LA_MERC_Dirge
October 20th, 2005, 05:16 PM
It's long but, 'nuff said...
http://www.nola.com/archives/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-20/1129445262280570.xml&coll=1
Hurricane yields haunting memories
'Riding out' storm proves bad decision
Sunday, October 16, 2005
By Bob Marshall
Outdoors editor
Even now, almost two months after the event, marina owner Louis Viavant and his girlfriend Beate Schroth can't remember when it finally hit them, when they realized Viavant's talk about "riding out" Hurricane Katrina in his house on Chef Menteur Pass made the transformation from figurative to literal.
It might have been when Viavant looked out the big picture window to notice the water outside was above their heads. It could have been when the rising water pushed them out of the attic into a howling ocean of towering waves and blinding rain driven by a wind so hard the droplets stung like BBs. And it should have been when they found themselves taking refuge with equally frightened alligators, snakes, nutria and raccoons in a debris pile stacking up against a line of trees -- trees that should not have been there.
But time has a way of blurring when you spend 10 hours in the heart of a hurricane, so they can only guess.
"At some point, it finally dawned on me. It all started making sense: The house had been floating," Viavant said. "And, you know, it would have been OK if it kept floating. Things didn't really get bad until it started sinking.
"Up till then, I think we were handling things OK. It didn't look like a bad decision."
Well, maybe.
Every hurricane prompts a certain percentage of locals to shrug at official warnings and proclaim greater confidence in their homes, their land and their wits. They do it with a familiar declaration: "I'm going to ride it out."
For some, it's a fatal mistake; we never learn their stories.
For the lucky ones, such as Viavant and Schroth, it's a mistake they live to regret. This is their story.
"I knew this was going to be a big storm, and it was heading for us," said Viavant, 56, who has lived on Chef Pass for 12 years, managing his Chef Harbor Marina. "But one thing I'd learned in the past was that, while the forecasts on the wind might be close, the forecasts for storm surges were never accurate. The water never got as high as they said it would.
"So, I figured, this is a strong place. It's been here for 50 years. We built it tough."
The modest wood-frame house sat on brick risers about five feet off the ground and about 100 feet from one of the canals allowing boats to access the marina's slips. Two large oak trees stood on the north side. And, because the house was built on the mud dredged from the marsh to dig the marina canals, it was about five feet above sea level. That bolstered Viavant's resolve.
"I figured it's been through Betsy, Camille -- all of 'em," he said. "I was going to stay here. I felt safer here."
Schroth, 57, listened to her boyfriend of eight years discuss the options. She trusted his confidence. She also knew she couldn't leave without him.
"If I leave, I'm going to spend all my time worrying about him," she said. "I thought that would be worse than any storm."
Hurricane experts on TV and radio disagreed -- vehemently. They said Katrina would be a killer to anyone in low-lying, flood-prone areas. Viavant's house was in both.
Chef Pass is a deep, twisting channel that cuts through a narrow isthmus of marsh separating Lake Pontchartrain on the west from Lake Borgne on the east. Scientists for years have warned that, if a Category 4 or 5 hurricane comes ashore east of the city, its northeast winds would push those lakes across the metro area, with catastrophic effects.
Katrina was a Category 4 storm. It was forecast to come ashore east of the city. The Chef Menteur area would catch the full blow of Lake Borgne as it was pushed toward New Orleans.
Still, Viavant stayed, and Schroth stayed with him.
"When I went outside Monday morning around 6:30, it looked like I was right," he said. "The wind had been rocking during the night, coming out of the northeast, but there was only maybe four inches of water on the ground. That storm surge hadn't materialized -- as usual."
It was the last time he would be right.
"Thirty minutes later, I'm in the house when the wind picked up, the house started rocking, and water starts coming up through the floor," he said. "I looked outside, and the water had come up at least five feet in 30 minutes. I knew we had to get moving."
So they started moving personal items -- and their three cats -- into the attic. They moved with purpose, but not panic, Viavant recalled.
"It was like, OK, we've got to go higher. No problem."
Wrong again.
"About five minutes into this, I looked out of the big window that faces Chef Pass, a window that's maybe eight feet tall," Louis said, "and it was like looking into a fish tank. The water was over my head.
"So I looked out the windows on the other side of the room, and it was only about two feet high, and there were tree branches. For a moment, I was disoriented. Then I figured the wind must be piling the water up on one side of the house, but not on the other side where my oak trees were, it wasn't as high because the house was sheltering us from the wind.
"I decided the water was coming up so fast the attic wouldn't do. I decided we should put on our life jackets, climb out that window and get in those tree branches."
They did. But what they didn't realize is they would be entering a far more violent world, a world of wind roaring like a jet engine. The water already had risen to the eaves of the house, a good 12 feet from the ground, as Viavant and Schroth huddle in a pile of debris for shelter.
"It was unbelievable. It was like a white out from blowing rain and water," Viavant recalled. "You couldn't see but a few feet, and the air was just filled with all manner of flying debris. When the waves crested, the wind picked up anything on the top of the wave and just took it away like a missile.
"There were 2-by-4s, 2-by-6s, pieces of houses, branches, raccoons, nutria -- anything that got off the water even an inch was picked up and carried away. We were getting pelted with all kinds of stuff. I was worried."
The debris pile on the lee side of the house soon became a resting place for an odd collection of refugees. Nutria and raccoons sat quietly next to eight-foot alligators and coiled snakes.
"It was really strange, because animals that normally would be enemies were just living peacefully together," Viavant said. "It was like they all realized they were in the same boat and had declared a truce.
"One time, this gator turned his snout and bumped a nutria. They looked at each other, and then turned away, as if they were saying, 'Ain't this a mess!'
"And none of them bothered us, either. But we weren't comfortable with them being so close."
Stuck for two hours in relative safety, Viavant had time to "begin collecting my bearings." Slowly his mind began putting together odd bits of information it had been collecting since 6:30 a.m. Like the oak trees that were out of place. And the tree line. And the position of the house.
The truth came slowly: Viavant's house had been lifted off its moorings by Katrina and floated at least 250 feet into what would have been the pass.
"I should have realized it earlier, but there was such confusion, such noise, and we were in such a hurry, it never occurred to me the house had moved," he said.
Around 10 a.m., the wind suddenly stopped. The eye of the hurricane had arrived.
"It was like someone turned a switch. It went from howling to almost dead still, then to dead still," Viavant said. "There wasn't blue sky above us, but it got very, very bright. And the air was just filled with thousands of seagulls and other birds, flying in circles. I guess they knew they were stuck in the eye."
The break in the weather presented an opportunity. Viavant and Schroth decided they would climb back into the attic, which was still just barely above the water, collect a few items. Their "door" was a vent hole in the side of the roof. It almost became a death trap.
"We took off our life jackets because we couldn't fit into the hole with them on," Viavant recalled. "Then we both scrambled inside.
"But as soon as we got in, the wind picked up again. It went from calm to screaming in a minute or two. You could feel the house begin turning, and you could hear it breaking up. Beams were snapping, and wood was ripping off. It was like a string of firecrackers popping.
"We had to run for it. We literally dove through that hole, and just after I got out, the house sunk. It just disappeared beneath the water, which was just as noisy, rough and dangerous as before."
Only now they had no life jackets, and no shelter. For the first time, Schroth began to believe she had come to the end of her life.
"I looked around and it seemed like we were in the middle of the lake," she said. "The wind was screaming, the water was rough, you couldn't see anything, and we didn't have life jackets.
"I figured this is it. This is how it all ends.
"But then, Louis started yelling, 'Swim, baby! Swim! Swim!' "
They swam until they reached an island of debris in the raging water. It turned out to be a piece of the attic from which they just fled.
"The edge of it was turned up, and there was a little space in there that I could crawl into," Schroth said. "I got in there to get away form the stinging rain, and all the things flying through the air. At this point, I was down to my underwear, because the wind had ripped my nightgown off. Louis gave me a shirt to put on, and I just huddled in there trying to stay warm."
Viavant found protection by rolling himself up in a section of roofing tarpaper. They stayed in those positions for at least two hours as the southern half of Katrina pounded the coast on its way north.
"I'm laying there with just face open to the sky, and it was a really weird picture," Viavant said. "The rain and debris hitting that tarpaper sounded like someone was throwing rocks at me. And the things passing over my head in the sky was amazing. Sticks, boards, animals.
"Raccoons kept trying to climb out of the water onto a stick or a branch, and the wind would just pick them up and take them away. All that was passing just above my face."
Around 4 p.m., the winds began dying down. Viavant knew the worst was over, but staying alive would depend on finding better shelter. They found a customer's 28-foot cabin cruiser in what was left of the marina. It was a 250-foot swim, but the boat's batteries were full. The refrigerator had beer. There were dry clothes, too. Painted on the stern was the boat's name: The Escape.
The couple spent three days on The Escape, waving off one rescue attempt by the Coast Guard because they didn't want to go to the Superdome. Eventually, they were picked up by Department of Wildlife and Fisheries agents and dropped in Slidell.
Schroth says one of her lingering memories was the first night on The Escape.
"We had just come through this terrible ordeal, something that I really thought might kill us. But that night was one of the most beautiful I ever saw," she recalled. "There wasn't a cloud anywhere, and, because the city's lights were out, the stars were incredible.
"I remember telling Louis how lucky we were."
And she had one other thing to tell him.
"I said, 'Remind me never to listen to you about hurricanes again.' "
http://www.nola.com/archives/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-20/1129445262280570.xml&coll=1
Hurricane yields haunting memories
'Riding out' storm proves bad decision
Sunday, October 16, 2005
By Bob Marshall
Outdoors editor
Even now, almost two months after the event, marina owner Louis Viavant and his girlfriend Beate Schroth can't remember when it finally hit them, when they realized Viavant's talk about "riding out" Hurricane Katrina in his house on Chef Menteur Pass made the transformation from figurative to literal.
It might have been when Viavant looked out the big picture window to notice the water outside was above their heads. It could have been when the rising water pushed them out of the attic into a howling ocean of towering waves and blinding rain driven by a wind so hard the droplets stung like BBs. And it should have been when they found themselves taking refuge with equally frightened alligators, snakes, nutria and raccoons in a debris pile stacking up against a line of trees -- trees that should not have been there.
But time has a way of blurring when you spend 10 hours in the heart of a hurricane, so they can only guess.
"At some point, it finally dawned on me. It all started making sense: The house had been floating," Viavant said. "And, you know, it would have been OK if it kept floating. Things didn't really get bad until it started sinking.
"Up till then, I think we were handling things OK. It didn't look like a bad decision."
Well, maybe.
Every hurricane prompts a certain percentage of locals to shrug at official warnings and proclaim greater confidence in their homes, their land and their wits. They do it with a familiar declaration: "I'm going to ride it out."
For some, it's a fatal mistake; we never learn their stories.
For the lucky ones, such as Viavant and Schroth, it's a mistake they live to regret. This is their story.
"I knew this was going to be a big storm, and it was heading for us," said Viavant, 56, who has lived on Chef Pass for 12 years, managing his Chef Harbor Marina. "But one thing I'd learned in the past was that, while the forecasts on the wind might be close, the forecasts for storm surges were never accurate. The water never got as high as they said it would.
"So, I figured, this is a strong place. It's been here for 50 years. We built it tough."
The modest wood-frame house sat on brick risers about five feet off the ground and about 100 feet from one of the canals allowing boats to access the marina's slips. Two large oak trees stood on the north side. And, because the house was built on the mud dredged from the marsh to dig the marina canals, it was about five feet above sea level. That bolstered Viavant's resolve.
"I figured it's been through Betsy, Camille -- all of 'em," he said. "I was going to stay here. I felt safer here."
Schroth, 57, listened to her boyfriend of eight years discuss the options. She trusted his confidence. She also knew she couldn't leave without him.
"If I leave, I'm going to spend all my time worrying about him," she said. "I thought that would be worse than any storm."
Hurricane experts on TV and radio disagreed -- vehemently. They said Katrina would be a killer to anyone in low-lying, flood-prone areas. Viavant's house was in both.
Chef Pass is a deep, twisting channel that cuts through a narrow isthmus of marsh separating Lake Pontchartrain on the west from Lake Borgne on the east. Scientists for years have warned that, if a Category 4 or 5 hurricane comes ashore east of the city, its northeast winds would push those lakes across the metro area, with catastrophic effects.
Katrina was a Category 4 storm. It was forecast to come ashore east of the city. The Chef Menteur area would catch the full blow of Lake Borgne as it was pushed toward New Orleans.
Still, Viavant stayed, and Schroth stayed with him.
"When I went outside Monday morning around 6:30, it looked like I was right," he said. "The wind had been rocking during the night, coming out of the northeast, but there was only maybe four inches of water on the ground. That storm surge hadn't materialized -- as usual."
It was the last time he would be right.
"Thirty minutes later, I'm in the house when the wind picked up, the house started rocking, and water starts coming up through the floor," he said. "I looked outside, and the water had come up at least five feet in 30 minutes. I knew we had to get moving."
So they started moving personal items -- and their three cats -- into the attic. They moved with purpose, but not panic, Viavant recalled.
"It was like, OK, we've got to go higher. No problem."
Wrong again.
"About five minutes into this, I looked out of the big window that faces Chef Pass, a window that's maybe eight feet tall," Louis said, "and it was like looking into a fish tank. The water was over my head.
"So I looked out the windows on the other side of the room, and it was only about two feet high, and there were tree branches. For a moment, I was disoriented. Then I figured the wind must be piling the water up on one side of the house, but not on the other side where my oak trees were, it wasn't as high because the house was sheltering us from the wind.
"I decided the water was coming up so fast the attic wouldn't do. I decided we should put on our life jackets, climb out that window and get in those tree branches."
They did. But what they didn't realize is they would be entering a far more violent world, a world of wind roaring like a jet engine. The water already had risen to the eaves of the house, a good 12 feet from the ground, as Viavant and Schroth huddle in a pile of debris for shelter.
"It was unbelievable. It was like a white out from blowing rain and water," Viavant recalled. "You couldn't see but a few feet, and the air was just filled with all manner of flying debris. When the waves crested, the wind picked up anything on the top of the wave and just took it away like a missile.
"There were 2-by-4s, 2-by-6s, pieces of houses, branches, raccoons, nutria -- anything that got off the water even an inch was picked up and carried away. We were getting pelted with all kinds of stuff. I was worried."
The debris pile on the lee side of the house soon became a resting place for an odd collection of refugees. Nutria and raccoons sat quietly next to eight-foot alligators and coiled snakes.
"It was really strange, because animals that normally would be enemies were just living peacefully together," Viavant said. "It was like they all realized they were in the same boat and had declared a truce.
"One time, this gator turned his snout and bumped a nutria. They looked at each other, and then turned away, as if they were saying, 'Ain't this a mess!'
"And none of them bothered us, either. But we weren't comfortable with them being so close."
Stuck for two hours in relative safety, Viavant had time to "begin collecting my bearings." Slowly his mind began putting together odd bits of information it had been collecting since 6:30 a.m. Like the oak trees that were out of place. And the tree line. And the position of the house.
The truth came slowly: Viavant's house had been lifted off its moorings by Katrina and floated at least 250 feet into what would have been the pass.
"I should have realized it earlier, but there was such confusion, such noise, and we were in such a hurry, it never occurred to me the house had moved," he said.
Around 10 a.m., the wind suddenly stopped. The eye of the hurricane had arrived.
"It was like someone turned a switch. It went from howling to almost dead still, then to dead still," Viavant said. "There wasn't blue sky above us, but it got very, very bright. And the air was just filled with thousands of seagulls and other birds, flying in circles. I guess they knew they were stuck in the eye."
The break in the weather presented an opportunity. Viavant and Schroth decided they would climb back into the attic, which was still just barely above the water, collect a few items. Their "door" was a vent hole in the side of the roof. It almost became a death trap.
"We took off our life jackets because we couldn't fit into the hole with them on," Viavant recalled. "Then we both scrambled inside.
"But as soon as we got in, the wind picked up again. It went from calm to screaming in a minute or two. You could feel the house begin turning, and you could hear it breaking up. Beams were snapping, and wood was ripping off. It was like a string of firecrackers popping.
"We had to run for it. We literally dove through that hole, and just after I got out, the house sunk. It just disappeared beneath the water, which was just as noisy, rough and dangerous as before."
Only now they had no life jackets, and no shelter. For the first time, Schroth began to believe she had come to the end of her life.
"I looked around and it seemed like we were in the middle of the lake," she said. "The wind was screaming, the water was rough, you couldn't see anything, and we didn't have life jackets.
"I figured this is it. This is how it all ends.
"But then, Louis started yelling, 'Swim, baby! Swim! Swim!' "
They swam until they reached an island of debris in the raging water. It turned out to be a piece of the attic from which they just fled.
"The edge of it was turned up, and there was a little space in there that I could crawl into," Schroth said. "I got in there to get away form the stinging rain, and all the things flying through the air. At this point, I was down to my underwear, because the wind had ripped my nightgown off. Louis gave me a shirt to put on, and I just huddled in there trying to stay warm."
Viavant found protection by rolling himself up in a section of roofing tarpaper. They stayed in those positions for at least two hours as the southern half of Katrina pounded the coast on its way north.
"I'm laying there with just face open to the sky, and it was a really weird picture," Viavant said. "The rain and debris hitting that tarpaper sounded like someone was throwing rocks at me. And the things passing over my head in the sky was amazing. Sticks, boards, animals.
"Raccoons kept trying to climb out of the water onto a stick or a branch, and the wind would just pick them up and take them away. All that was passing just above my face."
Around 4 p.m., the winds began dying down. Viavant knew the worst was over, but staying alive would depend on finding better shelter. They found a customer's 28-foot cabin cruiser in what was left of the marina. It was a 250-foot swim, but the boat's batteries were full. The refrigerator had beer. There were dry clothes, too. Painted on the stern was the boat's name: The Escape.
The couple spent three days on The Escape, waving off one rescue attempt by the Coast Guard because they didn't want to go to the Superdome. Eventually, they were picked up by Department of Wildlife and Fisheries agents and dropped in Slidell.
Schroth says one of her lingering memories was the first night on The Escape.
"We had just come through this terrible ordeal, something that I really thought might kill us. But that night was one of the most beautiful I ever saw," she recalled. "There wasn't a cloud anywhere, and, because the city's lights were out, the stars were incredible.
"I remember telling Louis how lucky we were."
And she had one other thing to tell him.
"I said, 'Remind me never to listen to you about hurricanes again.' "