Roar of the Heavens: Surviving Hurricane Camille - Hardcover

Bechtel, Stefan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0806527064 ISBN 13: 9780806527062

Publisher: Citadel Pr, 2006

Synopsis

"Rain is likely tonight, ending tomorrow. Thursday will be fair and cooler." So began the final and most destructive act of Hurricane Camille, a storm so ferocious that scientists calculated the odds as once in a thousand years. In 1969, meteorologists were yet to have satellite and computer technology at their disposal, and the National Hurricane Center’s director, Dr. Robert Simpson, could only rely on his instincts to predict Camille’s track.

The Category Five storm, with wind gusts over 200 miles per hour, tore into the Mississippi/Alabama coast, erasing entire towns. At a hurricane party on a rooftop a few miles from where Camille made landfall, the nearly three-story tidal storm surge—the highest ever measured—collapsed the entire building and swept 23 people to their deaths. Incredibly, the worst was yet to come.

As Camille hit the mountains of western Virginia she also collided with two other weather systems that squeezed millions of tons of water out of the storm like a sponge. It didn’t just rain; the air held nearly the maximum amount of water theoretically possible, becoming a solid body of descending liquid, and lightning flashed sideways. Eight hours and more than two feet of rain later, 124 people in rural Nelson County were dead. Many of them, taken by the devastating floods, would never be found.

Roar of the Heavens tells Camille’s destructive hour-by-hour story through the riveting first-person accounts of survivors and key players, including Dr. Simpson, who would later help to pioneer the universal Saffir-Simpson Scale for hurricanes; Mary Ann Gerlach, the lone survivor of that hurricane party, who was later found clinging to a tree five miles away; and William Whitehead, the very untraditional sheriff of Nelson County, who became a central figure in the storm’s aftermath. At the height of school desegregation, blacks and whites came together to rebuild, and students worked together with locals who had so recently attacked them for demonstrating against the Vietnam War.

Camille’s ferocity exposed the inadequacies of the nation’s ability to deal with such a cataclysmic event and led directly to the creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Yet Roar of the Heavens is also a cautionary tale, as the United States is still terribly unprepared to deal with hurricanes. When Katrina came ashore as a Category Four hurricane in 2005, over 1,000 lives were tragically lost, and experts agree that it is only a question of time before another Category Five storm hits the U.S. mainland.

About this title

From the Publisher

"A riveting account of what it was like to live through the most intense hurricane ever to strike the U.S. mainland." —John Grisham

Hurricane Camille, packing winds over 200 miles per hour, slammed into Mississippi’s Gulf Coast on August 17, 1969, killing 23 people, sweeping enormous tankers miles inland, and leaving behind 100,000 tons of debris. Yet her real fury would be unleashed a thousand miles inland and two days later.

This is the story, told by the survivors and key players, of a meteorological event so powerful and rare that scientists estimate it’s possible only once in a millennium. Camille approached the theoretical limits of what weather can do, and those who witnessed her wrath will never forget the Roar of the Heavens.

"Roar of the Heavens details the unthinkable that can occur...the immeasurable power of water was never so real." —Jim Cantore, host of The Weather Channel’s Storm Stories

"Gripping...compelling...ranks with Isaac’s Storm." —Dr. Robert Simpson, former director, National Hurricane Center

About the Author

Stefan Bechtel is the author or co-author of six books, which have sold over two million copies. He is a founding editor of Men’s Health magazine, and his work has appeared in Esquire, The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, and many other national publications.

Edition details

• Publisher: Citadel Pr
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0806527064
• ISBN 13: 9780806527062
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 308