On August 29th, 2005, I was in Waveland Mississippi helping a group of weekly rental motel residents with pets survive the most powerful and destructive storm in American history. That was not by plan or intention, but there they were, and there was I. Headed our way was the mother of all hurricanes with a forecast record breaking storm surge that ended up being four feet higher than the twenty-eight feet the professional weather guessers figured it might be.

Together, we faced Katrina as a survival group under my direction. Amid all the destruction and death that came with the eye of Katrina and her record storm surge (32' beat the old record by 7.5'), all thirteen and six dogs survived, and did in a most unconventional way. We abandoned buildings, got out in the storm, and swam in the surge until we got rafted up in the lee of a concrete block building.

These abandoned people with pet burdens decided to do things my way as I claimed to be the world's best and oldest hurricane survivalist with no one there to say I wasn't. When the surge came as I very accurately predicted it would, we abandoned our buildings and went out into the storm where the rising water got to be eight feet deep.

My guess had been seven, but I'd be surprised if anyone in Waveland would have guessed any in the area we were in. The shopping center across the highway is where evacuees park their extra cars, RVs, boats and such, an area FEMA calls a no-flood zone. My credibility soared when we began getting the water I said we'd get, but that was the water the Hurricane Center said we'd get. I can only assume Hancock County residents think their Wal-Mart and Save-A-Center parking lots are much higher than the ten feet they really are.

I didn't know the elevation. I just knew I would be up to my nose in storm surge at the highest point of land I could find, and that was a damn good guess. Until the water came, my people all thought I was a nut case inflating boats and floats, running safety lines, talking about swimming and abandoning motel rooms and the elevated building that was our final structure refuge.

Note: We were actually in the bad half of the eye. The very center (the pupil) came ashore just a few miles to the west of us. The right side eye wall went into the bay just a few miles east of us. Waveland was in the very worst part of a very big bad storm. For that matter, all of the Mississippi coast was, but those closest to the storm center get the worst of the wind and the surge.

Today, I am a disabled vet senior citizen, age fifty-six, an arm amputee and a diabetic with active Hep-C. On August 28th, I was in Biloxi getting VA medical treatment when ordered to evacuate. In the past, I evacuate toward projected landfall, but this time I went home to projected landfall. The address on my Mississippi driver's license, 6168 South Beach Blvd, ended up being a stone throw from the point plot for Katrina's Mississippi landfall. For sixty hours, the storm remained on the projected track, very rare, but not for the monster megcanes that have so much mass in motion only mountains can steer or stop them. Those who know hurricanes knew exactly where this one would land and be bringing.

We were not a team of Navy SEALs holding a reunion. I went home to Waveland on purpose knowing I could be useful. I volunteered and was offered a weekly rental motel, keys and all. In effect made the supreme commander of the Waveland shelter for people with pets. They were just a bunch of po folks trying to live, and four of their group were drunk as preparation to die. They posed a bit of a challenge.

I rode in just ahead of the storm with a utility trailer full of useful hurricane survival gear and supplies, to include three inflatable boats, plus I had a great deal of knowledge and experience on the subject of hurricane survival. They had very little of anything they were going to need, and they were in three small groups that didn't know each other or associate. Most adults were over fifty or very near and in worse shape than I was. Those that weren't were a couple with two young children. Seemed daunting before I found out how disabled and/or drunk some were, then I find out about an elderly couple that might be a problem. A four-hundred-pound diabetic woman living in a room with a frail skinny husband and three dogs might be a problem for a SEAL team with Coast Guard assets. The woman telling me they might be a problem was a drunk non-swimmer.

They eventually put their faith and trust in me, although the survival tips I was telling them made no sense and went against what the experts on TV had just been telling them. Fortunately, the credibility of experts and professionals was way down while that of men with lots of actual hurricane survival experience was way up and in much demand, especially those who come prepared.

They wanted in a shelter, but the professional told them there were none for people with pets. They wanted to evacuate, but there were no resources to evacuate. These people were poor, had no money near the end of the month, no vehicle, no evacuation resources, just some beer and cigarettes, the staples of poverty. The other staple is a poor dumb animal. Misery does love company.

In the quaint words of a drunk Loozieanna coonass, "We is nothin' but f--ked!"

It did appear so. These people were left to die in the community they were trapped in, misled by the experts and abandoned by the professionals, terrorized, feeling helpless and hopeless. I know some of them think God answers prayers and sent them the world's best hurricane survivalist and just in the nick of time, too. Maybe She did, but if I am the world's best at anything, the world is in pretty sad shape.

The world just might be, for I do believe I know more about hurricane survival than anyone living or dead. I am positive I know more about hurricane storm surge survival. I doubt any other mammal has logged even one tenth the hours IN hurricane storm surge waters. I mean physically IN the water.

There is no contest, and I never kept any surge logs. I do what I do out of a fascination with very violent weather, and I am most at home and comfortable in water. Always have been. Frighten me, I look for water or make some. Scare me there, I go to the bottom and cuddle-up with a gator.

Very few can say they have three hours of swimming in hurricane storm surge waters over their head. Katrina gave me that many at Waveland, Mississippi, where she made a third and final landfall on August 29th, 2005, right around ten in the morning. As I recall, a very windy day until it suddenly wasn't, but then came the water and you wish you had the wind back.

I never wish that, for the storm surge is safe sanctuary, the best and safest place to observe a hurricane in progress, preferably upwind of the debris-producing matter very near the water's edge if not on the beach of an inland waterway, bay, or bayou as a starting point. The two great forces of wind and water combine where the storm surge is, and together they destroy what neither one acting alone can.

To learn how they do that and why some structures survive while others fail, you must see it up close and personal, sober if possible. To deduce what occurred by studying the aftermath leads to wrong conclusions. If not, then we are stupid on purpose.

As a mature and serious observer, I am usually alone and much prefer it that way, but for Katrina I had the company of twelve unfortunate souls and six dumb animals whose great fortune was the self-sacrificing love of their hapless owners who could not evacuate or enter the community shelter with a pet. None could bear to leave a pet to face the storm alone, all stuck on the tracks of a natural freight train, bound by the chains of love. There may be a soft spot in God's heart for these people, but to me, the fire department, and the police department, these people were foolish idiots. I stayed with them, because I AM a foolish idiot with several decades of foolish idiot experience.

It would seem the people and the pets benefited from a chance encounter with a mature hurricane interceptor who knew how to survive these things with a look like he may have survived a few dozen and several just barely, talking about Camille like a former mistress. Very few of the 7,000 citizens of Waveland chose to remain with their property to ride out the mother of all storms, but many of those who did, perished trying. We thirteen and six dogs didn't, all fine, just very soggy and shook.

Many low-income renters survived by seeking shelter IN the water, said by experts to be the primary killer, charged and convicted in nine out of ten hurricane deaths. I believe a good defense attorney could help storm surge beat that rap. Hancock County has a slew of soggy and shook survivors who could be called to testify that leaping into the warm brackish water is what saved them. Some of the good citizens of Waveland were among them. Saved by the water.

A miracle? If it was, I predicted it and promised it. To kill terror and bolster confidence, I would have promised they would all stay dry and get ice cream. I just stopped at what did that. Failing meant breaking out more booze and passing that around. There wasn't anything else I could do if they remained terrified, feeling helpless and hopeless. I could sure get them all drunk with a gallon of rum, them and their dogs.

I was being intentionally bold and cocky, acting fearless in the face of this approaching great danger that I knew was headed right at us even before the hurricane winds arrived. I can read the winds and tell you exactly where the center is and over several timed observations know which way a cyclone is moving. I am also very good at finding a woman's birth canal, then figuring out where she went. It ain't rocket surgery even in the dark.

Here's how you do that in the northern hemisphere. Hold a flag in your left hand with arm extended out on your left side into the wind (imaginary works as well and is far more convenient). When you get your head under the flutter by slowly moving your entire stiff body, you are facing the eye of the storm with your outstretched left arm pointing directly into the wind. If you keep on doing that check as the storm grows in intensity, and you find that you keep turning to the left, that's good. If you keep turning to the right, that's bad, but if you are always facing the same direction, that storm center is coming right at you bringing the greatest wind along with the highest storm surge. That is very bad. Put the flag away and get busy. Your day is about to get very exciting and be most challenging.

You MUST remain calm and clear-headed in a hurricane. These people did not need to know what I knew. If they knew what I knew, they'd have as much crap in their pants as I had in mine. What they had to have was courage, hope, and confidence in their fearless leader helper sent by the Waveland Fire Department to help them (A tad off-white lie).

I could not lead terrorized chickens to a pail of juicy bugs. That would be like herding cats into a floating basket or pushing a chain along a pole. Their only real hope was to sober-up, toughen-up, stay together, pull together, help each other, and survive as a team under experienced intelligent direction, no argument, just do it. Follow me!

I knew the water was coming, and I guesstimated how high. I kept telling them it would and showed them on the walls how high I thought it would. No one could believe that. Camille didn't get that area of Waveland wet. True, but Camille didn't land there. The bomb we dropped on Hiroshima didn't get Tokyo dirty, either.

They were on the easy side of Camille, but would be on the bad side of Katrina, a much bigger badder storm, but the problem throughout that region was the belief that they had weathered the worst that nature can muster, and there would never be another Camille in their lifetimes. Whatever Camille did, nothing was going to top. Those residing in Hancock county using the Camille yardstick simply did not understand hurricanes, and I don't recall ever meeting anyone who did not do that or assume they were seasoned hurricane vets. Even Harrison county needed to understand that as bad as Camille was, she was a small hurricane, small but very fast, and the combo of small and fast moves a cyclone through quickly. Very large and slow moving was Katrina.

Note: Saffir-Simpson think central pressure and eye-wall wind speed is all there is to sizing a hurricane. Katrina finally and forever proved otherwise. Total mass and potential energy are far more telling and punishing over a much larger area. A Saffir-Simpson cat-5 can't get as big and bad as a Katrina, a Rita, or a Wilma, because when tropical storms get that big, the eye will not remain stable and goes through cycles of decay and regeneration, sending the entire storm up and down the scale when only the central area is being effected. The rest of that storm remains cat-5 on a grand scale.

New Orleans got back-handed by a monsterous cat-5 hurricane. Mississippi got the bad forehand. Hancock County got the eye wall of a cat-4 which rapidly disolved to cat-3, which is why wind damage is pretty much the same from East New Orleans to West Alabama. The dome of water is little effected by fluctuations in the eye wall, so Waveland got cat-5 storm surge with cat-3 wind. Katrina, Rita, and Wilma are all megacanes in their own class, Sonny's Biblical storm class, all three category one Biblical storms like Gilbert. Noah faced a cat-3. Sodom dealt with a cat-5 as did Gamorah.

If megacanes are the wave of the future, cat-5 hurricane building codes are a MUST, but it is very important to remember that hurricanes come in small, medium, and large. With hurricanes, size, forward speed, pressure, and mass are factors as important as wind speed. Whatever parameters used, a Katrina must be cat-5, a Camille a cat-4, or your scale loses credibility and usefulness.

Before we lost power, I saw the Hurricane Center downgrade Katrina from a five to a four, then project four to a three and thought they were foolish to do so, because I could see it was only the eye blinking. They did the same thing with Rita. Wilma was different. That entire storm degraded, because Wilma spent much of its mass and energy parked over the Yucatan. I say once a storm reaches cat-5, leave it be and deal with a cat-5 hurricane. If it arrives as something less than expected, explain why it wasn't so bad. If your downgraded storm was much worse, explain why we're paying you.

They downgraded Katrina, but I didn't; furthermore, that was not just a cat-5 hurricane. That was the very rare monster cat-5 of the type we might see two or three times in a century. The last one was Gilbert which hit a remote region of northeast Mexico but devestated all of the beaches in Texas. I was in the eye of that megacane, so there was no way I'd relax and let my guard down for Katrina, nor was I going to underestimate such a rare beast.

The pros were doing a great job until they began getting eye wall data that indicated a weakening storm. I thought they learned their lesson, but they did that again with Rita. Maybe it is hard to learn lessons in a bunker building or a boring board room, but get blown down, rolled around, then sucked out to sea, you'll crawl ashore much brighter. As the coonasses say, "I guaran-damn-tee ya dat!"

All through the night, while all of Hancock County relaxed a bit and the Big Easy felt a bit more easy, I readied the survival gear and set safety lines, making hourly rounds to the three motel rooms and the one small house way out on the back lot, pumping up the survivor candidates and going over the plans, making sure all understood the plan, the fall-back plan, and the alternate fall-back plan, and were fully onboard with all plans. Each visit came with a brief lesson, also a storm story time with question and answer session.

I was very much like a busy bee going from flower to flower. The flowers, after two in the morning with no power, were like sleepy people who are being bothered by a bumble bee with a two-million candle power flashlight and a storm umbrella. I could not have been more excited and was determined to whip this motley crew into a seasoned hurricane survival team that was ready to enter the Olympics.

I have no doubt they thought I had been sent by the Special Olympics, or there was an empty bed in the VA lock-down psyche ward. There was just so much to teach and so little time for them to learn, but how a person could sleep at a time like that was always beyond me. That was not my first Waveland hurricane spent up all night busy-beeing while everyone else slept. It was the first time no one threw anything or threatened to call the cops. These people really did want the hurricne help and company, which was a first for me anywhere in Mississippi where everybody knows hurricanes better than any hurricane x-spurt. Before they wanted my help, one drunk ex-con pointed out, an ex is a has-been and a spurt is a drip under pressure.

This might be the best place to introduce my fellow survivor candidates, but keep in mind, I knew very little about them, learned little more during the storm, and wanted nothing to do with them after the storm, making no effort to stay in touch. I didn't like them very much when I met them, and experience only taught why. I found them in four groups and left them three days later in three groups only they were fighting among themselves except for the two loners who returned to being loners. In the order in which I met them:

Group one--the drunks:

Olivia Reed--Hispanic female, age 45, single, living alone in the little house way out on the back lot near a swamp with a German Shepherd named Boo, no money, no wheels, depending on an ex-con ex to take her to a place he thought was safe.

Darryl Reed--white male, age 47, knows everything, has a high school diploma, cocky, fun-loving, wants to party first, enjoys scaring the frightened females.

Rose Jeffers--Hispanic female, age 36, friend of Olivia's, depending on her, stuck with her, and Olivia is stuck with and depending on Darryl. Rose is very quiet, very frightened, can't swim, and I frighten her with my storm surge forecast and hurricane survival stories that Darryl mocks. The three are together in the little house, undecided as to stay or leave, but will drink with Darryl until Darryl decides.

Billy DeBruan--white male, age 49, tall, thin, scruffy white beard, unopinionated, hard to get anything out of or put much into, agrees with everything and clearly understands nothing, has an old truck but will follow Darryl and drink with Darryl. His "boy" is a Chow named Cisco, the scurge of the Texan Motel as Cisco doesn't like dogs and has no idea he is one. I am not sure what Billy is, but I think he is older than I am by ten years. He is, in fact, younger by six, been a rough life made rougher by leaving decisions to men like Darryl who only appear to be wise and in control with a plan. And Darryl does have that high school diploma thing going for him.

Group two--the family:

Robert Abadie, white male, age 37, short, tough, scrappy, very opinionated, in control, needs no help from nobody, and refuses a hundred dollar bill to take his family far away from Waveland, which baffles me, irritates me, and as the storm bears down I grow to hate this hard-headed coonass man who is abusive to his wife, his kids, and his precious dog, a boxer named Buster, a dog he beats the crap out of for barking, but it's his dog, his wife, his kids, and Robby don't want any man talking to any of them, much less petting any. I do realize that we are going to need this very able bodied alpha male, but following my lead, and I just don't see that happening. No way will I ever be part of anything he leads.

Colleen Abadie, white, very busty female, age 36, a real stand-by-her-man woman even when her man is a proud, over-confident, opinionated, loudmouth bonehead whose decisions need distance and strenuous objection. Good mom, good woman, good swimmer, good at making the best of every bad situation and complaining little, befriending anyone trying to help her family.

Aarin Saurage, female age nine, Colleen's girl from a previous marriage, very quiet and very terrorized by her bellicose step-father. I very pity this poor girl and gave her my new girl's bicycle which so upset Robby post Katrina he went looting to get his son a better bicycle.

Richard Abadie, age six, son of Robby and a dry sponge when dipped in the ocean of adult male knowledge and experience. Unfortunately, he will grow up to be just like his daddy.

Group three--the loners:

Carol Cupp, a huge white female age 53, easily the most disgusting human being I ever met in my entire life. I can't begin to understand her, the man she married, or the motel life they live with three dogs that go where they please and bark at everything. The stench of their room and the sight of Carol lying in the dying chair she does everything in has supplanted the horror of two Nam tours with a new fresh horror of twice bursting into Carol Cupp's room.

Mike Cupp is Jack Sprat and as worthless a man as I ever want to meet.

Group four--the refugees

Alan came to us from Bayside Park and was at the place the drunks were planning to evacuate to. He arrived in bad shape and joined the drunks.

Peter is a young man who wandered into camp after the water went away, looking dazed, alone, wet, hungry, and needing his mommy. He found one in Coleen. I made a comment critical of his twisted philosophy and that was pounced on by Robby, something on the order of walk a mile in his shoes before speaking at his campfire. I moved on.

Again, these are my perceptions, flawed, incomplete, unfair, and in no way correct PCwise, but to deny having them or gloss over them robs you of the true state of the hero's mind. I'm not proud of the way I meet and quickly judge people, then wait for them to prove me wrong. Survival dictates you do it that way, and I love surprises. When I am wrong, I am always pleasantly surprised. Rose was a pleasant surprise.

Before the dawn which arrived with hurricane-force winds, we had a loosely-knitted survival group signed on to my leadership and my plan for our group survival. My plan had a fall-back plan and an alternate. The plan was simple. Hunker down in your rooms until the rooms no longer feel safe, then we all make our way as a survival group to an elevated storage building we dubbed the Alamo, an old windowless, interior wall-less house on piers that survived Camille. There we'd build a fortress of stored furniture and mattresses to ride out the storm, but if water came into that building to a level of two feet, we'd raft-up the inflatables and ride out the storm IN the storm. We would ride the remainder out in the lee of a giant oak tree that stood in the space between the Texan motel and the Alamo, all connected by colorful safety lines. The inflatables and floatation devices were inside the Alamo ready for launching, all with the necessary ropes and snap links attached.

At first light, Katrina was still dead-on for a Waveland landfall circa ten A.M., with a predicted twenty-eight-foot storm surge wherever it hit, but if it hit us, a foot or two, but possibly ten needed to be added due to the shallow run-up and the wrap-around bay. I figured the highway at twenty, the motel at twenty-two, seven feet up a wall was a hand-width shy of where the water ended up being just a few hours later.

Note: I was off by eight feet on my Hwy 90 mean sea level elevation estimation, and the storm surge at Waveland was 32' owing to the shallow run-up at that constricted end of the Mississippi Sound and the bay effect, and I forgot to deduct a third for inland equalization, because we were well away from the beach. As cool and aloof as I was acting, inside I was anything but, and wasn't thinking straight.

The storm surge record had been 24.5' set by Camille in 1969. When I look back, I didn't calculate anything, because too many parameters were simply a guess. It was all done in my head and my oversight was cancelled by my bad guess to produce uncanny accuracy. How you get a right answer when every estimated variable is wrong is a mystery I never could explain to any math teacher. I just knew we'd be in deep water and my gut was telling me not to waste any time preparing a fortress of junk inside the Alamo, because if we used it at all, it wouldn't be for long. We were going to be in the water.

My biggest hurdle would come when it was time to leave that old elevated storage building that had a wooden floor at my guesstimated twenty-five-foot grade, our fall-back position when the three-foot lower motel rooms filled with water. I thought that wood frame building would be too unsafe to remain in if water became two-feet deep on the inside, or knee level, the point at which most pier supported wooden houses become houseboats.

If my gut instincts were correct, water was sure to go to an adult chest level, but possibly even higher. Suppose the highway was twelve or fifteen feet above sea level (12' is the actual elevation). I guessed twenty. At what point would that building rise from its pier supports and become a houseboat in a cat-five hurricane. After knee level it was too risky to find out.

I did share that concern and warned them that, at that time, I would order the abandonment in favor of Katrina's womb. When the critical and crucial event arrived, I made the decision and gave the order with authority and conviction. Each and every one left that building and got into the storm without a whimper or a whine, argument or protest, remained calm, very orderly like a chain of cats crossing a slippery pole to get into a leaky basket, every other one carrying a dog that wanted to stay, and four were big dogs that wanted to stay the most.

I was sure those people were going to end up in the open rafters of that old building and would die there when the building crumbled. I was sure, at some point, they would want out, so I sent Robby into the rafters with a safety line to secure and then toss out a window opening for me to tie to the tree where I would be waiting. He goes up, tosses the line out, and I secure my end to the tree, try taking out the slack and the other end falls out of the window to land between me and Robby, now back from doing what I ordered him to do. My incredulous look said it all, so he says, "You didn't say tie it."

I sent him back up. This time, I said, "TIE IT!"

They nothing but amazed me. I honestly didn't think they would follow me. I did not save those people and could not save any. I could save me, maybe the kids. They saved themselves and saved each other. I guided and directed their survival effort from the water, and did until they were all safe, then stayed until the National Guard showed up. Maybe I'm a hero, but on that day, heroes were dime a gross. Miracles were even cheaper.

Katrina, the storm of a million great stories at a cost of two-hundred grand a story and a life for every thousand tales. Many think Katrina was one wicked bitch, pure evil, a category one biblical storm bred in the bowels of Hell. The name means pure, but pure what, evil?

Don't you believe it. I will tell you what I told those two kids to make them look forward to the water coming as high as I said it would while they were busy inflating the inflatables like poor kids with expensive new toys that needed lots of water (two inflatable kayaks and a pontoon paddle boat).

I told them that the god who created all things also created hurricanes, and created them so that the heat and wet from the hot wet areas could be sent up to the cold dry areas, making a nice warm area where America is, and without that divine genius air conditioning system, the Earth would be either too hot or too cold.

I told them that Katrina has a job to do, a very important job, plus she blows down old and weak things so that stronger, healthier, young things can have room to grow. She flushes out our rivers and streams, fills our reservoirs, and restocks our ground water tables, not out to kill or hurt anybody, but we do get in the way, and we do build things that don't belong where we build them.

I went on to tell them about the voice they will hear. Every hurricane on land has one best described as a banshee wail. This wail is caused by high winds passing over exposed pipes, tubes, and busted ducting, producing a harmonic symphony by an orchestra of amateur and intoxicated musicians that changes pitch and volume with wind speed. The awful sound, like a junior high school band warming up with no teacher in the band room, is a constant and ramps up to a terrifying wail when higher winds arrive in gusts and bursts, the destructive winds that come like an angry giant taking in a deep breath and then blowing.

Note: Katrina's voice nearing the eye wall was deafening and like a hundred freight trains all converging on the same crossing. Easily the worst I had ever heard, but one block up-wind was a large pipe and culvert supply yard. I'm sure that was the explanation, because she lost her voice when the winds came from the opposite direction after the eye passed over.

Hurricanes absolutely terrify kids, and in a hurricane we all become kids wanting our mommy to hold us tight and make it go away, but it won't, and it only gets worse as it shakes the house, breaks the house, picks up trees to beat the house, and is very much like a giant monster with a name, determined to get at kids to kill them. At least a male storm (tornado) is a nameless wind that is all huff and puff but is over quick, much like most men have...well, you know.

These kids were not going to be at all terrified. I told them that was the voice of Katrina and she is yelling her warning, RUN RUN RUN, and when they hear her yell RUN RUN RUN, they were to take cover in the concrete shower stall with their mother. Then, after each bad blow, we'd all go look at the damage she did to Ed Lott's precious little motel and to a strip mall across the highway, go right out and have a look around when Katrina was telling us it was safe to do so, warning us when to get back in our rooms, then screaming to take cover. That became a fun game their boxer dog had fun playing. In the open skiff where the other dogs were terrified, Buster wanted to play RUN RUN RUN.

Those people were damn lucky they got me and not some other hurricane survivalist. Any other would have limited a survival effort to humans only, but with that group, the supreme commander would have had no followers; furthermore, their mutts had to be treated as helpless children.

I understood the deal having recently lost a little chihuahua to an owl. That god damn owl flew off with my baby and ripped my heart out by the root. I understood the deal, which is not to say I liked it. I understood and undertook that challenge, but adding animals to a survival challenge greatly complicates matters and greatly jeopardizes the people. In deep water, big anything in a panic will drown everything it can climb on or grab. I would never attempt it again with any dog larger than a cat.

Four of the six dogs were big dogs and all four of the women were on the hefty side, abundant of butt 'n bosom, but Carol was huge, 400 lbs if she was an ounce, possibly an unkind guesstimate as good as my other guesstimates but morbidly obese is the unpleasant reality.

Note: Telling my version of these events while staying kind, polite, and politically correct became a challenge much greater than group survival in the bad eye of Hurricane Katrina. I'm sure a good editor can fix this, but just as sure that if one does, the harsh reality and cold conclusions will become a moving and heart-tugging survival story suitable for The Reader's Digest. I will NOT be a party to the Hollywooding of MY experience. I will go to my knees and publicly apologize to any woman or child I may hurt by telling it like it was as I recall the events in my way of self expression.

At least Rose was little, but Rose said she was a non-swimmer terrified of water. The mother of the two kids, Coleen, claimed to be a good swimmer with kayaking and canoeing experience. Olivia, about the same size as Coleen, a stout busty average, thought she'd be okay and wasn't prone to panic. I had a serious problem with those other two and those four big dogs, all big babies because they were raised to be child substitutes with no more idea how to survive in nature than their owners did.

Much of thev early morning portion of the storm was spent just outside of the motel rooms watching the storm destroy Waveland as the intensity grew. As the eyewall drew near, we were frequently chased inside and forced to take cover. Lulls allowed for going out and having a look around. It was during a lull at around ten in the morning that Robby looked across the highway and noticed a lake that had never been there before, and soon noticed a swift river flowing west where highway 90 had always been. He turned to me and said, "Look at that."

I did look at that and said, "THAT is the Gulf of Mexico, and THAT is headed this way."

He could not believe THAT, so he walked to the edge of the river, squatted, then immediately began walking back with the river right on his heels. When he came to stand before me, the water began seeping into our shoes as he is saying, "You are right. That is salty water."

In my mind and in my plan C, my two-person kayak was for the mother and the two children. The one-person kayak was for Carol, and the pontoon inflatable would serve as a raft for all the dogs. The other adults would all swim alongside and hang on, reducing wind drag and helping to anchor our floatilla of inflatables. I intended to place Rose beside me so I could keep an eye on her and keep her from going into a panic. At the last minute, while up in the rafters the second time, Robby spotted an old jon boat skiff we might be able to add to our navy.

With some great effort and over my objection, we added a jon boat skiff by freeing the old boat from its rusty trailer, patching a hole with styrofoam, and bailing out the hundred or so gallons it held. There was no freeing that boat of its dead-weight cargo of outboard motor. In the precious time we took to do that, I'd estimate ten minutes, the water went from knee level to waist level.

A hard-headed father wanted that boat for his dog, kids, and wife, in that order. He just went and got the boat but needed help. Several of us pitched in. I made do with the damn thing, but saw that boat as the biggest threat to the survival of the group, and just hoped it would remain afloat with that useless huge motor weighing down the stern. If the boat swamped and sank, all those big dogs would be climbing all over people trying hard not to drown, also clawing our inflatables to ribbons.

Multiple, multi-compartment inflatables rafted up have a greater advantage, and we had plenty IF adults remained in the water, which none were willing to do. The feeling of many afterward was, thank god we had that boat. I never told them how lucky they all were, or how close we came to being a disaster at sea. Had I made an issue of that boat and challenged Robby as commander, I think it very likely Robby would be their new leader, and I'd be telling the sad story of what happened to those foolish boat people.

Robby is a strong, capable, over-confident, mule-stubborn, little Cajun man who thinks he can look after his own family with no help from anyone, a hard man with chips weighing heavy on both oppressed shoulders. Convincing him otherwise took some doing, and he never was totally convinced, always suspicious of my motives and intentions, especially when I offered him a hundred bucks to gas-up his truck and take his vulnerable family well away from Waveland while the getting was still good.

Others took my escape money and left, but not proud Robby. When the water I predicted came, that very much impressed him, because he was a local who was absolutely positive it wouldn't, and he stayed because he was so sure the talking heads were exaggerating the storm to scare people away. He became my second in command until I commanded something he disagreed with. That boat was it, but when I assisted him and others were joining me, he appreciated that and returned to his place in the group. Being a young strong male, that group very much needed him.

My other able-bodied man was the ex-con, Darryl, fun-loving ex of Olivia who is Rose's best friend. On the eve of the storm's arrival, Darryl was having fun with this and stringing the gals along, offering them a ride to safety "when he was good and ready." Billy, the old man, was in on that top-secret great-escape plan with Darryl, and the four were planning to party until things got bad, then go to Bayside Park to stay with a friend they all knew, a man by the name of Alan.

Had they done that, they would have gone from the frying pan into the fire, or the toilet bowl into the sewer system, for Bayside Park went twenty feet under. We only went eight under. Alan ended up with us and looked like he went through the sewer system to get to us after being flushed along with the debris of his shack. He was sober, strong, and he climbed and clung to a pine tree. Few could have done what he did. None of them could have, not in their condition, but those two non-swimmer gals couldn't have done what Alan did stone sober in the best day of their youth. The old man, Bill, had seen his tree climbing days come and go many moons ago.

Darryl was getting a big kick out of my visits to prepare the gals for the challenge. When I'd ask Darryl if he was staying or going, he'd remind me that he had a high school diploma. He messed around and pissed around until the Sheriff imposed a strict midnight curfew, picking up and jailing anyone caught on the streets. Those four dumb asses were very drunk by then.

I must confess taking great pleasure informing those drunks that they were mine for the duration, and seeing the looks those women gave Darryl. His look was priceless to me. Bill obviously hadn't given any thought to what would happen to his dog if he were stopped and arrested, which he would be with a deputy in a cruiser posted at every major intersection. He wasn't too happy with Darryl, either, and the storm was now bad enough that they needed to do something survivorish or get drunker.

That look got better when I said, "That diploma will come in very handy, now....best sober up. Katrina will eat drunks alive. The sheriff only jails em. You'll get into a shelter that way, but any dogs just get left on the road."

When it was all over, Darryl took me aside and very much surprised me by saying, "Sorry I was such an ass last night. I really do appreciate everything you did and all the knowledge and experience you shared. I was just plain scared shitless and wasn't sure what to do. It was a relief when we had no choice but to do what you said. Then I was cussin' and blamin' you. Some of that might get back to you. I want you to understand where all that was coming from."

Note: I am putting his words and the words of others in direct quotes with the understanding that these are conversations as I best recall them many weeks later. If I err, I am human, but they all are, even their dogs are. The rich who evacuated but left their spare vehicles full of gas in the shopping center parking lot right across the street aren't. Those people are the assholes, but well insured assholes. The disadvantaged of Hancock County could have driven those vehicles to a place of safety, saving lives and property, but that would have required emergency management prior planning and preparation. None of that was evident in Mississippi or Louisiana, two states that are ate-up with emergency managers, rich assholes, and dependent humans. Read Commentary on the state of emergency management.

Rose, a chubby little Hispanic gal, had been my most terrified, my greatest worry, and I honestly gave her and the fat lady, Carol, little chance of survival. Both were likely to drown somebody trying to stay alive, but they both had enough fat on their bodies that neither needed a life jacket as they were positive boyant. If you can just get a fat non-swimmer to relax in deep water, they'd be fine and no threat to others, but a large person in a major panic is a major threat to all within their reach. Carol could reach for Robby's boat and capsize it.

I had every intention of letting Carol drown while keeping others away from her, but there was hope for Rose. After Rose abandoned the drunks, opting for sobriety and survival, I spent a great deal of time talking to her, helping her calm her fears, getting her to believe in herself and survival. When the waters came and were over our heads, I found Rose treading water behind me, helping with the dog loading. I smiled and said, "I thought you couldn't swim."

She thought, then said, "Just keep me busy. Don't let me think about this, and I'll be fine."

Indeed, Rose was very fine and showed her true colors early on. She hung on my every word and was ready to do anything I said must be done. As the storm was reaching critical winds near the eye wall, I looked across the parking lot to where Darryl and Olivia were gathered at Billy's room and said, "We need to get those people over here, NOW."

I was saying that to a group but was looking at Rose when I got to the emphatic NOW part. She took that as a direct order and simply took off running, ran right out into a fury and was very nearly hit by a large limb that could have crushed a pickup truck. We all just stood there, amazed to see her do that and make it to the other side, then during the eye wall white-out, we see her run back, having to detour around that limb where she became visible. She arrives sopping wet, wind tunnel type wind blown, puffing and panting, then says, "They're coming."

Fortunately, Rose had no idea that what she just did was impossible. I told her she could swim and swimming was no longer impossible. I thought about telling her she could fly just to see what a chubby little Mexican gal flying around in a hurricane looks like. I witnessed many courageous acts that day, but Rose stood out in my mind as the most courageous actor.

When you take on any survival challenge, fear is the first enemy you must defeat, and try to kill dead. If fear ever resurfaces, you must pounce on it and slap it down. Fear weakens and immobilizes, and is very contagous. Fear muddles clear thinking and instills a defeatist attitude in people who MUST believe they CAN DO and WILL WIN. Heroes flourish in an atmosphere of fearlessness. Cowards proliferate in the dark corners of fear and terror. I demanded fearlessness and pounced on the fearful and their fears.

I call that becoming Texan, for Texan isn't a birth state as much as it is a state of mind. Texan is CAN DO and stands fearless in the face of death. A Texan says, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the biggest, baddest, meanest sombitch in the valley."

A Texan can be wrong, but without that attitude you can end up dead when you could have been right. It's called upping your odds. Storm survival is a risky business, and it is all about stacking as many odds as you can in your favor. Getting Texan is something anybody can do if they set their mind to it. Ask a Marine, only they get bulldog. This new Army has an expression I absolutely love--MAN-UP. In Texas, we say, COWBOY-UP. We used to say, suck it up and drive on. It is all about positive mental attitude and Can-Do determination. To me, Texan, and was inspired by the heroes of my youth, the defenders of the Alamo, and so appropriate as we were facing this challenge at the Texan Motel with an Alamo and a Santa Anna marching on us from the south.

In some survival situations, for any in the group to be anything less than they can be, dooms the group. We weren't much, but I do believe we were nothing less than we had to be. A frightened Rose in the boat instead of in the water might have been all the dead weight and wind drag needed to doom our effort. On that day, when it mattered most, Rose Jeffers became as Texan as a Texas Ranger, but they were all Texans when they entered the Alamo, even Carol and her Jack-Sprat husband, Mike.

The fears those two had to overcome in order to save their three dogs, tower over those of all others. They were social recluses. The others were at least socially functional and seen out of their rooms quite often. Mike and Carol lived in back, rarely seen, just living lives of quiet desparation in denial of Hurricane Katrina posing any threat to them. Carol, due to her size and diabetic condition lived with a very severe and deadly disability. Right up until ten in the morning, they were both still in denial. This simply was not happening. Water rising fast in their motel room drove them to face their demons and conquer their fears.

By that time, we had to bust them out by coming through the west wall from an adjoining room for there was no getting to them by going to their front door. Had Ed Lott not left me the motel keys with permission to "Do whatever I had to do," Mike, Carol, and three dogs would have died in that room. Yes, they would have had a foot of air trapped near the ceiling, but the water filling the room came from the sewer system. That air would have been toxic methane gas, and those living beings would have drowned each other trying to breathe it. They all wanted out of that damn room and were very glad to see us. They were so Texan by then, they almost said, Howdy.

I knew they had been humoring me each time I made the rounds, but I also knew they'd take everything seriously when the water came, and remember some of the things I had told them. At least they knew the plan, the fall back plan, the alternate fall back plan, and were signed on to those plans, just clinging to the primary plan that called for riding out the storm in the rooms.

They weren't the only people doing that. To one degree or another, they all were initially, and very wary of any stranger bearing gifts and offering help. Before I could lead them, I had to win their confidence. Before I could merge them into one survival group, all needed to recognize me as the leader and see the value of taking on this challenge as a group. All had to be signed on to all plans and contingencies, for once the storm arrived there would be no meetings or training sessions.

I swear, I have never faced anything so daunting and seemingly impossible in my entire life that has been a long series of survival challenges, most done with small groups on a beach. In the Army, that was a specialty in a jungle environment.

In hurricanes, if I'm not alone, I'm with a special forces thrill seeker who wants to try what I say is like freefall parachuting that lasts for hours and the closest thing to combat I have found. Never have I ever tried any kind of survival challenge with a group anything like that group.

The closest was my week-long beach camping adventures on the remote South Padre Island very near the Mexican border with groups of kids, and I took my scout troop on some weekenders out in the desert west of Del Rio, Texas. The people I found at the Texan Motel, I wouldn't want to try camping overnight with in a public park, and except for Coleen and the kids, none would want to.

I didn't much care for any of these people when I met them, and got to hate half of the ones I came to know. I came to admire Rose and like Coleen. The kids were okay, but the dad was very possessive of his whole family, the type that don't even want you to pet his dog.

Rose, Olivia, Bill, and Darryl are low or no-income drunks, not my favorite people in the best of times. In a critical emergency when you need them to be at the best they can manage, they try to be at their worst. When stressed, they will take their stress medication in over-doses and want company. I now understand that Darryl is with Olivia in Alabama running from the law. Rose and Bill have disappeared. Each was given $2,000 by FEMA and there was more from the Red Cross. I'm sure they all went somewhere together and stayed drunk, got in trouble, and are now drunk and broke someplace else.

What can I say about Mike and Carol. I can't say anything good or PC and paint you a clear picture, but I have learned not to judge. I have no idea what happened in Carol's life to lead her to living the life I imposed myself on, or in Mike's that bound him so tightly to her, and she to him, and they to those three damn mutts, but all five were happy existing in one of Ed's tiny and simple 1950-style motor court rooms with a toilet, sink, and a concrete shower stall that Carol could not fit in with enough room to allow water past her to the drain.

They never wanted me to come in when I came to do more talking and more teaching, but their room was on the windy side. I got tired of talking to them through a crack in the door while I was being pounded by wind and rain, always with the potential of something of deadly mass. Just getting there from someone elses room when I made the rounds was hazardous duty, and from midnight on it was nothing but going around the big circle to hit my five stops, one being my RV to toke on a pipe while thinking about what needed to be covered in the next lesson.

For them it was visit number three or four at three or four in the morning in the first gusts of hurricane force wind when I pushed my way in, but was immediately sorry I did that. Oh lord, the stench, also an assault on my eyes and ears. The vision of Carol in that chair would not go away no matter where I cast my eyes, nor would those dogs stop their panic intruder barking, nor the wind stop banshee wailing, nor debris stop banging the walls, door, roof and awning. If that weren't enough, I forgot what I came to tell them.

That was a brief visit and a next to last visit, but the last one was too dangerous, so to get them out, we came through the wall from the rooms on the lee side. She could barely walk. I am trying to assist her with Robby helping and her damn mutts are having a fit. Mike is no help at all. He grabs the little dog that wasn't barking.

Outside on the lee side walkway, the water is now a foot deep, but the eye wall that Rose did her dash in has now passed. We are in the eye which to them seems like just another lull, and no one seemed to notice it was a damn long lull. With water rising steady, they weren't likely to notice anything but that.

The others were now gathered at the south end of the line of rooms on the lee side. A little further south was the big white storage building, the Alamo. They awaited my word. At this point, I was the hurricane man and they were as impressed as they could be, all looking to me to see if I was at all concerned by all this rising water. With all that had happened, they weren't sure the Alamo was still plan B.

When water rises rapidly in your dry world to be where water never is, you will feel a rising panic. If you don't arrest that feeling and get a damn good grip, you are headed for a panic attack and a state of absolute uselessness before becoming a danger to yourself and anyone near you. People in a group look to their leader to decide when to panic. If you are a leader, remember this always. There is NEVER a time to panic. At times when most think there is, you must be abnormally cool and aloof. If you have no sense of humor, develop one. A dumb joke will never be more appreciated.

This is where these people needed to see something Texan, something John Wayne type of Texan. I left Carol to her Mike and took a gander at the situation, then addressed them in a loud commanding voice:

"Here on, we do this as a group. Time to get Texan musketeer. All for one, one for all, ya'll. We will keep our heads. We will even keep out hats. This water will keep on rising, so its on to plan B. Lets move this hurricane party into the Alamo and build us a fort."

I saw smiles and got a few chuckles. To the kids held close by a clinging mother, I said, "See, I told ya we'd get lots of water."

Water was now nearing my knee level and that surge washed the ramp away, so that one step was a three footer. Most had no trouble, but Carol was nothing but trouble, four hundred pounds and about as wide as the door. If the water didn't get four feet deep, she just wasn't going in.

This is when Robby wanted a real boat, which he spotted while looking out the attic window after securing the escape line I wanted to have available for those who would not abandon a structure to go out into deep storm surge. They would end up in the attic and want out. When the little monkey man hopped down from the rafters, he made his case for the boat, but I wasn't looking at the boat he was wanting. I thought he wanted the big shrimper up on a tandem axil trailer. I nixed that bonehead idea inspired by panic, which was all he needed to leave me standing in supreme command of nothing of his.

I had known for fifteen hours that to save the wife and two kids, I was going to have to keep that hot head Cajun following my lead and in the group. Young, strong and capable alpha male types are difficult to lead even when you have command authority such as you have in the military or in a job, but where there is no authority, two alphas are bound to have a problem until one clearly establishes dominance.

Our group had three. I am alpha like an old bull. Daryl, although not as young as Robby, was bigger and an ex-con with prison yard attitude and scary tattoos. I had no tattoos and my face showed no evidence of being repeatedly rearranged. I had very little experience leading alphas without the club of authority and whip of consequences for insubordination.

The only thing I know to do when you lack those things and you must have subordinate obedience is fight to see who is more alpha. Your authority is the ass whippin you are perceived to be able to give, and the consequence of insubordination is the ass whippin you actually give. To maintain authority and control, the ass whippin had best be worse than perceived, at least the equal of perception.

I didn't think I'd ever have to fight Darryl, but could not see how to avoid a fight with Robby. I could tell that Robby figured he could take on an old one-armed man however big, bad, and Green Beret he used to be. Darryl had enough maturity and experience to know I was not a man who avoids fights or loses fights and likely knew some tricky commando stuff. Robby was the type that will fight a man even if the much bigger man is wearing a necklace of sun dried ears and his Ninja suit is all faded, tattered, and blood stained.

I ruled out fighting anybody very early on. Besides having a doctor's excuse, if I have to fight to lead a group of survivor wannabes, piss on em. They can wannabe under somebody else. I was tempted to go do my solo thing elsewhere and wish them all luck, because the rest were a bunch of drunks and Mike and Carol were Mike and Carol. If I couldn't save the mother and children, I didn't want to play.

Yes, I am that pety and childish, but I already told you I am an alpha male, and an old one still out chasing hurricanes and looking for adventure with one arm, one eye, and four terminal illnesses having just gotten out of the hospital. What was your picture, the bastard son of John Wayne and Barbara Bush? Maybe this'll help, and this VA hospital pic is circa Y2K. Something more recent is too embarrassing.

I know the Duke would have puffed up and said, "If you try to go get that ship, I won't hit ya...no, I won't hit ya...like hell I won't...[POW]...now get back in that Alamo, Pilgrim!"

That might have worked for the Duke, but Robby was likely to get up rubbing his jaw saying, "I'm not talking about the shrimp boat, ya big dumb cowboy. I mean the skiff next to it in the tall grass. Now, lets see how you take a punch."

That's where I'd have been willing to discuss it. A little boat had possibilities. After getting all those dogs together, the idea of putting them on a paddle boat was akin to making cats stand on the lid of a stryofoam cooler. When I saw what he was trying to get free of a trailer, I let that stand for a command element discussion and waded over rather than wait with Carol for her four feet of water.

Robby was surprised to see me, and he needed me because he could not release the bow hook with the crank under tension. I could, did, then we had a boat full of water still with a trailer because a very heavy old motor had the stern weighed down. Water is two feet deep as several others joined in.

I believe it was Rose and Darryl, because Billy was busy saving his dog, Cisco. Mike was with Carol and their dogs. Coleen was in the Alamo with the kids and their dog, Buster. Olivia may have been with us. If not, she was helping control her German Shepard, but a group of us managed to move the boat and the trailer after bailing some water out. We pushed both the hundred feet to the open doorway of the Alamo where we discover no drain plug.

Now in three feet of water, Robby hops right in and gets busy carving a chunk of styrofoam into a boat plug while some fed-up body tosses a dog in the boat that is only floating free at the bow. Carol is standing in the Alamo looking mighty fed up as surge water surges all around her pudgy ankles.

At this point, I go looking for my two-man kayak and notice it and Bill are missing. This water is nearing four feet deep, so making my way across the courtyard wasn't easy, and I was wishing I had flippers on, especially after getting tangled up in the same damn old shopping cart I tangled with moving Robby's boat.

I was pissed like a Russian jumpmaster with a planeload of queers, a type of pissed we Green Beret sergeants used to get when everything that wasn't factored into a plan shows up all at once, because I now see that a huge tree has fallen on our tree of salvation and my final refuge is kaput. That one limb that a big man could not wrap arms around was holding up a large fallen tree that two men couldn't put linked arms around. If that limb snapped, the two would press the floatilla to the bottom and hold it there. Both trees now threaten the Alamo right where we needed to build the fortress of junk. I was in no mood to see a big dumb mutt in my biggest and best kayak.

I recovered, then made my way to Billy's room and saw my best, biggest, and newest kayak floating half in and half out of Billy's room. The outside part was loaded with plastic trash bags of stuff. I was livid and waded over to express myself, nose-to-nose and man-to-man. That was when I saw what he had in the front half, at least the nose of it.

Wrapped in motel bedding was a huge chow dog, looking like a swaddled baby bear, just eyes and a nose. I had come to know Billy as a very quiet, unassuming, skinny, white-bearded, simple old man who was a few beers shy of a six-pack with a large nuisance mutt he regarded as his boy. I thought he was pushing seventy, but he is a few years younger than me. I saw a sober man determined to save his baby, and all of the livid melted away like flakes of snow on a steamy roast duck.

I said while indicating the pile of stuff he was adding to, "Bill, I ain't saving no shit. These kayaks are for people, ONLY. This one is for Coleen and her kids."

Keep in mind, we are in the eye of the storm at this time and the water is rising at three inches a minute. I had just wasted ten very precious minutes helping Robby (Coleen's husband) get the boat that was sure to be a disaster, and that was after Robby helped me bust through a wall to get the fat lady (400lbs worth of PC incorrectness) out of her windy-side room during the eye wall with trees falling on the motel and the salty water from the Gulf of Mexico coming on fast like a massive surge of sea water coming at us from every direction. The eye was NOT calm, full of swirling winds and little twisters, simply a cessation of straight-line wind. Keep this in mind.

Bill pleaded in a storm voice so as to be heard, "Not shit, Sonny. This here is Cisco's stuff...his teddy bear. That is his medicine, and his special diet food is in this bag. There's his bowl and his rug is on the bottom. Ain't none of it shit, and ya'll got dem a boat. Cisco cain't be in no boat with dogs. Ma boy cain't swim, Sonny. He is nothin but scared. It was all I could do to get him in this rubber canoe. Please leave us be. We'll be no trouble, I swear it."

I am a duck.

My two-man kayak was for Cisco and his stuff, so I return to the group, now loading dogs and kids in the boat just in case we need to abandon the Alamo. They were more concerned about the trees. I was concerned about the Alamo floating off its foundation blocks to become a houseboat/junkyard eight miles offshore in a hurricane. With the water five feet deep and still rising, now two feet deep inside the Alamo, and with those trees threatening, I made the decision and gave the order, though we now had no safe place to go.

Now, there was the matter of what to do with Carol. She wasn't getting in that boat, and she wasn't getting in that water. Somehow, she got in the Alamo well before there was enough water to accomplish that. She now stood in as much water while in the Alamo, looking to me to come up with an evacuation solution for the morbidly obese female hydraphobic with pack of pets of which the husband is the tallest, quietest, and least trouble.

I had not yet learned some very difficult lessons, harsh realities, and was determined to save all people and pets. All were dear and precious, priceless. Somehow, perhaps at the cost of my own life, the sick, weak, drunk, lazy, and disadvantaged had to survive. My sickest, weakest, and most disadvantaged was Carol. I could add quiet, sensitive, and frightened. To get her through this, she needed to fear me, and if she ended up hating me, I would not be losing anything.

I'd hate myself if I tried to pamper and coddle her through this and she died, or worse, drowned someone who had good chances for survival. I was the same way with the drunks, Darryl, Bill, and Olivia. Rose started off in their company and came to be my sobering assistant. Bill eventually abandoned their company and sobered up to be a loner again. Throughout the ordeal, Carol and Mike, Darryl and Olivia, stayed on my bad side and we never did strike up a friendship.

I put Carol in my one-man, Coleman, five-compartment inflatable rated to safely float 225lbs of people and gear. How do you get a sensitive, frightened, water-shy hippo into a dingy during a terrible storm? You take it off to the side and you tell it to get in that god damn rubber boat and float or stay and be mangled to death by Ed Lott's priceless treasures from twenty-eight years of pack ratting.

I had to rip off the leg cover, but she managed to get in and float. Tippy as hell, but floating isn't swimming. I told her if that boat tips over, she is a pleasingly plump swimmer or a drowning fat woman, and all she has to do to be a great swimmer is simply relax. She looked at me like her mind and her ample ass were still back in her room.

We floated her out and into a hurricane to get rafted up with the rest of the flotilla, now with no tree of salvation to tie off to. In fact, I had to dive for the slip knots that would set us free, then push us out and away from the danger of falling gigantus limbs that grew like horizontal trees, limbs I failed to give any thought to in my search for a tree that could not fall or be swept away. When those limbs had to hold their own massive weight and the weight of another big tree all through Katrina phase II, plan C became an abortion.

Plan A didn't last long, but at least I had everyone except Mike and Carol prepared for that likelihood. Plans B and C were aborted one right after the other, leaving me in a state of shocked numbness in storm surge up to my nose, pushing a precious cargo, but to what, the community shelter, KFC, Waffle House, Wal-Mart?

Never before had I gone through all of the plans to end up in a position that was the same as having no plan at all. When that happens, you play the hand you are dealt each time the grim reaper deals, and survival is all raw luck, because only with prior planning and preparation do you get to stack the deck in your favor and conspire with others to cheat. In a situation such as this, the cards are stacked against you in a serious life and death game that can't be cheated. Outdoors in any hurricane is not at all a fifty/fifty wager without deck stacking.

This wasn't just any hurricane, nor were these people ex-SF storm poker players. All I had done since arriving on the scene was convince these terrified people there was no real danger, nothing to worry about, nothing at all to fear, and I do this for fun. We were going to have fun. We'd keep our heads and we'd even keep our hats. I was pushing evidence that my hurricane survivalist macho bullshit worked. Those Texans weren't at all concerned. We were having fun.

I wasn't, because I knew those poor people were right back in the hopeless position they were in when I rode in on my white horse to give hope and offer help. My horse was in six feet of water about to get all the stuff I had piled on the upper loft bunk wet.

Truth was, the odds were ninety/ten against survival at best, and a good plan that was well-prepared and rehearsed by a good team of healthy young cheaters not burdened by any dumb animals could get that up to even odds in a blow like Katrina. That was why I went to the Waveland Fire Department to try to get those people evacuated. Failing that, I spent all the cash I had giving broke people money to buy gas so as to evacuate. A slew of them had been begging down at the WalMart pumps, and I helped one man at the motel. I held onto a hundred and another hundred for Robby in case he changed his mind, but there came a time when evacuation was no longer an option.

I never felt inclined to give the drunks any, and I didn't find out about Carol and Mike until it was too late, but I'd have given the two-hundred to get those two and their three dogs out of the group. I'd have offered my horse, but there wasn't any door Carol could squeeze through. In hindsight as 20/20 as yours, I should have handed somebody the keys and loaded as many as the vehicle would hold and just told them GO AWAY. In hindsight, Wal-Mart should have given away the gas that would soon be under twelve feet of water.

I didn't think of that, because I am not that altruistic, wasn't going anywhere, and I need my stuff. I could no sooner leave the direct path of the storm of the century than a fifty-five-year-old skirt chaser could get out of the path of Julia Roberts. They were there; I was there; WE were there. Katrina showed up. I had company, but I would have much preferred being alone, probably the same for that old skirt chaser. I think about all I could have done and seen. Him, too, I suppose.

Many times I was asked, "What are our odds, seriously, no bullshit?" Each time, I lied like a husband in bed with your sister, each time leaving you feeling like the Garden of Eden church play rehearsal was still going well.

At ten A.M., with six hours of hurricane force winds, we aren't yet halfway through this badass hurricane when most would be blue skies and chirping birds by this time. We are all rafted up, a floatilla there is no controlling. We are drifting toward open water, the submerged highway, and the huge parking lots beyond that are now an open sea. As we move north, the deep water deepens. It isn't long before my shoes no longer touch the parking lot, and what little resistance I could exert against the drift is gone. Those in the boat and on the floats are exhausted and taking a break, great relief, some jokes and laughter. They are oblivious to the peril as I scramble for a new plan while pretending to be having fun, too.

We MUST have a plan. Someone is sure to look to me and ask what it is, and we are reaching the point where I needed to focus on the storm surge undertow, the most dangerous threat that plan B and C took care of and A had no flood water. Plan D, whatever it ended up being, needed to address the reverse winds, rapidly receeding water, (for it goes away much faster than it comes in) and being sucked down a storm drain and out to sea, a horror those people would not have faced had I not helped them.

I needed a place where I could light up a pipe, pour a shot of rum, kick back, relax, and give this some serious survival expert thought where nobody could ask me any dumb questions and from which I could emerge with the plan and my flippers on like I had them on all along, and had that reserve plan all along, just didn't feel the need to share plan D until there was a need.

I could not believe I was in that kind of storm surge without flippers. There I was, the Hurricane Man on a cruise in T-shirt, shorts, a ball cap and sneakers. Tennis anyone?

In Special Forces, we call this a clusterf--k, and those always evolve in a vacuum of prior planning and preparation. An officer and gentleman would put it in the form of the six P's': Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. The Sergeant Major would make it seven by using Piss-Poor. To a Staff Sergeant like me, it's three P's' avoid a god damn clusterf--k. I never in my life imagined I would lead a clusterf--k dressed like a tennis ball boy.

They knew nothing about storm surge undertow. I saw no point in scaring anyone, and was so sure we weren't going to be dealing with any as the big tree was our salvation. That tree was not going anywhere, and we'd be tied to it on a raft of floatation stuff, always on the lee side sheltered from missles and fast floating crap, typical of my plan C"s".

Very few at the National Hurricane Center even know that a monster undertow exists, but I know it not only exists, it causes hurricane landscaping and drownings that otherwise would not have been. The storm surge doesn't come in like a tidal wave, but it does go out like one. Momentum and suction bring it. Gravity brings it back. Water that is several feet deep over a storm drain, drainage pipe, culvert, or exposed sewer pipe will suck and have a whirlpool that may be hard to see or might not be fully formed. Get caught in a big one, you are dead. One that is six to twelve feet deep over a storm drain would suck Carol through a four-inch slot, kayak, soulmate, mutts and all.

We were headed for an area littered with hidden storm drains at a time when the undertow was due to begin. The water over those drains was twelve feet deep. If I could not arrest our drift, one of them was our destiny. By my guesstimate, we all had one hour to live, and our demise was going to be a horror unimaginable, for I have been caught in a storm surge sucker at night. I survived because I was only in two feet of water and could hold against the sucking until the water level fell low enough that I was stronger than the suction and could free myself. In three feet or more, Hulk Hogan would get sucked in and spit out in deep seas looking like Hunk Hogie.

I am quite sure that many who are lost and never seen again get sucked to bits that won't bloat and float but get dined on by seafood. In most cases, they were dead bodies long before being sucked to bits. The ones that weren't are the stuff of a storm chaser's nightmares. Takes courage to get into storm surge at night, but stupidity to move around in it during the undertow. Day or night, when the water returns to the sea, you need to be tied to something you are certain isn't going anywhere.

The courageous were not in that boat with Colleen, her kids, and five of the six dogs. I won't call them cowards, but they were not where they could help, and were creating more drag, plus over-loading an already way over-loaded boat. The rear of the jon boat skiff had all of two-inches above the water. I am at the bow with the bow line in my teeth, trying to swim the drifting floatilla over to a nearby restaurant with one arm and with tennis shoes on. They were all trying to help by reaching out and paddeling, because I yelled, "PADDLE! You (and a most emphatic rude crude epithet)!"

For all the good that did, two swam and the rest paddled, but at least they were alerted to something that I considered of critical importance. As yet, they had not heard that voice or language. Robby wasn't there, because on his own, he went back to the Alamo to get Carol's insulin. I don't know where they thought we were going that she'd need to shoot up, but I was planning a short cruise to a restaurant in our parking lot.

Had I been a commander on a battlefield, I'd have pulled out a pistol and shot him, then Carol, Mike, Darryl, Olivia, taken aim on Bill and come to my senses to realize I wasn't helping them survive. I wasn't really a commander, and they weren't soldiers. This wasn't war or a battlefield of it, just a quiet little seaside village temporarily eight miles offshore.

Never been that far offshore in a motel parking lot, trying like hell to get to a seafood restaurant that was closed. I can only imagine what the sea life thought:

Hey, they aren't taking us to be pampered aquarium pets, THEY'RE EATING US!

We were headed for a minefield of surge sucker whirlpools, and I became frantic for a way to arrest our drift. Even a deeply in debt loser with a death wish wouldn't wish it that way. The hard part would be watching all who go before you. Even a sucker that just holds you is likely to hold you to death, either under water, out in the dangerous open, or in the path of something you would want out of. Even a small hole (3 or 4' inch dia) where a toilet once sat poses a suck and hold threat. At that point, I hated Robby for putting me in a position where I may have to watch those kids die that way. He wasn't there helping, because he went back to get Carol's insulin. I honestly saw no hope, but gave it all I had for as long as I could.

Again pissed like a Russian jumpmaster until the bow line in my teeth went slack. When just about to surrender to whatever fate awaited us across the highway, I suddenly found myself with a slack line in my teeth. The floatilla was about to run me over. It was like they got that motor running, but if they did, it had one hell of a muffler.

In that surreal unreal environment full of disorientation, it took me a bit to figure out what the hell was going on, but as soon as I did, I came to see a miracle, but this was something like miracle number fifteen. Significant as the first miracle to happen to all of us, and one that saved us all, but I was the only person aware of that fact.

Out of nowhere came a wind that was just right to trap us to that restaurant. In the cold, twisted, cloudy eye of that megacane, a strong and true steady wind blowing out of the southeast toward Wal-Mart to our northwest, came across and around that restaurant, making opposing vortex winds on both sides and one over the top that wrapped us and pulled us into the lee of the building. All I did was swim hard enough to keep that line taunt so as to appear to be pulling.

I like to think Katrina reached out, grabbed us, and pulled us into her protective bosom. Somebody did and just in time. You just don't get a wind like that when you are well inside the eye. If something hadn't, we'd all be dead. You had to be there in that water during a cat-one Biblical storm-type hurricane to know that, but I was there, and I do know that.

Even had we avoided whirlpools, in open water, when winds go over 100 mph, breathing becomes an impossible challenge as the air has more water than air. Lungs gradually fill with more water than air. The bill of a ball cap helps, but keeping a hat requires some kind of miracle. We were facing a rapid return of eye wall winds of 130 to 150 mph that would be blowing us east toward the bay. The wind waves from those winds took out several miles of a four-lane, concrete slab bridge. We might have lasted one minute in the eye wall, but after that, survival would have been an individual challenge that few had any chance of winning.

Our survival odds took a radical teeter totter flip flop that favored the Grim Reaper when we headed for open water with no ability to control our drift. I could have and should have had the tools to do that but didn't because no plan called for a free floating raft with a big damn sinkable boat in the core of it. Without those tools, I never should have set us adrift.

There were other trees and other tie-offs, none as good as that giant oak, but all better than adrift with no tools. The tools for that is flippers, Danforth anchor, fifty-feet of sailing sheet minimum, carribiners (snap links or beaners), and a come-along. With those tools, all of which I had, you can move anything that floats in any direction, even directly into a hurricane wind so long as you don't get out in open water that has fetch and wind waves.

My fellow survivor candidates had no idea how close we came to being a disaster at sea and additions to a grim statistic, or how risky adding that open very sinkable boat to our floatilla really was. Sometimes, ignorance is merciful bliss. I left them ignorant, because I screwed up and compounded that screw-up with very poor decisions, but everything worked out, and I didn't tell them they were in the eye of the storm until the following day. There had been so much fear of that eye, had they known, fear would have again been my biggest challenge and a constant one.

We get drawn into the restaurant, a concete block structure with hurricane roof. As long as we remain in the lee, we'll be fine, so upon arrival, I quickly took the bow line and tied off to a sturdy pipe coming from the roof that served the air conditioning unit that I could stand on. Everything else was tied to the skiff. They were still having fun, so as Robby is returning with the insulin, I took my leave and went back to the Alamo.

I found my flippers and put them on, but my utility trailer with the other tools I would need had been demolished, the contents spread over a large area that was now under six feet of murky yucky water. I could find them when the water went away. I could have them when I don't need them. All of that potential gear should have been where the flippers were or on my horse (RV). One stupid mistake after another and just hours earlier I had been thinking how lucky these poor dumb bastards were to get the world's best.

I felt like a newbee super hero who could not stop tripping on his cape, but each time goes right into a soft shoe tap dance, giving the impression they drew one that just likes to dance a lot. How long can a dancing old fool keep up that illusion. I was thinking, until something I said proves incorrect or somebody dies and any dance will be totally inappropriate. It wasn't that I was lucky so far. I was getting lots of super natural help that no one else was aware of. Even when it happens to the entire group, I am still the only one aware.

Had I been a religous man, I'd have been thanking the Lord and doing more praying. I was just a confused hero wondering which of those poor dumb bastards had a blessed life, or was it a blessed group, or did some nature god or dog diety take pity on a group of poor people willing to die rather than abandon helpless animals, or was there a cloaked starship in orbit over Waveland violating the hell out of the prime directive, or was Katrina a sentient entity capable of selective destruction, or was I the one living the charmed life that they were all getting some charm from. I knew one thing: this wasn't at all natural.

I swam next door to my horse, a Toyota Class-C motor home I had parked on the south side of the Alamo with the doors fixed open to prevent floating, now full of water up to the bed which is over the cab. Once inside, I dove to retrieve a bottle of rum from a low cabinet. The fine crystal was in an upper cabinet with the fine pipe tobacco. I poured myself a good healthy shot, then loaded an unhealthy pipe (my doc was okay with one shot or one beer a day but way down on pizza, donuts, and smoking). There was too much stuff packed on the bed to lie down, which was what I ached to do, but having gone without sleep for going on fifty hours, I knew better than try.

We are now in as deep a water as we will get and deep in the eye as we'll get. There is relative calm, no blue sky, but it is very bright out. My people very likely think it is all over and the dancing hurrican man did get them through like he said he would, and some fun was had. They were a bit giddy when I left, but Carol was having no fun at all, terribly seasick and puking all over. When she puked on me, I needed a stiff drink.

I stood in chest-deep water inside my cozy little home, smoked my pipe, and drank my rum. I calmed my troubled mind and tried to relax. I took stock of the current situation and formulated a plan with a back-up and an alternate to the back-up, tempted this time to come up with a back-up to the alternate and factor in a dozen clandestine miracles. I just could not conceive of a seven-plan storm but it was while relaxing in the eye of Katrina that a hurricane scale much better than Saffir-Simpson came to me:

Just in from the Hurricane Center...Hurricane Wilbur has been ugraded from a four-plan giant to a five-plan monster with fears that this one may go to the mega monster six-plan. Now, to our reporter on the scene, Sonny Hoffman, live in his latest new horse, a yellow submarine.

Plan D was to stay in the lee of the restaurant as the winds shift from east to west. Plan E was take refuge in the passage way between the two buildings. Plan F would return us to the Alamo or the motel rooms, possibly break into the restaurant. We were NOT going out with the tide, and there were no suckers except toilets. Toilets all had their lids and were still bolted over the sewer pipes. So far, no building had failed and weren't likely to, so we had no dangerous construction debris to deal with, just Ed's junk.

The dangerous stuff had already floated past us and left the property, among them a huge dumpster and a five-hundred-gallon propane tank spewing propane. This thing popped up like a nuke sub just as we are arriving at the trap. At first, the winds begin sucking that nuke sub into the trap, too. We can smell the propane. I'm thinking, "Jesus Christ! Stop blowing!"

The miracle wind stopped, and the stinky explosive sub continued on its journey for miracle number sixteen. I'm all happy until Carol puked on me, because the trap had also trapped the restaurant's rancid grease trap grease along with crankcase motor oil, gasoline, floating sewage, and now puke and propane.

That is the down side of taking refuge in a wind trap. The up side is, you live to bitch about the salvation sewage. Nothing ups odds like a good trap unless there is a storm drain there, hence the universal hurricane survivalist parting salutation: May you always turn left under the flutter, and may there never be a drain in your trap.

What I did during my smoke break was work on upping our odds again, and we'd be in better shape because the odds against us weren't half what they had been when we faced the entire storm. The first half will always be the worst half. If the surge waters leave and don't take anyone, the rest is just a bad storm that progressively weakens. The start of the second half is dangerous, especially if you are in deep water. The start was about to begin in very deep water.

My group was now tight and confident. A bit cocky actually. Much of that would go away when I return with the other half of my survival plans for the other half of the hurricane. It was so hard to leave my drowning horse. Actually, it was killing me to leave my dry bed and dry stuff.

I did know exactly how high the water would go. Everything that could not stand getting wet wasn't, and one inch from being wrong. Did that count as a miracle, and could I really count all the running around out in hurricane force winds and not getting hit by anything as miraculous or luckulous. How much luckulous is there in one miraculous event. How do I attract luck, and why won't that work in a casino. How much extraordinay luck do casinos tolerate. When they see excessive luck, do they record a miracle, then gather in groups to marvel at what they have on tape, or do they give the tape to professional cheaters and cheat catchers, tasking them to discover the explanation.

I was very much like a casino owner in my attitude, also what one might call a professional storm poker cheat. When I hear storm survival stories that contain miracles, I can usually figure out what really happened that appeared to be miraculous. It is mostly exaggerated dumb luck and a fertile imagination under life and death stress. If a religous person survives anything dangerous, God saved them in a mysterous way. The good people He killed simply forgot to pray in all the excitement. The bad get no help at all.

I was having a very difficult time explaining my own miracles, and I was very shook with confidence shattered by all of my horrendous, outrageous, unforgivable mistakes, oversights, and poor judgement calls. I didn't get to be the best and oldest by dancing my way through disasters. The combo of my inexplicable errors being offset by super natural intervention was as though some something were trying to take me down about ten pegs. As I toked on my pipe, I could not help but wonder if their goal was twenty.

From where I languished and anguished, the group floated about the length of a football field away, but the swim would not be straight line or without hazards. Before starting back, I took a few moments to remember where all the bad stuff was. I wish I had done that before leaving the Alamo, or I would have given that boat trailer a wider path. On the other hand, with flippers on, I'd be swimming over 90% of it to include the submerged boat trailer.

You don't want to walk around in surge water. You want to move over the surface and use hands in a dog paddle motion to encounter stuff with hands that can quickly halt progress or push off to the left or right. You can swim right into some very nasty situations by swimming in a conventional way, among them huge fallen branches all tangled with utility lines and all types of jagged metal from signs and awnings. The water arrests their flight but remains the jailer. As much as possible, I needed to return the way I came.

Cuts must be avoided, and that was another very important lesson I failed to go over with my students back when we were holding classes. I made a mental note while leaving my poor drowning horse. I'm one of those fools who thinks certain cars, planes, and boats have a soul and a spirit, the type that talks to a car and gives it a name. That Toyota RV was just "my horse." I paused to look back and will always remember that pitiful sight as I abandoned a thing I loved very much to go help people and mutts I really didn't care a damn thing about. I parked her there and left her there knowing she'd drown. There she was, drowning, her lights on and the life draining rapidly across saltwater-shorted circuits. What drove me to do that, and what was driving me to swim out to save those foolish people, and what was looking out for us all, because something was and that was now freaking me?

All the little miracles I passed off as incredible luck, but that Divine wind that trapped us was something from out of this world. As I am swimming past our tree of salvation, I looked closely at the tree that fell on it that so effectively destroyed plan C, putting us out to sea. Was that their doing, too? If so, what was so wrong with hugging the lee of a salvation tree.

Seemed a damn good plan to me. Did a higher power see something I could not, then take action to yank that option rug out from under us. It wasn't just me. Robby wanted no part of that jeopardized tree, either, and he was sweating it crushing the fortress area of the Alamo, which had him all in favor of abandoning that structure even before the two feet of water I was waiting on. With the two of us in full agreement, there wasn't anyone to argue with. They were all going to follow me or Robby but would much prefer both being in full agreement, like a Captain and a Number One.

In any group survival situation, you must have a captain, and that leader needs a right arm especially if he is missing that one. I would love to have had one who called me Sir, but Robby was much better than one who called me an ignorant-assed old man. We managed, and he was with them while I wasn't. I just hoped he made no command decisions while I was away.

What he did was step onto the roof of the restaurant to "have a look around" and in the process, lost his hat. I told them we would not lose our hats. I returned to the group not realizing we had lost a hat, but because we had and I said we would not, there was a shift in the mood toward the unsure and fear was again in the air. The new fear was from a tall tree they all feared would be coming down on the floatilla. That had to be the result of Robby's look around. They all wanted to go someplace else.

That tree might fall but not in the same direction all the others had. Those east winds were history. The west winds were coming. If that tree fell it would be in thick woods away from us. I did tell them, but they weren't buying. I couldn't figure out why all of a sudden my guidance is just another opinion. I was now hanging onto a boatload of hurricane experts. How the hell did that happen.

Furthermore, I was not in control. Bill cut loose and was on his own under the awning with his feet on a window ledge, hovering over "his boy" talking baby talk. The two alphas were also cut loose and on the paddle boat, heading out to the highway to save three black men who were clinging to an inner tube and caught in the first effects of the surge undertow and being sucked out to sea.

I should have called them back and told them of the danger they were ignorant of. I think I didn't, because I wanted them both out of my survival group. I can't say I wanted them dead, but I knew those three blacks were on their way to their end. The pontoon paddle boat would soon be caught in the same current, likely headed for the same storm drain. When they saw what happened to the blacks, there would be no avoiding the same fate.

All of this ran through my mind and still I said nothing. With my flippers on, I could have saved the blacks and did nothing. I do not hate black people, but by this time I knew I was taking on more than I could handle and came to see alpha males that you have no control over as a bigger liability than asset. I didn't need to add three more and would not miss the two I had.

This scene went down during the lullest lull, a time when the storm seemed over. We just had all this water to deal with, but it was now a recreational lake, and the highway was a river ride...fun, fun, fun. To the survivors I still had, I explained how we were only halfway through, in a lull, and that the bad winds were returning but from the opposite direction. That news sucked all the fun out of their hurricane party. Collen began yelling to her husband, trying to get him to paddle back, but they heard something come from the passing inner tube that accomplished that.

When they returned to our group, they were laughing and cursing the "damn niggers." Darryl explained that when he called out, "Do you guys need any help." One of them yelled back, "We helpin' ourselves." The other two blacks laughed. They were looters with a haul.

In this area, looters move in as homeowners evacuate. At the height of the storm when there is no law or order, looters go on a rampage of destruction that is often worse than the damage done by the hurricane, why it is so damn hard to get people to evacuate. The motels along highway 90 are filled with them, and I would not be at all surprised to learn Darryl is usually a white one. For most, this was a bit too much storm to ply their trade, but those three blacks were trying. I am quite sure they died trying and are not missing from the local community. They might be missing from Houston, New Orleans, or Atlanta.

Shortly after the men return, we get the first new gusts of the backhand winds, the lights dim, and an ominous pall falls. The hurricane man was right. I am busy trying to get Bill to do something useful for the group by monitoring the rise or fall of the water. I need to get us moved around to the opposite side of the building and accomplish that move before the water starts a serious return to sea level. Just then, I hear many voices exclaim and catch a glimpse of the cause. Coleen lost her hat to a twister, sucked it off her head and tossed it at he edge of the highway. The current was now taking it to the looters, and once again, the hurricane man is wrong. I could see it in their faces. This was not supposed to happen and now happened twice. I am thinking this is the first time, and I am thinking I can't let that be.

At this point, I did what I consider the only truly brave and courageous act for it was selfless and at great personal sacrifice while having to overcome great fear. I took off in a hard swim and found that damn hat. I put the hat in my teeth and swam back. I could see all the smiles as I returned, then handed the biggest smiler her hat back saying, "I said we will keep our heads and we will even keep out hats."

That was when I learned that Robby already lost his, and how he managed that. He did not like what I did and liked even less being pointed out as a hat loser. He liked pointing out what danger we were in from the big tree and pointing out that I picked that place to tie up to.

I can't tell you how much I did not want Robby in my survival group. I tried explaining what needed to be done. I told them about the three new plans and what a lee is, and that the lee we were in would soon be the windy side and be battered by waves sure to sink their precious boat. I was in no mood to hold a discussion, so I took Carol's boat by the bow and began swimming her around the building.

We had to move toward the tall tree they were still worried about, because Robby was still sure it was going to fall due east. The path was strewn with many very nasty submerged obstacles and most ominous were the plethora of downed power lines. As I reached the corner and got into the alley, I feel a rather strong current that will only get stronger. I knew I could pull Carol through but that boat would never make it and the boat held all that was worth saving. For me by this time, that was Coleen, Rose, and the two kids.

I wasn't aware but I was absolutely terrifying Carol. When we left the sight of the others, she lost it and begged I return her to her man. That was all I needed. I returned her to her man and gave up on plan D. On to plan E and we needed to get on it real quick. We now had the back wall bearing down on us with the surge undertow underway. It was getting very scary again, and no one needed convincing that we needed to get out of there. Destination, the narrow passageway between the buildings. The boat wouldn't fit, but the three inflatables and all the people would.

We had to untie all the boats and move them one by one, huging a wood fence. I got the adults in the water, all except Carol. We got them all moved and got the three inflatable boats in the passageway just as the back wall hit. It banged the boat around pretty badly, but there were enough of us standing on firm ground holding it that the precious carge of children and pets were never in any jeopardy.

In the first lull, Robby points out that the kids are freezing and we should open a room. We were in chest-deep water, the level having dropped three feet since I asked Bill to keep an eye on the level possibly fifteen minutes earlier. I wasn't at all cold for I had been in the water the whole time, but they were all cold. They all liked that idea, so three alphas set about opening one door.

Not easy, because the doors open in and the water level inside was three inches higher than out and could be seen in the window. It took three of us to force open that door. I was in the crack feeling the interior water flowing out. That water was cold water. The water I was in was very warm. I'd say there was a ten degree difference in water temp. I will leave you to ponder this inegma as I was.

See if you can explain that. For many weeks it stumped the hurricane man, but then I remembered all the bubbles that came with the eye, all over, up through the ground and cracks in the paving, bubbles, lots and lots of steady stream bubbles coming up through the rising surge water. It is all related, but back to the room.

We pushed on in and there was a floating mattress, the plastic still on, a place to set kids. We dragged Carol's boat in and I assisted her out of her rubber prison. Her man took over. The water was now knee deep as the room filled with cold survivors and wet dogs. They were safe, so I took my leave and don't recall saying a word in parting, but I slodged back to my dead horse in a dying hurricane, totally exhausted. I cleared my bed and laid down.

I honestly don't remember a thing about Hurricane Katrina after my eyes closed. My dead horse was hit bad, rocked hard, and pelted with limbs. I slept through it all. When I awoke, the water was gone, the sun was out but low on the horizon. I have Rose shaking me, saying, "Sonny, are you all right."

I was not. I needed to get to a hospital. I had severe muscle cramps and blood pressure going off the scale. I told her to flag down any emergency vehicle, though I wasn't sure we'd be seeing any. She saw a school bus with a stobe light, so I made my way out to the highway, weak as a rundover kitten. Enroute, I encounter a drunk Robby who had just been in a fight with drunk Darryl. Their women are pissed at each other. The survivors are back in three camps, and not a damn thing Texan about any of them.

I suppose I was unsympathetic to Robby's case, but I just wasn't interested and had no intention of mediating their pety arguements. I just wanted to get to a damn hospital, but I have Robby to get past and he is picking a fight with me. He gets in my face and warns me that if I ever take over his family and start bossing around his wife again, he and I are gonna step out and get it on. Coleen was so embarrassed she could not speak. I brushed by the idiot, crossed highway 90, and boarded a school bus driven by a wet cop with another wet cop seated right behind him.

They are just cruising the main drags looking for people who need transport to the Hancock County Medical Center. I qualified, so I get a right-after tour of ground zero and hear from two cops who rode out the storm in the water like we did, and just down the highway from us. The rising water chased them out of the police station. They all clung to small trees and shrubery, their cruisers all drowned, their communications gear all destroyed, and their bullets all wet.

I didn't say anything about prior planning and prep, nor did I tell them about my great adventure. I listened. They needed to get a woman's nude body out of a tree because that looked bad. The writer in me wanted to persue that, but the victim in me decided to let it go. I was sure had she been decently dressed, she'd be up there a while longer. If it looks like you are going to die in the Bible belt, take off all of your clothes. You'll get much better service.

Thirteen Waveland Mississippi residents survived in the deadly right central portion of Katrina's eye, and did so with their dogs. All came through in remarkable shape in defiance of conventional wisdom, means, and methods. We got into the storm surge at the height of the storm as the water is rising. Very likely the only people in Hancock County to do so as all others waited until they had no other options. We also propped open the doors to allow the water in to flood the rooms, likely the only ones who did that.

All of our people, their pets, and all of our buildings survived, because hurricane storm surge is like the amniotic fluid in a mother's womb. I doubt anyone else is drawing upon that analogy, but I am old school, and to me, hurricanes are females. The really big ones are in labor about to give birth to something and will die giving birth. The water will protect people, pets, and structures if you let it. Fight that salvation sewage, and those nasty waters will destroy the buildings and all in, on, or around them.

People who don't understand the hurricane's womb want to name hurricanes after men to be fair and equal. Trust me. Hurricanes are female. Tornados are male. No one would dream of naming a tornado, Heather. That is no kind of weather for a girl named Heather. Any idiot can look up in the sky and see, that's a hung cloud, but look at any satellite photo of a tropical cyclone. Am I the only one that sees a birth canal or giggles when they call it the eye?

Hurricane Frederic (1979) was very normal, quite typical, just a cat-2 blow hitting the Florida panhandle, but I ended up in the storm surge. I was fine in the water, and the waves disrupted the hurricane force winds. The water arrested flying debris and was rather warm and comfortable.

I found that I could dive and hold to the bottom to enter a sureal world of peace and quiet. The fury and tempest was a surface event. The waves were not like beach waves that build up then get tripped by a rising bottom. These waves were breaking on the surface, being tripped by surface tension and having little impact on anything several inches below the surface. As the wind builds and comes faster and faster, the waves can't keep up and get flattened. Monster waves come ahead of the storm. As the storm gets nearer to making landfall, the waves get smaller with shorter intervals. At the height of the storm and storm surge, there are no waves.

Getting into the surge and settling in, relaxing, and growing comfortable there was an epiphany experience. After Hurricane Frederic, I was a hurrigator looking for the best water with a good view. For the past five years, I have been seeking out hurricane encounters to study the destruction and develop survival techniques along with effective construction mitigation efforts with a focus on the single family residence.

I had often noted that trees remain where buildings get reduced to foundation slabs, and in no-surge areas where the buildings withstood the ravages, trees didn't do so well. You can tell where the storm surge reached by looking at the state of things. In areas where some stood and others didn't, you had some surge but no waves.

All came together at Waveland Mississippi on August 29th, 2005. I am very pleased with the results; however, the people I convinced to leave a perfectly good building to enter a perfectly bad storm might not be so pleased. To some, I am that crazy one-armed idiot who tried to kill them in the name of Texas. I would look much better had that elevated storage building failed like I feared it might.

I saw that happening as clearly as I saw the water coming as high as it did. I know my actions and my decisions were being influenced by these strong feelings and visions in my mind's eye. That might be how spirit entities on the other side control and steer a destiny event. I was being steered, guided, pushed and pulled far more than usual.

It may be that those from the great beyond don't know what will and won't fail, but they operate on more accurate odds and know the land elevation as well as the exact height of the dome of water headed our way. Not sure about much of anything, but I know I wasn't alone, and I knew I wasn't going to die. By cell phone, right up to the loss of transmitting towers, I was able to assure my loved ones, not that any were sure, but they were sure I believed. Three days after Katrina and still no word, most believed I had been wrong again, dead wrong this time.

Most were saying "He would have wanted to go that way," and they'd have been dead wrong. I want to go at the hands of a jealous lover on my hundred and tenth birthday.

We were fortunate to be in a high ground clutter area surrounded by trees in dense woods on three sides with the open side to the north, exactly where you would want it with the eye coming up from the south with a center passing by on the west side. We were going to get every wind except a north wind. The waters, when they came, did not surge in on us. Waveless water seemed to be rising up from the ground at the rate of three inches per minute, which is about the rate that a bathtub fills, and luke warm like bath water, and tasting much like salty sewage offered in the cupped hands of a sloppy garage mechanic named Bubba.

Katrina placed us safe in her womb like a mother who scoops up her babies, holds them close, then gently sets them all down again when the danger passes. Katrina was no evil bitch, just a big, blustery, loud-mouthed woman with an important job, a very demanding boss, and only a few days to live, all of them work days while in labor. She seemed ate-up with PMS, too.

In reality, she is neither good nor evil, she just IS as we all are. She was born, lived a fast and furious short life as prescribed by nature, did her climate control job, applied a good strong environmental stress on all the living stuff of nature, cleared away the dead and dying, thinned the herd and forest, flushed the rivers and streams, restocked the ponds, wet the wetlands, swamped the swamps, replenished the water table, and then she died giving birth to "?".

I came to know her well, and I thank her for not hurting my courageous people or their precious pets. She made me look good. I do appreciate that.

I left when the National Guard showed up two days later, and wasn't sure the people appreciated my contribution, for I had been more of a driver than a helper, pushy, bossy, demanding, sometimes insulting, even rude and crude. In hindsight, I knew I made several mistakes and wondered if they knew. Abandoning the Alamo was done too soon and ended up being unnecessary. Rafting us all up then casting us free to drift away from a tree that didn't fail put us all in even greater jeopardy. Were they thinking so, too? Were they talking about me, saying that old fool almost got us all killed?

As I was leaving quietly after having lost everything except what I could carry, the mother of the two children came running after me with something for me. She held out a piece of paper. On that paper were the names and ages of the people she told me I saved to include the names and breeds of the dogs. In bold letters at the top: TEXANS.

Made me smile. I AM a Texan and half full of something most Texans are full of, but in a motivational pep talk prior to the storm's arrival, I told them they would have to become Texan, and that we would keep our heads and even keep our hats. Indeed they were and we did, although we did lose two hats, recovering one.

The note:

• Robert Abadie 37
• Colleen Abadie 36
• Aarin Saurage 9
• Richard Abadie 6
• Rose Jeffers 36
• Billy De Bruan 49
• Darryl Reed 47
• Olivia Reed 45
• Michael Cupp 52
• Carol Cupp 53

Texan Owner--Ed Lott (evacuated but gave me the keys and the motel for the duration with permission to use the Texan as a shelter for people with pets. In his words, "Do whatever ya gotta do, Sonny." I notified the Waveland police and fire departments that we now had a shelter for people with pets. Unfortunately, that news came way too late.)

Dogs:

• Buster    Boxer
• Boo       G. Shepard
• Cisco     Chow mix
• Bubba    Scotty mix
• Shorty    Chi mix
• Thunder Chow mix

Peter & Alan: Refugees from Bayside Park

• Commentary on the state of emergency management
• Hurricane Survival Tips
• Building Smart and Building Dumb
• The Geodesic Dome (smart habitat for coastal living)

Sonny's other writing:

• Vietnam Essays
• Commando Grammar Guide
• Student's Guide to the Internet (very dated material but amusing for that reason)

Waveland

Mississippi Coast

Upon seeing the plight of motel residents, my first action was to go to the Waveland Fire Department and try to arrange evacuation or pet accommodation in a suitable shelter. When those failed, I offered to ride the storm out with them and make the Texan a shelter for people with pets. I had the owner's okay to do so. I informed the police and the fire department. Both took note. I returned to the motel and told the people I was assigned and was a fire dept volunteer. I met with Mike Smith, the assistant fire chief, and with a large female police officer whose name escapes me but there can't be many like her.