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Flight to the Attic
Forced into the attic, a Pass Christian couple waited out the storm surge
By Darwin Singleton
"Where were you when the storm hit?" I asked.
"We was in the loft in my mother's . . ."
"In the attic?"
"In the attic."
Roderick Gates and Fran Jacobs are from Pass Christian, Mississippi, one of the towns hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina, but I found them in Biloxi, a block away from battered Beach Boulevard.
Gates works for Yates Construction Company, which is already busy rebuilding their headquarters in Biloxi. Both Gates and Jacobs seem awed by the destruction they see here even though, last monday, they were much closer to the storm. In fact, they were in the eye of the storm.
"Terrifying. Terrifying, like an earthquake, rocking with you and water and wind coming at you."
Gates and Jacobs were at her parent's house when Katrina came roaring into Pass Christian -- her 125 miles an hour winds pushing a storm surge that began to fill the house with water. There was no where to go but up, and then, the water reached the ceiling.
Gates managed to get into the attic through an opening- but when Jacobs tried . . .
"I got stuck trying to get up into the ceiling," she said. The water pressure pushed me up into the ceiling."
"So the water pressure made you shoot up?"
"Yeah, into the ceiling."
And there they waited in the dark with the water rising and and no way out.
"Did you think there was a time when you would not live?"
"Yes we did," replied Gates. Then Jacobs jumped in.
"There was a time, a moment, but we held on and we prayed."
The couple says this went on for hours. They could feel the water getting up to their knees in the dark attic space.
"We had three surges up and down with water to our knees."
"In the attic?"
"In the attic. And then it went down."
"It went all the way down and at this point you knew you had survived the worst of it?"
"Yes."
The water did go down, and both Roderick and Fran emerged into the light of day. . . and a new world. But they had survived.
Still, one wonders- why did they stay in Pass Christian, waiting for Katrina? The answer? They overslept!
"We were going to leave like, 3:00 in the morning, and before we knew it, it was up on us," said Jacobs.
"You're a heavy sleeper!"
"Yes!", agreed Jacobs.
And then, suddenly I heard something that I realized I had not heard for several days. Jacobs laughed.