My First bad Hurricane, Beulah

My First bad Hurricane, Beulah

Having just finished boot camp in Fort Jackson South Carolina, I was stationed at Fort Sam Houston for twelve weeks medic training when I encountered my first big bad hurricane named Beulah. She was a twisted woman and a violent example of how Mother Nature can strike out at you with the kind of wrath no man could imagine unless you were standing in her path or in her way. 

September, 1967 was the time I experienced this storm from a bird’s eye view and a boots on the ground kind of participation. It triggers more than nightmares and memories as I recall how her she-devilish ways torn up everything in her path. She assaulted the coast, the country side and the cities with floods that packed more power I had ever imagined before this occurrence. It was magnificent yet terrifying to say the least.  She roared in like a killer whale packing the kind of power that makes you respect water, wind and earth. We had heard she was coming but we all know meteorologist make up stuff just to put some excitement into their forecasts. 

A soldier and nothing more than a grunt, I was part of a relief team that went to face this storm. I was selected by my team leader to join others assigned to perform damage control and sandbag critical areas of the post to minimize water damage as well as wind damage. It was rumored this hurricane was the mother of all hurricanes to date and I had no reason to doubt them except that meteorologist lie a lot. 

We were dressed in our olive drab ponchos and we wore our military boots as we had no rubber boots to hand out. We knew our feet would get wet but we didn’t know the water would reach our waists as the water just kept coming down. It seemed that every hour that passed, we stood in that much more water passing sandbags and trying to keep the wall we built from falling apart. 

We left the post on those six wheel drive deuce and a half trucks that could straddle low streams and water ways without any problems. We were dispatched to various parts of San Antonio to put sand bags around government buildings and entrances to museums and other public places. We never ran out of sandbags but our arms and our backs never got a rest.

 Coming back, we learned the post had lost all electricity. I don’t know if they had emergency backup power but we didn’t have a light in the barracks when we came back to take a break from sandbagging all day. The water had seeped into the wooden barracks and we weren’t sure if the building was going to last but for once I was glad we had bunk beds and mine was on top. 

 Exhausted, I took a nap before a whistle blew calling us all to get dressed and go out again. It must have been less than two hours since I tried to close my eyes. By nightfall, the word was the water was coming in like a wall and soon to cover the entire facility. On the Gulf side there were reports of swells of destruction as it pounded the beaches and swept the rain with winds of up to 128 miles per hour. We know where we were, these structures could not sustain those kind of damaging winds and prayed it weakened before it got here inland.

We never ran out of sandbags but we never got to finish filling them all as the wind, the rain and the storm caused everybody to be ordered inside to wait it out. Wind gusts breaking windows and pouring in it was a mess as the cement floor was covered with at least two feet of water. 

Being told to stand down until dawn we knew we were part of the cleanup crew to go out and put everything back in order again. The news was sparse and we only had rumors to go by what was happening elsewhere in the state of Texas. 

During the past 24 hours we had the roof leak, the windows broken, the ceilings collapse and every fixture or piece of furniture not bolted down float out the front and back doors. Some pieces of the walls were missing and our clothing was destroyed as footlockers and other containers floated freely around like boats in a big ocean. Our sergeant advised us what to do about plywood, window tape, supplies etc. and we did the best we could to patch up the barracks with what supplies they gave us. 

It seemed like the storm lasted forever but realistically it must have been about 48 hours of hell. We had heard that there were hundreds of tornadoes spawned from this storm and that all major roads were closed and flooded. Some said they were in the helicopters and couldn’t see the roads at all as everything was covered with water. 

The cleanup was hell. The sergeant kept yelling “grab what you can and stack in on a dry spot.” He must have been tripping because there were no dry spots to stack these thing as we were surrounded by objects bobbing in the water like fishing corks do when you go fishing. No rubber suits and just wearing ponchos our feet were soaked and we did what we could to clean up the mess. Much was submerged but some said it wasn’t all bad because nobody got killed. 

Anything smaller than a deuce and a half was submerged or destroyed. Not a Jeep was running and part of the cleanup was to hook up chains to these disabled vehicles and pull them out of the deep water and move them to higher ground. The best moment for us was a chance to take off our water soaked boots and take off our wet socks to dry our feet.

 We were blessed not to be assigned to the emergency teams going into the communities to set up shelter and food centers. That would have been more taxing on us than anyone could ever imagine as we were on our last leg of energy going without sleep for more than two days and nights. After sandbagging for those last days we needed rest and it didn’t matter whether the mattress was wet or dry. 

San Antonio Texas was hit hard that day by Beulah. She showed no mercy to the state of Texas especially the Gulf areas. It was said more than 50 people died and the damage estimates was in the billions. Rains 10 to 20 inches over much of the area south of San Antonio resulted in record-breaking floods. An unofficial gaging registered the highest accumulated rainfall, 36 inches. The resultant stream overflow and surface runoff inundated 1.4 million acres. This was to be my first and my last hurricane. I was glad to have survived such a storm.