Track of Hurricane Carmen
(Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
I am a survivor of Hurricane Ian. But this is not the first hurricane I survived or experienced. The first one was Hurricane Carmen that hit the gulf coast of Louisiana directly in 1974. I was born in Morgan City, Louisiana and Hurricane Carmen was the first major storm I experienced. When I wrote my second book about my grandfather, Two Wings and a Star: The Life and Times of Sheriff Chester Baudoin, I decided to add a small segment in the book about Hurricane Carmen and its effects on the south-central portion of Louisiana, particularly St. Mary Parish, in which my grandfather was sheriff at the time. I've included a couple of photos of the aftermath that were taken by my family. What follows is what I wrote. I affectionately called my grandfather Poppy.
Damage to my grandfather's backyard in the aftermath of Hurricane Carmen, 1974. He lived on Morris Street in Franklin, Louisiana.
(Courtesy of Chet Wallace)
Hurricane Carmen was warned to be a devastating hurricane, but damage was relatively minor. Although damage occurred to property, it mainly destroyed crops and was a category 4 storm. The entire duration of Hurricane Carmen lasted from August 29 to September 10, 1974. It started in the Atlantic Ocean east of Puerto Rico and traveled west directly below the United States passing the Dominican Republic and Cuba. When it entered the Yucatan Peninsula it took a sharp turn northward traveling directly for Louisiana. Before it reached the coast of Louisiana it halted as if deciding where to strike. The eye of the hurricane passed over Abbeville on September 8th after which it took a northwestern turn toward Texas. After entering Texas, it dissipated. It was a freak hurricane that followed few of the rules of hurricane theories. There were two eyes that covered an area of sixteen miles across. One fatality occurred during Carmen in St. Mary Parish. An 11-year-old boy named Andrew Grogan from Morgan City was riding his bicycle on Sunday September 9th, the day after Carmen hit. He encountered a fallen electrical line, electrocuting himself.
As soon as it was imminent that Carmen would strike St. Mary Parish, Poppy swung his department into 24-hour shifts. Reinforcements from other agencies were called in. The state police were called in to control evacuation traffic. The evacuation began in the Grand Lake area and then up through Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes. Cars filled with families headed west traveling through Franklin and the surrounding areas. The Franklin Police Department assisted in town wherever needed. They helped in assisting families to evacuation centers as well as supervising these centers. They also worked with civil defense efforts.
The St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Department had the largest and most diversified role of the areas agencies by sending units to assist in evacuating lowlands in remote areas where telephones were scarcely found. The department had, for many years, requested that every home in the parish have a copy of the mass evacuation route in case it was needed. Poppy printed these out to distribute at his own expense. He gave the job to the Franklin Banner-Tribune to distribute them. A map of the escape route in the early 1960’s showed the route going east from Morgan City down Highway 70 through Pierre Part and west from Morgan City following Highway 90 out of St. Mary Parish towards Lafayette.
A copy of the evacuation route from the early 1960s that my grandfather developed to be handed out.
(Courtesy of Chet Wallace)
Deputies patrolled evacuated areas and deserted industrial sites. Units were blown into ditches, hit by flying debris and blocked by fallen trees and branches but kept moving. Throughout this Poppy kept in close communication with his units. At one point communication was lost due to damage of the radio tower that stood on the top of the St. Mary Parish courthouse. The 60-foot tower crashed to the ground just shy of the underground garage door leading under the eight-story building. Replacement communication lines were re-established, and Poppy was able to communicate once again.
The radio tower leaning up against the side of the courthouse building.
(Courtesy of Chet Wallace)
St. Mary Parish caught gusts winds that were reported up to 140 mph. The parish suffered hardly any torrential rain fall. Structural damage of buildings occurred mainly on the eastern part of the parish doing minor damage to the western parts. High winds did damage to sugar cane fields by leveling most of the crop. The sugar cane mill at Louisa received considerable damage. Walter J. Landry, president of J & L Engineering of Jeanerette, Louisiana estimated that the loss of cane could be only 20 to 25 per cent. He stated that Carmen probably did more damage to sugarcane crops than Hurricane Hilda did in 1964. Charlie Hodson, an economist with the American Sugar Cane League, said that approximately $60 million had been lost due to the damage to the state’s sugar cane crop.
In the town of Franklin, a dozen Main Street store windows were broken, and, in some cases, serious damage was reported. National Food Store, which was directly across Main Street from the courthouse, suffered the greatest loss of windows with virtually every large plate glass window broken. West End Shell Service Station received the most structural damage by having the metal roof completely ripped off with tumbling interior walls. Other buildings affected were the Banner-Tribune newspaper office, the Commercial Bank and Trust, Wormsers Department Store, Blevins Ford, Diana Shop, Shine and Betts Bakerette, St. Mary Tire and Norwood Chevrolet. Many Franklin businesses opened up as soon as the winds stopped. They immediately started clearing debris from the storm and repaired broken windows and parts of buildings.
In Morgan City electrical power was lost around 7pm that Saturday. It took about two days to restore power. In the Berwick and Bayou Vista areas, power restoration took longer. Blown-out windows were reported at the Shannon Hardware Store on Front Street in Morgan City as well as the Allstate Credit office and the law offices of Levy, Burleigh and Bourg.
Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards stated following a meeting with state and federal officials that he would ask President Ford to declare sections of Lafourche and Terrebonne parish’s disaster areas. The town of Abbeville was included in the request. He would additionally ask Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz to declare a large portion of South Louisiana an agriculture disaster area. Overall, the total cost of the hurricane reached $130 million. “I want to say to the public that naturally everything and anything that is available to any of these people from a federal assistance standpoint, the President has assured me that it will be made available, and I will do everything I can to get it for them,” Edwards said. Not only was the sugar cane crop destroyed but also there was increased costs for harvesting and planting the following years crops.
On Monday September 23, 1974, Congressman David Treen announced that President Ford declared St. Mary Parish and nine other South Louisiana parishes which included Lafourche, Terrebonne, Iberia, St. Martin, Lafayette, Plaquemine, St. Landry, Vermilion and parts of Jefferson parish disaster areas.
One of the most difficult things my grandfather had to deal with was people refusing to leave when an evacuation became mandatory. When a hurricane was barreling down on a certain area the sheriff’s department had to make a decision whether to evacuate people or not. This was a decision not taken lightly.
I remember my grandfather telling me that people who refused to evacuate even under the sheriff’s department’s orders, were putting themselves at great risk. One has to remember that when an evacuation occurs, it means local government services are shut down temporarily and hospitals are evacuated as well. A person who decides to stay is in trouble because if they need help, there is no one to come to their aid. People were afraid to leave their homes because they were worried that they would be robbed and looted in the aftermath of the hurricane.
I vaguely remember this time period because I was only two years old. Whenever a hurricane was on its way, our family got together at my grandfather’s house on Morris Street in Franklin. Poppy was always busy during a hurricane making sure that people in the parish were as safe as possible and making sure things were battened down.
Poppy had a major job to do when the call came to evacuate in case of a hurricane. He made sure that everybody evacuated in a safe manner. He got deputies out to make sure things were done in an orderly fashion. Then after the hurricane passed, he had deputies helping to make sure that roads were clear of debris and fallen trees.
When we realized that Hurricane Carmen was headed directly toward the parish the whole family got together at Poppy’s house in Franklin. Poppy called the house in the evening informing us that he would like us to come to the Franklin courthouse only a few blocks away because he would feel safer if he knew we were safe. It was the safest building in the whole parish and had hurricane shuttered windows. The adults had already gotten things ready just in case a quick trip to the courthouse was imperative. Pillows, blankets and essentials were brought. The whole family was there…..mom and dad, me, my grandmother and her sister Beverly, my Uncle Tim and Aunt Marvel and their kids T.J., Tammy and Micah. My aunt Beverly was inconsolable during hurricanes and had out her rosary beads exclaiming “we’re all going to die!” My mother at one point told her to shut up because she was scaring the kids. My mom told my Uncle Tim and my father to get the mattresses out of the bedrooms and line them along the walls of the hallway.
Poppy made the call to the house to tell the family to try to come whenever they thought the storm started to die down a little. Once there was a lull in the storm we decided to leave. My mother was carrying me when she came out of the house. My Aunt Marvel noticed that it was eerily quiet with a high barometric pressure. “Look how calm it is” she said. My mother responded, “my God, we are in the eye of the storm”. We quickly got into two separate cars and drove. By the time we turned the corner of Morris Street onto Main Street the winds started picking up again. The lights were out all over the town, but one could hear furniture and other items whipping across yards and the roads.
My Uncle Tim and my father each drove two separate cars the couple of blocks to the courthouse. Poppy, who was already at the courthouse, had opened the courthouse garage doors for them to drive inside. My mother got out of the car and had me in one arm and my cousin Micah in the other. The power was out, and the elevators were inoperable, so mom carried both of us up four flights of stairs to the floor where the Sheriff’s Department was situated, hearing the roar of the storm in the stairwell which sounded like a freight train. To this day she doesn’t know how she did it, but she was sore for almost a month afterward.
The family went upstairs, hearing glass breaking out of the National grocery store across Main Street from the courthouse. Furniture seemed to be rolling down the street from the direction of the Franklin Banner-Tribune newspaper office. I remember that we had laid blankets on the hard tiled floor in one of the side offices in the sheriff’s department and stayed there until we could leave.
Later on, as the storm was dying down, Poppy wanted to leave the courthouse to check the situation. Poppy and my father went downstairs to the garage and got into the car and started backing up to the garage door, which hadn’t been opened yet. At that point Henry Louviere was downstairs and had stopped Poppy to ask him a question. Someone had opened up the garage door and just as they did the tall 60-foot radio tower on top of the courthouse was ripped from its base and fell over the side of the building to come crashing down right in the path of the exit from the garage. (see photo of courthouse earlier in blog) If Henry had not stopped Poppy and my father, most likely this tower would have crashed down on top of their car and killed both of them.
Thanks for learning!
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