army truck providing innoculations of some kind.
A bedroom window blew out in our home, and the wind blew in some water, leaves and grass into that room. There was a mess in that room.
We lost an aluminum garden shed, and, I'm sure that the house's roof shingles took a beating.
Hurricane Camille missed even East NOLA, so, it was not as bad as Betsy for us.
Of course, Katrina wiped East NOLA almost off the earth.
Permit me this small lapse into human emotion. I hate Hurricanes and Tornadoes. Live long and prosper.
Post by marshwarden on Sept 16, 2013 23:38:14 GMT -6
I was born in 1952 and I remember the many storms we went through. When I was very young, my grandfather lived in a house directly across from the Schriever Train Depot. The whole family went there for the weekend at least once every month, for all holidays, and every hurricane. The house was old and the family did not feel safe because it would shake and creak and the tin roof would rattle in every storm. My grandfather ran the depot at night and was also the station telegraph (morse code)operator. So, they hung kerosene lanterns in a cleaned-out boxcar, put in army cots and rollaway beds. Set up card tables and chairs, made a cauldron of gumbo, iced down a lot of Falstaff and Cokes and had the neighbors over for a hurricane card playing party. The kids played Battle and the adults played Poker and Bourre. It seems the storms always hit after dark. Luckily, no damage ever occured in the neighborhood. However, there were always twisters out there that tore roofs away somewhere. In 1957 we built a new home in Bucktown off of Bonnabel Blvd., leaving our old home off of Monticello Ave. near the river at the Orleans/Jefferson line. The first hurricane of note there was Hilda. It was my first daytime storm, and I was looking out of our front window facing west as a tornado came down at Causeway and Vetterans Blvd, picked up the Esso(now Exxon)Service Station man from the pump island and tossed him through the stations plate glass window, uninjured. It continued north up Causeway Blvd which was mostly vacant property then, with clam shells in the streets and no cement or blacktop. I remember Betsy, well. I was in the 8th grade. I had gone to St. Paul's as a new boarding student with the Christian Brothers. I was on the 3rd floor of Benilde Hall in the big open-floor dormitory and had been there for just two weeks when Betsy hit. That night the wind screamed and roared in Covington all night as I had never heard wind before. Through the night we could hear the roaring twisters passing over and knocking down and turning giant nearly 150 ft tall ancient long-leaf pines with their foot long needles and cones into 6 ft segments lying broken on the ground. The noise when those 3 ft wide trunks popped and hit the ground was like an explosion. They were all over the campus, but none survived Betsy. It took a month to clean up the mess. Luckily, only one tree came down on a building; the Brother's house, and nobody was injured. My folks back in Metairie had no electricity for two weeks. They were cooking on grand mamere's heirloom civil war era heavy iron pots they used in the fireplace in the old days. They put barbecue charcoal under the Dutch oven iron pots which had 2&1/2 inch legs on the bottom. My mom grew up cooking in the big fireplace in the 1920's when they had neither gas nor electricity, and a big cistern for water out on Bayou LaFourche and Bayou Terreborne. That rainwater was so good to drink, except when the frogs got in one time, and we had to watch out for tadpoles from the tap. I miss being able to go into the field next door in Shriever, and cutting down a cane to chew like candy; it was delicious. But, I digress...
I was born in 1952 and I remember the many storms we went through. When I was very young, my grandfather lived in a house directly across from the Schriever Train Depot. The whole family went there for the weekend at least once every month, for all holidays, and every hurricane. The house was old and the family did not feel safe because it would shake and creak and the tin roof would rattle in every storm. My grandfather ran the depot at night and was also the station telegraph (morse code)operator. So, they hung kerosene lanterns in a cleaned-out boxcar, put in army cots and rollaway beds. Set up card tables and chairs, made a cauldron of gumbo, iced down a lot of Falstaff and Cokes and had the neighbors over for a hurricane card playing party. The kids played Battle and the adults played Poker and Bourre. It seems the storms always hit after dark. Luckily, no damage ever occured in the neighborhood. However, there were always twisters out there that tore roofs away somewhere. In 1957 we built a new home in Bucktown off of Bonnabel Blvd., leaving our old home off of Monticello Ave. near the river at the Orleans/Jefferson line. The first hurricane of note there was Hilda. It was my first daytime storm, and I was looking out of our front window facing west as a tornado came down at Causeway and Vetterans Blvd, picked up the Esso(now Exxon)Service Station man from the pump island and tossed him through the stations plate glass window, uninjured. It continued north up Causeway Blvd which was mostly vacant property then, with clam shells in the streets and no cement or blacktop. I remember Betsy, well. I was in the 8th grade. I had gone to St. Paul's as a new boarding student with the Christian Brothers. I was on the 3rd floor of Benilde Hall in the big open-floor dormitory and had been there for just two weeks when Betsy hit. That night the wind screamed and roared in Covington all night as I had never heard wind before. Through the night we could hear the roaring twisters passing over and knocking down and turning giant nearly 150 ft tall ancient long-leaf pines with their foot long needles and cones into 6 ft segments lying broken on the ground. The noise when those 3 ft wide trunks popped and hit the ground was like an explosion. They were all over the campus, but none survived Betsy. It took a month to clean up the mess. Luckily, only one tree came down on a building; the Brother's house, and nobody was injured. My folks back in Metairie had no electricity for two weeks. They were cooking on grand mamere's heirloom civil war era heavy iron pots they used in the fireplace in the old days. They put barbecue charcoal under the Dutch oven iron pots which had 2&1/2 inch legs on the bottom. My mom grew up cooking in the big fireplace in the 1920's when they had neither gas nor electricity, and a big cistern for water out on Bayou LaFourche and Bayou Terreborne. That rainwater was so good to drink, except when the frogs got in one time, and we had to watch out for tadpoles from the tap. I miss being able to go into the field next door in Shriever, and cutting down a cane to chew like candy; it was delicious. But, I digress...
Interesting. I grew up in Schriever. But Betsy was way before I was born. My mom rode it out in Thibodaux
Post by marshwarden on Sept 17, 2013 13:55:53 GMT -6
Harp, we lived at 111 Gaulding, but the house looks nothing like it was back in the day. The parish mis-spelled the name Paulding; who was a famous author like the other side streets were named for. It was never corrected. Just like Helois, but that was finally corrected/renamed after 50 years to Helios after the sun god as originally named by Alfred Bonnabel; this is in the Bonnabel subdivision area. The people who make our street signs...