...Today marks the 50th Anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Audrey...
It was a time of crew cuts and conformity
in America. The post-war baby boom was
still underway and teenagers were
enjoying a new musical revolution called Rock 'n Roll
from such artists as Buddy Holly,
Chuck Berry and Little Richard. In June 1957, the
number one record in the charts was
Love Letters In The Sand by Pat Boone but in a
few short weeks, it would be replaced
by the smash hit Teddy Bear from none other
than The King himself: Elvis Presley.
Americans liked Ike and loved Lucy. Millions
tuned into their grainy black and
white television sets nightly to see the intellectual
battles on the (as it turned out,
rigged) television quiz show: 21. If game shows
weren't your thing, you had dozens
of westerns to choose from like Rawhide and Have
Gun, Will Travel. And
although the Russians had "the bomb" and the cold war was
heating up, America's schoolchildren
were taught that all you needed to do to survive
nuclear annihilation was to simply
dive under a desk. This period of blissful naivety was
about to be horribly interrupted
by a killer storm that would forever change the nation.
Fifty years ago today...Thursday,
June 27, 1957...a massive hurricane slammed into
the Texas-Louisiana border region
taking the lives of an estimated 419 to 500 people.
That storm...Hurricane
Audrey...is among the most legendary hurricanes in Gulf Coast
history. To date, it still
ranks as the most intense June hurricane ever to make landfall...
the 23rd most intense overall...and
the 7th deadliest in the United States since records
began in 1851. The name "Audrey"
is now permanently retired from the list of names for
tropical storms and hurricanes in
the Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.
Audrey packed sustained winds of 145
mph and a minimum central barometric pressure
of 945 millibars...or 27.91 inches...when
it made landfall in Cameron Parish, Louisiana
near the town of Johnson's Bayou
which is located about 30 miles southeast of Port
Arthur, Texas and only 15 miles from
the state line. When the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane
Intensity Scale was introduced in
1971, Hurricane Audrey was classified a Category
Four hurricane at the time of landfall.
Overall damage caused by the hurricane was
the equivalent of $1,000,000,000
(one billion) in today's U.S. dollars.
Ironically, another infamous hurricane...Hurricane
Rita...made landfall in almost exactly
the same location on September 24,
2005. Although the death toll in Rita was far less
than that of Audrey, the damage was
probably greater and many of the small towns in
Cameron Parish were either heavily
damaged or completely destroyed for the second time
in less than fifty years by a
tremendous tidal surge estimated at 15 to 20 feet above
normal tide. It may take many
years for the marshy coastal towns of Holly Beach...
Hackberry...Creole...Johnson's Bayou...Sabine
Pass...and Cameron to rebuild and some
of them may never completely recover.
The first named storm of the 1957
Atlantic hurricane season began as an area of disturbed
weather accompanied by a weak low
to mid-level circulation over the Bay of Campeche.
On Monday, June 24, 1957...the system
was classified a tropical depression. Later that
same day, the U.S. Weather Bureau's
Hurricane Warning Office in New Orleans began
receiving reports from shrimp boats
in the western Gulf of Mexico offshore from Brownsville
that winds were sustained at 40 to
45 mph with gusts to 65 mph in squalls. Based on this
information, the first advisory was
issued on Tropical Storm Audrey at 10:30 PM CDT.
During the night, the storm steadily
intensified while remaining nearly stationary. By
morning, a U.S. Navy reconnaissance
plane investigating the storm found sustained winds
of 75 mph...meaning Audrey was now
officially a full blown hurricane.
On Tuesday, June 25, 1957...Hurricane
Audrey began a steady northward movement over
the western Gulf of Mexico while
continuing to increase in size and intensity. A Hurricane
Watch was posted for portions of
the Texas and Louisiana coast. However, this was 1957
and dissemination of storm warnings
was antiquated by today's standards...especially in
rural areas beyond the range of most
television and radio stations. The news and weather
reports in those days were usually
limited to once or twice a day at the most...a far cry
from today's non-stop coverage on
literally dozens of cable stations to choose from. In
fact, most people still relied on
the weather page of their local newspaper as their primary
source of weather information.
This information gap was compounded
by the rather limited technology available to
meteorologists. Weather satellites
were still a few years off and weather radar was in
its infancy. Named for the
year of its inception, a new state of the art WSR-57 weather
surveillance radar had just been
installed at the U.S. Weather Bureau Office in Galveston
and tracked
Audrey's path toward the coast. But badly needed data from the core
of the
hurricane was limited to an occasional
ship report and a few irregularly scheduled Navy
reconnaissance flights.
On the morning of Wednesday, June
26, 1957...a U.S. Navy plane found sustained winds
in Audrey had increased to 105 mph
with a minimum central pressure of 973 millibars...or
28.73 inches. Unfortunately,
this was the last reconnaissance flight into the hurricane
before it made landfall the following
day. This lack of crucial information would ultimately
prove to be catastrophic when the
storm rapidly intensified into a major hurricane during
the overnight hours Wednesday night.
Hurricane Warnings were posted at
10:00 AM CDT along the upper Texas and western
Louisiana coast but many in the storm's
path never heard the warnings or hardly gave
them a second thought. After
all, this was June. The really big storms always hit in
August or September. Besides,
the early storm was creating a little fun and excitement.
Dozens of people in Galveston gathered
to watch the huge breakers slam against the
seawall. Winds on the island
were steadily increasing and, by nightfall, had reached
tropical storm force. The hurricane
was forecast to track just east of Galveston as it
bore down on the Texas-Louisiana
border region. This would place Galveston in the
normally weaker left quadrant of
the hurricane. However, one man's gain is another's
loss and the full fury of the hurricane
would eventually make landfall somewhere.
The U.S. Weather Bureau's hurricane
advisory on Wednesday night warned that "all
persons in low and exposed places
should move to higher ground" as well as a dire
prediction of tides possibly as high
as 9 feet above normal. The problem was that many
people in the hurricane's expected
impact area didn't feel that they lived in a location that
was either "low" nor "exposed" and
that as long as they didn't live near the beach, they
were safe. Adding to the problem,
some local radio stations in Lake Charles broadcast
only portions of the advisories or
downplayed the seriousness of the situation. For most
residents in Cameron Parish, this
lack of essential information coupled with the mistaken
belief that their homes would be
perfectly safe was the basis of their decision to ride out
the storm. Meanwhile, the hurricane
was getting stronger by the minute and...even
worse...was beginning to accelerate
its movement toward the coast. But none of this
vital news ever reached the doomed
residents of Cameron Parish. Disaster was inevitable.
By 4:00 AM CDT, Thursday, June 27,
1957, the tide at the U.S. Coast Guard station at
Calcasieu Pass was increasing at
a rate of 1½ feet per hour eventually reaching a height
of 11.7 feet above normal...the highest
of any location in the storm.
By the time residents of Cameron Parish
realized just how low and exposed they truly
were...it was way too late.
A dome of seawater from the Gulf of Mexico nearly two
stories high swept across the vulnerable
low coastal marsh inundating land as far as
30 miles inland. The damage
was horrendous and the loss of life staggering. There
were dozens of harrowing survival
stories of persons being thrown from their houses
into the churning inland ocean of
water. Many clung to the tops of trees sticking up
out of the water for hours.
Hundreds of venomous cottonmouths and rattlesnakes
shared the same treetops and floating
debris piles and quite a few cases of snakebite
were reported...a handful of which
were fatal due to the victims' inability to seek
immediate medical aid.
To the west, Galveston was hammered
with sustained winds of 61 mph, gusts to 78 mph
and tides of 6.6 feet above normal...and
it was on the normally "good" side of the storm.
Not too far away, winds were clocked
at a sustained 85 mph with gusts to 100 mph in
Sabine Pass and sustained winds of
100 mph pummeled Orange, Texas. Sustained
winds of 72 mph battered Beaumont
and Port Arthur.
The eye of the hurricane made landfall
around 8:00 AM CDT just east of the Texas-
Louisiana border in Johnson's Bayou,
Louisiana. An hour later, Orange, Texas was
within the western portion of the
eye as it continued its eventual trek north-northeastward
toward the towns of Leesville and
Winnfield, Louisiana.
The highest winds and lowest barometric
pressure along the coast in the exact center
of Hurricane Audrey may never be
known but extrapolation of nearby reports revealed
that Audrey strengthened rapidly
just prior to landfall with sustained winds of 145 mph.
The central barometric pressure within
the eye is believed to have fallen an incredible
40 millibars within a five hour period
between 5:00 AM and 10:00 AM CDT Thursday.
The highest official sustained wind
reported during the hurricane was 105 mph at
Sulphur, Louisiana before the anemometer
blew away. However, an oil rig off the
coast recorded an unconfirmed wind
gust of 180 mph and several Continental Oil
Company tenders broke loose offshore
and drifted onto the coast from winds estimated
to be at least 150 mph.
The lowest barometric pressure reading
during the hurricane occurred at the U.S. Coast
Guard Station at Calcasieu Pass with
a reading of 960 millibars...or 28.35 inches.
However, a slightly lower pressure
of 958 millibars...or 28.29 inches was reported at
Hackberry, Louisiana...slightly closer
to the center of the eye.
As previously mentioned, the highest
tide in the hurricane occurred at the Calcasieu
Pass Coast Guard Station with a tide
of 11.7 feet. Cameron had a maximum tide of
10.6 feet while Pecan Island had
a tide of 9.5 feet and a tide of 6.5 feet flooded portions
of the city of Lake Charles...30
miles from the coast. Saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico
covered all of Cameron Parish...most
of Vermilion Parish...and penetrated far inland in
Calcasieu...Terrebonne...Lafourche...and
Jefferson Parishes. 60 to 80 percent of the
homes and businesses in Cameron Parish
were either heavily damaged or completely
destroyed.
In the Golden Triangle area, tides
ranged from 5.4 feet at Port Arthur to 7.0 feet in
Orange to 9.2 feet at Sabine Pass.
Nine deaths were directly attributed to the hurricane
in Texas including one person in
Galveston who drowned after wading into the heavy surf
and eight others from a boat that
sank offshore.
As the storm made landfall, two tornadoes
touched down in Louisiana...one in the town
of Arnaudville and the other in New
Orleans. Once further inland, the hurricane spawned
an additional 23 tornadoes in Mississippi
and Alabama. Sustained winds of 65 mph
with gusts to over 90 mph were still
associated with the decaying storm as far inland as
Pennsylvania and New York and severe
flooding from torrential rainfall affected the Ohio
Valley which resulted in even more
fatalities. Canada even reported the loss of 3 lives
related to damage from winds up to
80 mph there.
The exact death toll in Louisiana
has never been determined but the estimate ranges
from 390 to as high as 500.
The official death toll is now listed at 419. Over 40,000
persons were left homeless.
The unusually large loss of life (for a modern day hurricane)
was primarily attributed to the following:
1. The unexpected rapid strengthening
and forward acceleration of the hurricane just
prior to landfall;
2 The confusion and apathy of
persons in the path of the hurricane resulting from a
lack of storm information or only
partial outdated information at best;
3. The failure of the U.S. Weather
Bureau to more clearly define "low and exposed
places" that were threatened by the
hurricane's tidal surge;
4. The long interval between
major hurricanes in the area causing longtime residents
to feel the area was safer than it
really was. Evidence of this was that while nearly all
of the longtime older residents remained
behind..nearly all newer residents evacuated.
Numerous hearings were held by federal,
state and local government agencies in the
wake of the Hurricane Audrey disaster.
In the end, there wasn't enough evidence to
blame one single reason or entity
for the tragic death toll. Instead, lessons were
learned and no single hurricane...with
the exception of Hurricane Katrina in 2005...
has caused such a large loss of life
in the United States since then. This can be
attributed to the vast improvement
in the amount of data collected...the constantly
increasing technology and skill in
hurricane forecasting...and the widespread mass
media dissemination of hurricane
warnings that now contain much more specific
information for vulnerable communities
with almost block by block precision. Our
ability to deal with and prepare
for killer hurricanes has come a long way since 1957.
Nevertheless, even with all of these
changes, it is still conceivable that a similar loss of
life could happen again today under
the right circumstances. Hurricane Katrina proved
this with a death toll now known
to be in excess of 1,000 people. All it would take is
another hurricane that rapidly strengthens
just prior to landfall in a low-lying coastal
community that was prepared for a
much less intense storm. Property damage would
be thousands of times greater due
to the massive influx of coastal construction over
the past several decades that, in
many cases, didn't even exist in 1957. Let's always
hope that history doesn't repeat
itself...but be prepared in the unfortunate case it does.
