Before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana, it was a lady named Camille that roared ashore on this date back in 1969 that was considered by many as the worst hurricane to hit the area. The Category 5 hurricane killed more than 250 people, mostly along the Mississippi Gulf Coast cities […]
Before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana, it was a lady named Camille that roared ashore on this date back in 1969 that was considered by many as the worst hurricane to hit the area.
The Category 5 hurricane killed more than 250 people, mostly along the Mississippi Gulf Coast cities of Waveland, Pass Christian, Gulfport and Biloxi.
We’ll hear a lot about Hurricane Katrina over the next few weeks as we approach that hurricane’s 10th anniversary. But back when I was working in New Orleans in 1989, it was the 20th anniversary of Camille that was on the minds of most Gulf Coast residents.
I was new to working in television and new to New Orleans. An impressionable kid from the Philly area who suddenly moved his young family to the Crescent City to start his TV career as a writer and producer in the marketing department of the NBC affiliate, WDSU.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that the word “hurricane” was a hot button there, and any hurricane that loomed near the city was taken very seriously.
I was assigned to do a promo for the station’s 20th anniversary coverage of Hurricane Camille. The host was the late, great WDSU anchor/reporter, Alec Gifford.
I devoured any archived footage I could get my hands on to create the promo, while Gifford put together the stories.
I remember one scene in particular. To demonstrate the height of the storm surge from Camille, Gifford stood at the base of a hurricane pole in Gulfport harbor.
As the camera tilted up to reveal each line carved into the pole to represent the storm surge of past hurricanes, Gifford named them one after the other.
Then he stopped as the camera continued tilting up for a few seconds until finally it revealed one last line at a height of 24 feet, the storm surge from Camille.
It was a powerful visual that told the whole story of Camille, that it was the storm surge that caused most of the death and destruction from Camille.
There is one famous story about Camille that Gifford used in his coverage.
It’s the account of what happened at the Richelieu Apartments in Pass Christian, a little beach town on the gulf just a few miles west of Gulfport.
The residents of the Richelieu Apartments, the ones who didn’t evacuate, decided to throw a hurricane party.
The story goes that 23 people gathered on the third floor as the hurricane approached.
Suddenly, that 24 foot storm surge smashed through the front windows of the room they were in and swept everyone out the back windows.
Everyone died except for one lady, Mary Ann Gerlach.
Her account says that she and her husband were pushed out the back window into hell in the form of shrieking wind and choppy water.
Gerlach says she clung to a log as it went by. She couldn’t see any people, just lights, until even they went underwater.
She could do nothing to help her husband who cried out for her.
Gerlach, who claimed it was her years as a cocktail waitress that left her with strong legs, was pushed a mile inland and several miles down the coast before her ordeal was over.
It’s estimated she was in the water from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m. the next morning, when she was found skinned up like a rag doll atop a mountain of debris.
Gifford wanted to interview her for his coverage. We tracked her down to a Mississippi prison where she was serving time, convicted of killing her 11th husband.
Gerlach had petitioned the state supreme court to overturn her conviction of the grounds that she was insane due to her experiences during Camille.
The judge in the case is reputed to have said that she was “definitely crazy but not legally insane.”
As I recall, Gifford went to the state prison and interviewed her. I imagine it’s in the video archives somewhere inside WDSU.
Gifford died after a 51-year career as a television journalist. He was 85.
To see some rare, color, but silent, helicopter footage of the damage done by Camille, click here.
To look at some mostly black and white images of before and after Camille pictures, click here.
To see a 1988 special on Camille by Charles Kuralt, click here.
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