1969 Cat 5 Hurricane - "A Lady Called Camille"

SUBSCRIBE. From Camille'sWiki Page:
en.wikipedia.o...
"Hurricane Camille was a powerful, deadly and destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane which became the second most intense tropical cyclone on record to strike the United States (behind the 1935 Labor Day hurricane) and is one of just four Category 5 hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S.
The most intense storm of the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season, Camille originated as a tropical depression on August 14, south of Cuba, from a long-tracked tropical wave. Located in a favorable environment for strengthening, the storm quickly intensified into a Category 2 hurricane before striking the western part of Cuba on August 15. Emerging into the Gulf of Mexico, Camille underwent another period of rapid intensification and became a Category 5 hurricane the next day as it moved northward towards Louisiana and Mississippi. Despite weakening slightly on August 17, the hurricane quickly re-intensified back into a Category 5 hurricane before it made landfall a half hour before midnight in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. At peak intensity, the hurricane had peak 1-minute sustained winds of 175 miles per hour (282 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 900 mbar (26.58 inHg), the second-lowest pressure recorded for a U.S. landfall behind the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. As Camille pushed inland, it quickly weakened and was a tropical depression by the time it was over the Ohio Valley. Once it emerged offshore, Camille was able to restrengthen to a strong tropical storm before becoming extratropical on August 22. Camille was absorbed by a frontal storm over the North Atlantic later that day.
Camille caused tremendous damage in its wake and produced a peak official storm surge of 24 feet (7.3 m). It flattened nearly everything along the Mississippi coast and caused additional flooding and deaths inland while crossing the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. In the U.S., Camille killed more than 259 people and caused $1.42 billion in damages (equivalent to $11.8 billion in 2023)."
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[@glendapeterson1180]

My husband returned from Vietnam just in time to meet Camille. He was a Seabee, and they were just told a big storm was coming. He looked around the base at Gulf Port and herded his platoon into a tank. They spent the night there. The next morning the base was gone and the tank had been moved quite a ways. He and some pals immediately began giving out water and MREs to survivors. He also checked on the many people he knew in the destroyed city. He told me about finding bodies high in the trees. One he caught the smell of death, which he knew well, and followed it until the found an old lady in a tree. RIP, Hubby.

[@NerdsMakeMedia]

@@glendapeterson1180 thank you for sharing your amazing story.