I was born and raised around them. My earliest memory (I'd have been 4 years old) is my dad carrying me through a hurricane blacked-out house (electricity blown down) in waist-deep water through out back yard in howling wind and rain to a neighbor's house next door that was up on blocks. They made us kids a pallet on the floor, and I could hear the water lapping on the underside of the floor like laying on a boat pier. Stopped short of coming in their home. And this is 70-odd miles away from Galveston, where the 1900 Storm killed just a few shy of 6,000.
When Ike came through my hometown of Beaumont, TX, several years back, the water municipal district was totaled, all the electric pumps were ruined by iffy electricity and being submerged. The only quick fix? A set of eight giant oil field pumps were quickly modified, some inventive pipe welding was performed, and the city water was back while the original pump system was being repaired over the next several months.
Hurricanes, you're generally OK with a Cat 1 or 2, as long as you're far enough away from the shore so the storm surge won't reach you. Cats 3-5, you need to Get Out of Dodge, at your soonest convenience. Most of the Gulf Coast, you can simply run north, from Texas through the Florida panhandle. The long part of Florida? Only a few ways out on jammed freeways, and you may very well be trapped. I laughed at that Florida Governor urging people to evacuate to higher ground, there ain't any down there! You hear the stories of people having a 'Hurricane Party' in a beachfront high rise that drowned on the 4th floor from storm surge, or the floating casinos that broke loose and floated a few miles inland before they grounded.
I've lived in Tennessee since 1990, and yet every time a new hurricane comes on, I'm glued to the TV as if I still lived there. Things . . . . stick with you.
