Posted on 09/07/2005 12:19:44 PM PDT by Liberty Valance
HUNT Texas — As Hurricane Katrina battered the Mississippi coastal community of Ocean Springs more than a week ago, three counselors from Camp Stewart for boys found themselves clinging to life on the branches of a large oak tree.
“I didn’t think we were going to make it,” Jeremy Tyzack said Tuesday after returning to the camp. “When I was up in the tree, I just thought about my family and my girlfriend.”
Tyzack, 22, of Melbourne, Australia, spent the summer working at the Hunt Texas youth camp where he made friends with Paul Swainston, 19, of London, and Thomas Butera, 20, of Ocean Springs, Miss. The three planned to spend the last few weeks of summer in Ocean Springs and visit New Orleans before weather forecasts predicted trouble for the Big Easy.
But even then, Butera said they felt safe staying at his house about 90 miles east of where the hurricane was expected to do the most damage. Butera, Tyzack, Swainston and a friend, Shane Carter, 20, of Ocean Springs, decided to wait out the storm at Butera’s house while his parents spent the night looking after elderly family members.
“The town wasn’t really worried about it because we had been through so many hurricanes,” Butera said. “We didn’t expect it to be so bad.”
The first signs of trouble came around 4 a.m., when the power went out. Butera said he woke and listened to the wind howling outside for a while, but fell back to sleep still thinking it would pass.
It was around 9 a.m. when Tyzack woke and found water coming up to the home about 50 yards off the beach. Tyzack alerted the others. They began gathering valuables and putting them in the attic where the four men decided to try to wait out Katrina.
As the hurricane landed on the Gulf Coast and the Ocean Springs community of about 18,000 people, Butera and his friends watched the water getting higher until it began seeping in through doors. The storm surge eventually blew out the windows and flooded the house, Butera said.
As the waves began crashing against the house and the wind howled outside, they decided not to wait any longer.
“We thought the roof was just going to come down, and we were going to drown underneath it,” Butera said. “So we figured it was time to bail.”
Using a long rope Butera had taken with them to the attic, they tied themselves together and grabbed a mattress that would float on the surging waters. They made their way through chest-deep water in the living room to an open door and threw themselves against the storm.
“It was like jumping off a cliff and hoping you can fly,” Butera said. “It was just chaos. The wind, the waves and the rain.”
Tyzack said debris was all around as they swam away from the house. Oil covered the top of the water and pieces of wood churning in the waves bruised their bodies.
They swam to a large oak tree behind the house where they grabbed on to the large branches and held on while Katrina passed.
“The wind was just blowing rain into us so hard it felt like little rocks hitting you in the face,” Tyzack said.
For two hours they waited in the tree, cold and shivering, until the waters began subsiding. Butera said they knew they couldn’t stay out in the elements much longer, so they found their way to a neighbor’s home, where a back room had escaped damage from the hurricane. They found paper towels to dry themselves and waited out the storm.
“I just sat there wondering what was going to happen,” Butera said. “Everything was gone, and I lost all my clothes, and my parents lost everything.”
For the next three days, Butera, Tyzack and Swainston stayed at different friends’ homes farther inland along the Mississippi coast. Swainston and Tyzack also were finally able to contact family members, who after hearing about the hurricane, had feared the worst.
Tyzack’s father had reported him missing to Australian authorities, and Swainston’s parents were preparing to fly from England to search for their son.
Encouraged by Butera’s father and with the help of a man who gave them a car, the three counselors decided to return to Camp Stewart, but Carter, an Ocean Springs resident, decided to remain on the Mississippi Coast. Swainston left for home Tuesday, and Tyzack plans to remain in Texas until October.
For now, Butera said he plans to take a year off from school, but after that his plans are uncertain.
“I didn’t have a lot, but it’s going to take some time to get it all back,” Butera said.
ah, heck. nothing happened in ocean springs -- all the action is in new orleans.
LOL. I know, nothing about New Orleans or even President Bush here. I think we need to hear more stories from Mississippi and Alabama.
Bump for later. A relative of mine has a home in Ocean Springs, and is trying to find out info on whether it is still intact (they now live in another state). I tried Google Earth, but it seems as though their pics of hurricane damage are of areas to the west of Ocean Springs.
No politics in the story? Hell must have frozen over.
Did something happen in Mississippi and Alabama? Why has the MSM not picked up the story? < /sarcasm>
Think again.
From what I can tell, this is a very bad idea. If the rope gets caught, everyone drowns. This happended in the Galveston hurricane where three nuns and 19 orphans drown when the water rose. In Katrina, 22 people were found dead - tied together with a rope.
Looters!
Bump for a later read too. I know someone down there as well.
I guess these guys weren't really paying attention to the news because FOX reporters were talking about the storm surge in Mississippi and Alabama on SATURDAY.
"Oil covered the top of the water and pieces of wood churning in the waves bruised their bodies."
They're very fortunate the things churning in the waves weren't larger debri like boats and cars bruising their bodies. Lucky lucky luky
"They swam to a large oak tree behind the house where they grabbed on to the large branches and held on while Katrina passed."
Explains why so many oak trees are large old and majestic.
"The wind was just blowing rain into us so hard it felt like little rocks hitting you in the face," Tyzack said.
With a 100 mph and more hurricane wind it's no wonder.
Rhetorical question of course, such stories would glorify our mission in Iraq and help increase recruiting, things the media actively try to subvert.
Ropes are a good idea, if you have a knife.
A fellow lawyer in the office spent the weekend in New Orleans checking on his apartment down there. He says half the city will have to be levelled in order to rebuild anything down there. He says what he saw down there is unprecedented - dead bodies everywhere; dead fish in the middle of the street, and a stench of death in the whole city. He is getting me some pictures he took, which I’ll post on the blog when I get them.
Wow. My boys went to Camp Stewart for 3 month long summer camps. The counselors there are from all over the world, but mostly South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Scotland. Good to hear they survived. The ole stuck in the oak tree all night scenario. Read about it in Isaac's Storm.
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From what I understand, many structures will have to be burned, due to indelible infusion of contamination. Nearly the entire city is a haz/mat zone.
Comment by Aunt B — 9/7/2005 @ 12:14 pm