Once again, the number one news story that we have to listen to, and have televisions shows interrupted over -- is the possibility of still another tropical storm, or potential hurricane headed our way.

Another state of emergency have been declared in Texas and other states. Nobody has to tell anyone there what the extent of devastation can be. The rest of us can only watch, worry, and be glad it isn't us -- this time.

More than fifty years after two separate hurricane events in Louisiana, when "state of emergencies" were very real, but there was no one to declare them, except those who lived to tell about it -- the nightmares about them would haunt a man nearing his final days.

If you ever wondered what it was like to live through such an event, when there were no such things as hurricane preparation, hurricane tracking, a National Hurricane Center, hurricane warnings, or hurricane categories -- you should know the story he told. More importantly, you should know how a not so modern man and his family, coped during and after the hurricanes.

These hurricanes altered the lives of not only this family, but the generations that would follow them. Uprooting and displacing families permanently is one of the least talked about consequences of such an event.

These are the true events that happened to one family that survived the 1909 and 1915 hurricanes that devastated Louisiana. Their story has been handed down orally in our family for the past five generations. It's a lesson in hurricane survival that applies to today, and to the survivors of such natural disasters in modern times. The following narrative is a recount of the recurring nightmare that never left the patriarch of our family for the rest of his life.

Emile thought he heard Hirma singing. Her words were an echoing of an old Terrebonne spiritual, that spread like another gray ghost over the swampland:

In the last day of September

In the year of 1909

Gold Almighty rose in the weather

And that troubled everybody's mind

The storm began on a Sunday

And it got in an awful rage

Not a mortal soul

On the globe that day

Didn't have a mind to pray

And God was in the wind storm,

And troubled everybody's mind.

God Almighty and his ministers

They rode up and down the land,

all God Almighty did that day

Was to raise the wind and dust,

Gold, He is in the wind storm and rain

And everybody ought to mind.

It was unmistakably Hirma's voice, yet something else was wrong. Emile's Hirma would have never sung those particular refrains in English. In all the years, they had only spoken Cadien between them. "Perhaps I have died and gone to hell," he cried.

Momentarily, he was ready to ceder-- hang up the fiddle. He had no fight left in him. confusion set in and Emile was overtaken by memories and sadness. He slumped down to his knees and held his head. A whirlpool of memories of love, family life, and living with Hirma danced within him, amidst the fog within his mind.

Remembrances of her and the storm that had given birth to that lyrical verse, were as relentless, as the alleged feux-folet prancing before him in the distance.

If the tormented trees had a voice back during that hurricane, they would have thrashed out, "C'est L'orogan! C'est L'orogan!" For those were the very words Emile had screamed himself. And those were the very words he was screaming now in his nightmare. He closed his eyes tightly in a feeble effort to escape both the hurricane ghost and the feux-folet.

The storm had been one of the most destructive hurricanes to ever strike Louisiana. One that would claim hundreds of Cajuns and non-Cajuns by drowning. It left most of Louisiana in shambles. Emile had known when the skies first became forbidding, that it was going to be a sinister assault.

All of the animals were making noises, howling at the storm. The wind began to gust adversely, a terrifying harbinger of what was to come. Then, the clouds moved in rapidly. The winds brought a black sea of water upon the land.

For six miles up and down the bayou, not a house was left. The winds tested the strength of the mighty oak trees, the water, and the currents twisting their branches. They forced the strength of the mighty oak trees, the water and currents in turn forced the people to climb to attics, as a questionable refuge. Some spent the night in their boats tied to trees.

One family tied their boat to the post of their front porch. When the water came up, they went into the attic. Finally, from the attic window, they climbed back into the boat. The water and boat were less than a foot below that window.

When the hurricane was over, the women and children were taken to Houma, but the men stayed on to clean up the aftermath. Throughout the parish, three quarters of the homes were completely destroyed. After the mud and debris were cleaned up, it was discovered that whole families had drowned together. The bodies of half of the missing were never found.

Remembering all this, while simultaneously trying to calm himself, Emile began to defer to Hirma quietly. He was talking to a memory, that his sons said was never coming home. But they were wrong, of this he was sure.

Hirma's phantom voice reminded him, "Je t'espere -- I am waiting for you. What was it we did the night L'orogan roared? Do you remember? On a attrape une vilalue escoursse -- we got badly shaken up."

Emile still lost in his private hysteria for the moment, could not recall. Meanwhile, the suspect feux-folet closed in on this unsuspecting soul. However, before he opened his eyes in discovery of this change, Emile unsteadily rose from where he had knelled.

He held out his arms to Hirma, as if they were a couple on a dance floor, facing each other, toe-to-toe. He clutched fast to his false partner at both her wrist and waist. They began the slow-in-and-out weave of a Cajun two-step promenade. This is how they kept out the hurricane in 1909.

A big hurricane is a frightening thing. Lightening struck repeatedly. It was a frightful experience. Le tonnere -- Thunder, was deafening that day. There had been no escape. There was no safe place to hide in that terrible storm. Back then, there was no such thing as a hurricane warning.

Two of their older children, Leonce and Victoria were teenagers at the time. When the storm began, the elder siblings took eight-year-old Juanita and four-year-old Lloyd, to the center of the room. After securing the hurricane shutters, they huddled together under a table, in sheer terror as the roof groaned with each blow.

The wind driven rain pounded their house from every conceivable angle. Then, the children sought refuge under the lone bed that had not been piled up against the door. There was no room under that bed for adults and no other shelter.

So Emile and Hirma wrapped blankets around themselves and clung to each other. They danced all night in the darkness to the tune of an unearthly roar, a ballad of terror, a valse -- waltz that would end at first light, to silence and ruin. Pretending to themselves the whole while that nothing, including the storm, existed outside their swaying embrace -- all the while praying to God for the safety of their children.

Pieces of the roof, limbs from trees, personal possessions all flew about the room, sometimes hitting them. Still, they continued to sway, locked into an embrace no storm could sever.

When the 1909 storm ended, the entire family emerged to a blinding light that shone through the few skeletons boards remaining on the roof. The sunlight was a natural spotlight upon the destruction.

The storm left just as quickly as it came. Afterwards, Emile often thought they'd had a preview of the end of the world. It had seemed just like judgment day had arrived.

For those who survived to rebuild again, this was not all that they would face. For then, hard luck struck. The following year anthrax, reached epidemic numbers among the livestock upon which they depended heavily for their very financial existence. As if this were not enough, in the aftermath of the hurricane, sugar cane diseases attacked the bayou economy too.

Abruptly in Emile's nightmare, the direction of the wind changed and the dancers were blown forward in time to September 1915. by then, the house that could not be rebuilt after the hurricane of 19019 -- had been replaced by a new one, in a nearby town, New Iberia. Emile and his sons had made certain to carefully tighten the roof of this new house, in the manner they thought secure from the worst of storms. It was here the ghostly dancing couple landed, still swaying to the beat of their combined hearts.

Again, an angel-like song filled the air. Again, it was Hirma's voice humming a frighteningly familiar tune. Her lyrics were a reverberation of the two songs -- a mingling of the 1909 spiritual and the different song of 1915. words that were eerily joined in what almost sounded like an old fashioned round, penetrating the swampland.

Hirma murmured softly in Emile's ear, "Tu t'rapple? -- Do you remember?"

T'was on the 29th day of September

In the year of 1915

Many lost souls that went and slept

Just became of that raging storm . . . . "

Recalling this, both solemnly hummed the chorus, as they resumed the dance:

"Wasn't that a raging and a storming time?

Wasn't that a raging and storming time?

Wasn't that a raging and storming time?

People had to run and pray and cry."

One giant ghost fire of the feux-folet seemed to be absorbing the shadow dancers as they clung to each other. Memories of both hurricanes came rushing back in some kind of crazy kaleidoscope of flashing pictures of the past. Emile remembered. Hirma had related to him afterwards, that she had screamed to the children, "Sauve tol, la pluie va te prendre. Run, the rain will get you!"

Yes, indeed they had ran. They had prayed. And when it was over, they had cried. It was as though the kaleidoscope was being wickedly turned by the feux-folet, this turn of events was something over which Emile had no control. He had no choice but to remember what he wanted to forget, as the images of that natural disaster gyrated around him.

With the first thunder clap, Emile knew they were in trouble. Then the winds started. Within minutes, the heart of the community was swept away. Again, there was no place to go, nor time to flee this horror.

He and his older sons were working ten miles away from home in a cypress lumber camp. Hirma had been home alone with nine-year-old Lloyd, and five- year-old Vernon. Emile had tried to get back to the house, but the l'avalasse -- heavy downpour made it too late to return, or to seek proper shelter.

It was a final desperate act, in which he and his older sons decided in a split second, to tie themselves to a nearby water oak tree. This decision saved them, but it would be three days before they were rescued, barely alive.

This second storm also began with blackened skies, but quickly the usually calm, shallow waters swelled over fourteen feet high, knocking down the small wooden bayou homes. Few survivors were left in its wake. Those who did survive, managed to do so only by clinging to driftwood, or make-shift rafts, or to rope themselves to trees against the current.

Many of the dead were not found for days and days. Some were never found. Whole families again drowned together, just like back in 1909. After the storm was over, an odd lifeless calm washed over Southern Louisiana. The sky was a clean washed clear blue.

Bodies were laid out on the floor of the church. In a time before electricity, after dark, survivors searched for family members who were missing by candle light. Not all human remains were found or in a position for recovery before wildlife and rotting flesh would consume them. When the water receded, the survivors buried their dead, if they could find them. Not everyone would be able to piece their shattered lives back together.

Once Emile was conscious, it was all his rescuers could do to keep him from trying to get home to Hirma and the children. His left arm was broken. He was terribly weak and suffering from exposure. He was so injured, that it was three days before he was able to travel.

During those terrible dark days of not knowing if Hirma and the children were alive or dead, Emile prayed and prayed. His dreams during this time were filled with a mixture of the terror of the hurricane and strangely la jeremiade -- lyrical poems, from the Book of Lamentations. Those odes mourned the destruction, desolation, and ruin of Jerusalem.

Mostly, Emile's dreams recalled that the odes were about the broken spirit of the survivors and their profound grief. By day, he felt as though he was all alone with his trial. the burden was a never-ending dark night for his soul. by night, he seemed to have forgotten that the wailing had not only expressed profound grief, but also manifested deep faith and hope.

During periods of semi-consciousness, Hirma's voice kept whispering in his ear, telling him "Je m'ennule de toi -- I miss you and I fear I may never see you again." With those words he would awake in a terror, so real that his rescuers had to tie him to the bed.

Hirma and the younger children hadn't fared much better. Neighbors had found them unconscious and afloat on top of an outbuilding roof, that had been launched into the torrents of the flood water after the storm.

The storm had been so frightful that Hirma was never able to remember how it came to be that they got up on that roof top. Before the storm hit, she had tied each of them and herself securely to a massive tree next to that outbuilding.

Five-year-old Vernon was so traumatized that he stopped speaking altogether for nearly a month after that storm. Lloyd coped with the trauma by day. But for years, the young boy's nights would be passer la nuit blanche -- nearly sleepless. He feared that another hurricane would descend upon them in the darkness of night. Over and over, he cried out in his sleep, "L'eau haute-- High-water flood!"

Finally, when the family was united, hard times came. The worst, however, was yet to come. From bad to worse, everything they had ever owned was gone. Days were spent locating and retrieving farm animals. The barn and all of the other out buildings were destroyed. Their fences had been entirely washed away. Pastures and the yard were heaped with decomposing bodies of their livestock and their former friends.

What was left of the house was filled with five feet of offensive mud. Their well was unusable. gone was virtually every possession, even their boat. Nothing remained of their old life. The only proof they had that their home existed lay in the mortgage, they still owed the bank, regardless of what remained, or didn't remain of the structure. Yes, they had cried.

Cajuns were not people to give up during any sort of conflict, no matter how grave the outcome. They are not about to walk away from their land and proclaim mother nature the victor. After each devastating hurricane, after each flood, families such as Emile's would se trousser les marches-- roll up their sleeves and pitch in to help pull themselves and other through. Together the entire community worked re-clearing the land, planting new crops, beginning new farms.

Cajuns had created their position in nature and entrenched a rigid hold on their land. Some would later say that the two hurricanes of 1909 and 1915 gave them a more complete view of life, that they would not have had, had they not survived it. However, after this storm, many of them found themselves facing yet another destructive force -- an old adversary whom many thought they had settled the score with, long before.

That enemy was another group of humans, who tried to control the Cajuns. As the Cajuns successfully worked the land, raising cotton, sugarcane, rice, and establishing prosperous ranches -- other wealthy English speaking newcomers flocked to the bayou. They tried to cash in on their hard work. The outside world had gotten word of oil having been discovered in the area.

A surge of devouring oil men and oil companies, in conjunction with local bankers, swept through the bayou country -- buying up, or outright stealing the oil-rich land from the Cajuns. Other families were driven off their land by pressure and strong-arm tactics.

The style was always the same. A family would buy or homestead a small piece of swamp land and establish a successful crop. Then, English speaking outsiders would again force them from their land. The Cajuns would move on again, only to face eviction again, by mother nature or at the hands of man. This pattern continued until the 1930s.

This was the fate of the Navarre family, the fate of my family. The bankers with whom Emile had secured his mortgage seized the opportunity of the hurricanes destruction to immediately demand the note in full.

The land was a coveted piece of real estate that had been in extended family hands for generations. Unable to pay, Emile and his sons stubbornly clung to the hope for outside employment -- hopes that were soon dashed. Memories of those horrible days would follow my Grandpere Emile from the swamp in the form of nightmares for the rest of his life.

We would often overhear him cry to Hirma, "It was all my fault. I cannot bear knowing that you were alone on that day. I cannot stand the knowledge that I could not earn enough to rebuild the house in Chacahoula, that you loved so much. I cannot accept that I could not hold onto the land in New Iberia, that had been in our family since 1719. I should have never taken our children away from Louisiana. Now, they have forgotten who and what they are."

In the last few weeks of Emile's life, he lingered between times of clarity and confusion. However, there were a few topics he was not confused about, one of them was the subject of hurricane survival. He told us:

"No matter what happens in life, you owe it to all of your ancestors who didn't make it, to live your life to the fullest. Being an unfailing survivor, someone who does not wait for society, or someone else to rescue them, is all that is important."

"I have heard on the television, that we already have a multitude of people who fail to see how they are responsible for their own destiny. It saddens me, to think of so many people with their hands out, waiting for others to rescue them. Misguided and uneducated children and child-like adults. . . . . already thinking their parents, or the government owes them a living and a comfortable life."

Then, he also asked us some uncomfortable questions, questions we didn't have answers to:

"Why aren't they willing to work for what they want and need? Our nation seems to be in a quest for quick fixes to life's problems. Where will it lead us?"

Finally, he told us:

"Unfortunately many individuals within all cultures today, find it troublesome to be true survivors. A genuine survivor treasures life and appreciates what they have. A faithful survivor persists in loving and extending unconditional love to those around them. They alone, have earned a life with few regrets. A legitimate survivor goes on living fully, despite discouragements and setbacks. They intentionally choose to turn tragedy into life-affirming celebrations."