Mississippi Oral History Program

Transcription

1 Mississippi Oral History Program Hurricane Katrina Oral History Project An Oral History with Thomas Ed Brister Interviewers: Johanna Stork and Chrystal Bowen-Swan Volume

2 2009 The University of Southern Mississippi This transcription of an oral history by The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage of The University of Southern Mississippi may not be reproduced or published in any form except that quotation of short excerpts of unrestricted transcripts and the associated tape recordings is permissible providing written consent is obtained from The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. When literary rights have been retained by the interviewee, written permission to use the material must be obtained from both the interviewee and The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. This oral history is a transcript of a taped conversation. The transcript was edited and punctuation added for readability and clarity. People who are interviewed may review the transcript before publication and are allowed to delete comments they made and to correct factual errors. Additions to the original text are shown in brackets [ ]. Minor deletions are not noted. Original tapes and transcripts are on deposit in the McCain Library and Archives on the campus of The University of Southern Mississippi. Louis Kyriakoudes, Director The Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage 118 College Drive #5175 The University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS An Oral History with Thomas Ed Brister, Volume 857 Interviewers: Johanna Stork and Chrystal Bowen-Swan Transcribers: Stephanie Scull-DeArmey, Carol Short Editors: Clay Baird, Stephanie Scull-DeArmey

3 Biography Mr. Thomas Ed Brister was born in 1934, in Cypress, Louisiana, to Mr. Shelby Brister and Mrs. Bonnie Thurman Brister. When he was six years old, his family moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Pascagoula. Mr. Brister is married, has two sons, one in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and one in Pascagoula, and he has grandchildren in Pascagoula. Mr. Brister survived Hurricane Camille in 1969 when he lived in Pass Christian, and he survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when he lived in Pascagoula. At the time of this interview, he was making a living as a real estate appraiser. He enjoys Mardi Gras, boating, and fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

4 Table of Contents Attachment to Mississippi Gulf Coast... 2 Neighborhood before Hurricane Katrina... 2, 7 Preparing home for Hurricane Katrina... 3, 15 Hurricane Camille, August, , 29 Flood and wind damage, Hurricane Katrina... 4 Neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina... 4 First sighting of home after Hurricane Katrina... 4, 16 Federal flood map... 5 FEMA... 5, 17, 19 Fishing... 5 Horn Island... 6 New Orleans, Louisiana... 6, 28 State government... 7 Insurance problems... 9, 27 Politicians... 9 Towns destroyed Rebuilding... 11, 26, 27 First hearing about Hurricane Katrina Evacuation Life after Hurricane Katrina Gasoline FEMA trailer... 17, 21 Renovating home Migrant Mexican laborers Volunteers... 18, 20, 23, 24 Small Business Administration Storm debris Swimming for life in storm surge Helping elderly neighbors Personal transformation from Hurricane Katrina Appraising real estate Increased value of housing after Hurricane Katrina Best practices in rebuilding... 26, 28 Zoning laws Hattiesburg after Hurricane Katrina Number of homes lost State Farm Insurance Company Preserving strength of neighborhood... 28

5 1 AN ORAL HISTORY with THOMAS ED BRISTER This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Eddie Brister and is taking place on February 21, The interviewers are Johanna Stork and Chrystal Bowen-Swan. Stork: This is an interview for The University of Southern Mississippi Hurricane Katrina Oral History Project done in conjunction with the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The interview is with Eddie Brister and is taking place on February 21, 2007, at 3:30 p.m. in Pascagoula, Mississippi, at St. John s Episcopal Church. The interviewers are Johanna Stork and Chrystal Bowen-Swan. First I d like to thank you, Eddie, for taking the time to talk with us today, and I d like to get some background information about you, which is what we usually do in oral history interviews. So I m going to ask you for the record, could you please state your name? Brister: My name is Eddie Brister, and my real name is Thomas Ed Brister, but everybody calls me Eddie. Stork: Cool, OK. Bowen-Swan: And for the record, in case all the labels are lost are damaged, how do you spell your name? Brister: My first name is spelled E-D-D-I-E; last name is B-R-I-S-T-E-R. Stork: Great. And when were you born? Brister: I was born in Bowen-Swan: And for the record, where were you born? Brister: I was born in a little village called Cypress, Louisiana. Stork: And for the record, what was your father s name? Brister: My father s name was Shelby Brister. Bowen-Swan: And your mother s name and maiden name?

6 2 Brister: My mother s name was Bonnie Thurman; her maiden name was Thurman, then Bonnie Thurman Brister. Stork: And where did you grow up? Brister: Most of my life was spent here in Pascagoula. I ve lived in Pascagoula since I was about six years old. Bowen-Swan: And how long have you lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast? Brister: I ve lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast about sixty years. Stork: And how many generations in your family have lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast? Brister: Well, including my mother and father who brought us here, I raised my family here, my two sons. One of them is still here, and he s now raising a family. That would be three generations. Bowen-Swan: And why were you living there on the Coast? Brister: Mainly because it was hometown, and my employment was here, and I was happy with the employment. So I liked the area; so I stayed. Stork: Where was your neighborhood? Brister: My neighborhood was in southwest Pascagoula along Washington Avenue, which is very close to the beach, close to the beachfront. And it took a very heavy hit in Hurricane Katrina. Bowen-Swan: And can you describe your attachment to the region, the coastal region? And what does it mean to you? Brister: Yes. Well, I think the seashore, you know, 50 percent of the people in the United States live on the seashore, and it attracts all types of people. And I particularly like the seashore even though I like the mountains a lot, too. The seashore is a good place; it s usually very productive in terms of getting employment. There s a lot of jobs on the coastline. And also I like the recreational facilities, the skiing, the fishing, and stuff like that. And the boating; I particularly like the boating because I owned a boat [before] Hurricane Katrina, which I lost in the storm. Stork: Describe your neighborhood before Katrina. Brister: My neighborhood before Katrina was a quiet, I would say probably for this area, middle-class neighborhood, maybe a little upper-middle-class neighborhood in a

7 3 good part of town. And real estate values were a little higher than average there, and it was very close to the beach. And I liked that particular location because for the past thirty years or so I ve sometimes I ll get up in the morning, and I ll walk along the beach, and I have a regular place that I walk a lot. And I listen to the seabirds and whatever there is, and it s very pleasant. Bowen-Swan: Did you stay in your home during Hurricane Katrina? Brister: No, I didn t. Bowen-Swan: Where did you stay? Brister: I happened to be in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when the storm came. I was visiting a son that lives there. My oldest son lives in Winston-Salem and is a professor at Wake Forrest University. Stork: So describe that experience for me. What happened to you during Hurricane Katrina? Brister: OK. I ll try to start from the beginning. I think Hurricane Katrina probably came into the Mississippi Coast on either Sunday night or Monday morning; I m not somewhere about that time. I remember that I left the area the previous Thursday knowing the storm was out there. At that particular time the storm was around the Florida Keys. I ve been through this numerous times over the past thirty, forty, fifty years, and I ve watched hurricanes. And when they re out there I always keep a close eye on them. And this one I probably thought was going to miss us, but you never know for sure. But I so I tied down things at my house as well as I possibly could and secured everything, but I really wanted to so I just left. I said, That d be a good place to go, into North Carolina. I ll be as far away from anything if it does happen. I picked up things that I couldn t afford to lose if things really got bad. This was not my first time through a catastrophic hurricane. I lived in Pass Christian, Mississippi, in 1969, when Hurricane Camille came through. Up until 2005, Hurricane Camille was the worst hurricane in American history, and I didn t think there would ever be anything like that again. I lost my entire belongings in 1969 in Hurricane Camille, so I know what could happen, but I did not suspect it. I said, This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime happening, and it ll never happen again. And I think a lot of people viewed it that way. And so I left thinking probably that everything would probably be OK when I got back. Bowen-Swan: So what things did you bring with you? Brister: I brought papers I didn t want to lose such as tax records, banking records, birth certificates, and the things that are important papers like deeds to your house and things like that, that I didn t really want to lose. Other than that, any valuables I left behind.

8 4 Stork: So would you know how or if your home was affected by the flood or wind? Brister: I have I do know that it was affected by both. And I had for sure like, we ll start with the flood first. I had four and a half feet of water through my house. All the doors and windows were gone when I got back. And I do have a two-story house, and upstairs I have some slight damage, but not floodwaters upstairs. And the wind damage destroyed my roof, roof shingles, which I have had to replace. I hired a professional engineer to come look at my house shortly after the storm to see if any major structural damage was done that I should look into and maybe declare it a total loss or not. He came by and did me a good job, and said, Your house has some damages and slight shifting because of the wind, and said, because some of your walls are not lined up properly, you know, like they should be. He said, But otherwise your house is fairly structurally sound and can be restored back to its original condition. So I said at that point that I chose to rebuild my house and stay here. Most of my neighbors did not; they left. Bowen-Swan: So most of your neighbors left during the hurricane? Brister: Yeah. Well, they never did move back. Bowen-Swan: Oh. Brister: And right now my neighborhood is sort of deserted, so to speak; it s not like it used to be. I go out in my front yard, and I don t see any houses; they re all gone, except for a few here and there. But most of them are gone. Of course, directly in front of my house was a little there was a street there, but the Gulf of Mexico was very close to me, and the further south in front of my house that you go, the more devastating the damage was and most of the houses I was in a particular spot just out of the major damage area [that] would have destroyed the entire house. Some houses were totally gone, period, swept off of their foundations. And this was within a block of my house. And particularly a street called Ingar(?) Street and St. Mary Street, and I lived on Washington Avenue. But the houses on, all of the houses on Ingar Street and St. Mary Street directly fronted on the water; they were all gone. And that was a shocking sight. Stork: So what day did you come back? Were you gone then? You were were you Brister: I was in North Carolina, and I called my youngest son who evacuated and went up on higher ground north of here, and he said, I will try to get in my car and go down there and see it. It s very hard to get into places after a hurricane; most of the time it s almost impossible because of the downed power lines and the chaos and all the things that go along with having a hurricane. But he was able to somehow, to get back to my house with his car. And when he saw it, he didn t want to tell me what was there. My house was still standing, but all my furniture was washed out into the yard, and my interior walls were crushed, and there was nothing really valuable left on

9 5 the first floor. And he called me in North Carolina, and he was very quiet. And I said, Well, did you make it to my house? He said, Yes, I did. So I (inaudible) to his house because he lived there fairly close to me. And he got very quiet, and I said, Are you going to tell me what it was? And he says, Well, I don t know. As I began to suspect at that time that it was really, really bad. This was probably shortly, just hours after the hurricane s eye passed through. And he said, It s totally gone, Dad. He said, It s totaled to you; you ve lost it. Your house is absolutely destroyed on the first floor, and all your furniture s gone. And I said, Well, I ve been through that before. So he thought I would go into a state of shock, but I didn t. But I was concerned about him, and he lived maybe a mile north of me, and he also had four feet of water in his house. But I was fortunate that I had flood insurance on my house, and he did not. So I was able to recover from it a lot better than some people. Bowen-Swan: And why didn t he have flood insurance, because he was further back into the county? Brister: Further back and the federal flood map said you will never flood there. Bowen-Swan: There s a federal flood map? Brister: Yeah, FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency], what they call FEMA flood maps. And all the lending institutions and the banks and all of them have them. If you take out a mortgage on your house, they go to these, and they figure in certain zones in that flood map, they make you buy flood insurance. And my house was paid for at the time, but I had flood insurance that I had had for thirty years because I had it with my mortgage when I so I just kept it because I knew from Hurricane Camille in 1969 what could happen, so. It s not very expensive, and so I just kept the insurance. Stork: What traditions do you carry on in your community? For example, do you do Mardi Gras or St. Patrick s Day parade or boatbuilding or music? Brister: I do the Mardi Gras parades. As far as music, I listen to it, but I don t play it. (laughter) Love to listen. And I basically spend a lot of my time fishing. At one time I was a golfer, but I quit that. Stork: A golfer? Brister: Um-hm. There s a lot of golf courses around this area. Bowen-Swan: What kind of fishing did you do? Brister: Well, mostly close inshore and not, I didn t really go out in deep water very much. I had a nineteen-foot boat that was sitting in my yard at the time Katrina came through, and the boat was gone when I got back. And we found it way off down the way, but it was ruined; so I had to give it up. I had it insured as well.

10 6 Stork: and Bowen-Swan: Well, that s good. Brister: Yeah. (laughter) Stork: Did you usually go out with who did you usually go out with to fish? Brister: Myself and usually a friend or usually one other person. Now, the last time I was out, I was out probably two months before Katrina came through. I had my nephew from California was visiting; I had my son and his, and my two granddaughters that live here in Pascagoula. We all went offshore to one of the islands out there they call Horn Island. We call it a barrier island is what they re known as. And that s where we go when we really like to go see the seashore, you know, and it s just real pretty out there. It s about twelve miles offshore. Bowen-Swan: What kind of fish are you looking for up there? Brister: OK, usually the fish that we seek more than any other are redfish, speckled trout, and cobia. Bowen-Swan: And do you use nets or rods? Brister: Rods and reels. Stork: What are your most vivid memories of your community before Hurricane Katrina? Brister: Well, it was very quiet and you need to it s hard to reflect back on that because you didn t expect anything like that to ever happen. And I would use the word normal, but there wasn t anything to suggest that we would ever be in this condition within a few days, you know. And on August the 28th, 2005, one day before Katrina came in, everything there was some concern, I would think, about the hurricane. It was somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico at the time, and when those hurricanes get there, they re either going to Florida, or they re going to Texas, or they re coming here. And we re all focused on New Orleans at the particular time because the meteorologists and the National Weather Service said, This could be the big one that does New Orleans in. And it s always been a fear in this part of the country that if a hurricane came in, directly into the city of New Orleans, that it would absolutely wipe it out entirely. Everybody knows the story of New Orleans. It was bad, but the storm actually did hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. This is where the brunt of it hit, was over here. New Orleans was damaged so badly because of broken levees, and when the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain poured back on it from the backside. And they had very little wind damage in New Orleans; we had it here. And our tide our storm surges were much greater here than they were in New Orleans, but New Orleans probably had more damage because of the backwaters from the levees breaking, yeah. A larger city has much more to lose than we do.

11 7 Stork: What were your community s problems and strengths prior to Hurricane Katrina? Brister: Community s problems. Every community has its problems. It s hard to say which ones there are, yes. That s the reason you have a government that tries to run things and represent people and things like that. One of the if I can think of any problem we had prior to that I think was, schools probably were a problem then. We didn t have enough schools positioned at the right place to service all the students we needed. Although I would say the schools were fairly good, and judged by Mississippi standards, they were probably very good, excellent. So, but as far as any major problems, no. I think maybe that the problem that bothered me more than any other was environmental issues. We re known as the most industrialized city in the state of Mississippi. We have a lot of [industry] here. If you go down, you ll see that we do. We have oil refineries. We have several chemical plants. We have a huge shipyard, and we have numbers of little shipyards, just lots of that. And there s a lot of people dumping waste, and right now there was some problems within the soil, within some of the water samples we had. A lot of people really don t ever get concerned with that, but I was. Stork: It s important, right? Brister: Yes. And I could see, you know, because I can remember this place when it was a pristine, untouched area when I was a little kid. You could almost drink the beach water. No more. And, but that over there, the beach was not murky and graylooking like it is now. It was bluer, greener. And I think over the years just slowly and slowly the pollution has come in and just population buildup, lack of regulation of the industries that are here have caused a major problem with this that most people are not addressing now. Bowen-Swan: So what was your opinion of local, state, and federal politicians before Hurricane Katrina? Brister: On a scale of one to ten? Bowen-Swan: Um-hm. Brister: About two. (laughter) Bowen-Swan: Why is that? Brister: Well, I ll start with the state first. I ve never been a big fan of the State of Mississippi and their government. I don t like their constitution. I don t like the way that the legislature is set up in a way that politics is done in this state. It s always tilted too much to one region of the state rather than another. But this is typical, and all states have this problem, and everybody would have it, I m sure. But I felt like that

12 8 there was some, probably some constitutional issues that s never, wouldn t be addressed. In fact, they should have to rewrite the constitution. There were a lot of laws on the books of Mississippi that should not be there. Bowen-Swan: What did you think, like what did you want to change? What bothered you about the constitution? What didn t you like? Brister: With the constitution? Well, I ll give you an example of one thing in there. In the Constitution of the State of Mississippi that they say that Mississippi has a right to seize all the assets of any corporation who does business here, if they so choose, and run them off. Of course they don t do that, but they can if they want to. Bowen-Swan: Hm, that s really interesting. Brister: Another one was that now we re speaking of the whole constitution that was written back in plantation days, back when cotton was king and all this kind of stuff, if you ever studied American history. We were mostly not in that part of the South; we re coastal. We were a different type of environment down here. Stork: Not too much cotton around here. Brister: Not at all. And most of the money and the politicians lived up there in North Mississippi. And they put things in the constitution in there for I ll give you an example. That no member of the state college board, which is an appointed board to oversee all universities in Mississippi, can live south of Interstate 20, which is Jackson. That s still in there. Stork: No, sorry, go ahead. Bowen-Swan: The members of the board on there Brister: Believe me, USM [University of Southern Mississippi] knows this real well. Bowen-Swan: That s funny, OK. Brister: And the new governor, I will say this, the new governor, the governor we have now is addressing that. It s totally wrong. Stork: Are there any other examples that you d like to share with us? Brister: (laughter) Stork: Against the Constitution because I think this is something that probably Brister: Well, I m a graduate of The University of Southern Mississippi. And I m naturally loyal to them, and there was never a member, a graduate of The University

13 9 of Southern Mississippi ever served on the Mississippi State College Board. (laughter) Stork: I think that kind of information would be very interesting to historians in a hundred years from now, looking back on people s attitude towards things. Brister: And as you might guess by now, there s always been kind of a rift; there s been a sectionalism in this state. Stork: Now, what s in this state? Bowen-Swan: Sectionalism. Brister: Sectionalism, more or less North against South, almost like the Civil War. Bowen-Swan: Yeah, OK, I understand. Brister: But a lower and a lesser degree, you know. And this has actually come up after Katrina, too, because we feel like we ve got an enormous problem here right now with the insurance problems. The only solution that I can see at this point is to spread the risk of the hurricane damage and any kind of catastrophic event statewide. And by that I mean the insurance premiums may have to be raised for some of our brethren upstate. Stork: Right, share the Brister: Yeah, share the Stork: risk. Brister: Share the risk. Stork: Exactly. I don t think that s a bad idea. Brister: And I think this will be a big issue in our legislative session this year. Stork: Um-hm. And so what was your opinion of politicians after Katrina? Brister: I made almost a 180-degree turn about politicians, but believe me that I ve never seen so much generosity in one place in all my life. And particularly that President Bush got a lot of criticism, but I do not believe that he neglected us that much. I don t think that he was he s just the President of the United he has a lot of things to do; he s President. And there was a lot of criticism of him by a lot of people, but I don t think that. The governor that we have now did a wonderful job, I think, of reassuring the people and said, We re going to be with you. Don t worry about it.

14 10 We re going to help you get back. There was so many people that lost their homes here. This was a real serious thing. Stork: Yeah. Brister: And this was something, and you re talking about probably close to half a million people that are displaced. Stork: And you know, like as Canadians, I know personally like we heard about it on the news, and we saw it on the news, but I really couldn t prepare myself for what I was going to see when I came down here and just how many people it really did affect. Brister: Yeah, if you run into the people at the archives at the library, like Renee [Hague] or somebody like that, do you know them? Stork: No, I don t know them. Brister: They can show you some pictures of things like how they looked maybe a day after the storm, and it ll give you personally, I drove; I was concerned about the entire coastline and everybody. One week after I got back on the Coast and tried to get my place reestablished, I drove west down to the little cities of Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis, and that s where the center of the hurricane actually came in, and I lived in that area at one time, and that was back in the year of [19]69 when Camille came through. And I was absolutely astonished, and I couldn t believe I lost my house, a good part of it. A lot of people lost their houses. They lost their entire cities. Stork: That s sad. Brister: Small towns but they were like everything was gone. I used to live in the city of Pass Christian, and I lost a lot in Camille and went back, but we still had our town. And I went back the main street of Pass Christian the week after Katrina, and nothing was there. Every building was destroyed. Bowen-Swan: And have they rebuilt there? Brister: Not yet. Bowen-Swan: I m sorry. Brister: They re working on it. Bowen-Swan: Yeah. Do you want to just wait till the train passes? Stork: Sure and ask the next question.

15 11 Brister: Are we going too fast? Bowen-Swan: Oh, no. We re just making sure there s not too much background noise. Brister: Yeah, OK, the old train there. I grew up on this street in this town. Stork: Oh, yeah? Brister: And I remember hearing that ever since I was that high, hearing that train go by out there. Stork: Oh, yeah? Brister: (laughter) Wake you up in the morning. Stork: It s nice. I kind of like the train. Brister: Well, yeah, you get used to certain things, noises, and you say what attracts you to an area or something like that, it s just tradition, whatever that tradition might be; that s what you are. And you don t know how to be anything else. Stork: Exactly. Brister: Just like you re a Canadian. Beautiful country. Stork: Thank you. Bowen-Swan: So how has the storm changed the way you think about your community? Brister: Personally, I was very impressed with the leaders of our community. I was impressed with some of the people in the community. And by that I mean collectively that they have come together and decided we re going to build back, because that was my attitude. I m not leaving and going somewhere else; I m going to stay here and live in the same house I lived in. They came back, and we had an awful lot of help from outside. They took advantage of it; they (inaudible) and they formulated a plan. They said, We will try, to the best of our abilities, to build this city back, but build it back in a smarter way to make it more aesthetically attractive, to make it more functional, and make it more appealing to everybody than what s been. Because, truthfully, Pascagoula was turning into an ugly, little town. And I think they have their own drawing boards; I think they re looking at it long-range, which will be fifteen years, and that it will be a much better place. It ll be a much better place unless we have another Katrina. (interruption)

16 12 Stork: Sorry about that. Brister: What is that? Who is that over there, kids or something? Bowen-Swan: Yeah, they re other interviewers. They think they re done, and they just don t realize that noise carries so well. Brister: This is my church. Stork: This is your turn; we want to make sure we get everything today. Brister: Yeah, I thought you had trouble saying Episcopal Church. Stork: I did the Episcopal thing because I don t know about words. Bowen-Swan: Episcopal. Brister: That s the Church of England. Stork: I didn t know that. (laughter) Bowen-Swan: How do you say Anglican Church? Brister: The Anglican Church, yeah, that s where it originated. Stork: OK, Episcopal. Brister: Yeah, I ve only been a member for five years, so I was another faith; I was a Methodist before I joined this church. Stork: That s easier to say. (laughter) Brister: OK. Bowen-Swan: OK. Brister: Now, people in North Mississippi call us whiskeypalians. We call it Episcopalians. (laughter) Stork: OK, so how and when did you hear about Katrina? Brister: When did I hear about it? I m a very close observer of weather, especially in the hurricane season. And when a storm even forms way out in the Atlantic it may be two thousand miles away I start tracking it. And I get on my computer; I tune into the webpage of the National Weather Service, and I follow. They follow it very

17 13 closely; they re very good, too. And they can tell you within two or three days if that storm s going to get you or not. And they have become very good at this. And if you if the storm gets as far as, say, Cuba, they pretty well know from that point on where it s going. And they ll tell you continuously; they said, These are unpredictable things. And they are. That they can do anything, they re amazing; they re fickle. They might go this way, may go this, but usually the track they go on is usually pretty accurate on their end. And I could this one came across the Florida Keys. And at this particular time the National Weather Service was not that accurate. There were upper level events in the area, particularly stuff from Canada that came down. Actually, Canada has a lot to do with the weather here. Stork: Really? Brister: Yes. (laughter) Stork: I don t know too much about weather topics. Brister: Well, most of your weather systems, especially the cold fronts, are emanating from Canada, and they can travel from down through the United States, and then sometimes they re strong, and they come all the way through us. We re a very warm climate here normally, but even almost like Florida, you know. Like today, for instance. And if those cold fronts ever make it through there, they re hurricane killers. A hurricane cannot come up against a cold they cannot fight a cold air mass. Stork: OK. Brister: And that s what you hope for when the hurricanes come; you hope for a little cool front coming in in September so that, you know, it ll push that hurricane back, and the hurricane will just back off from it. But that didn t happen this time. The conditions were perfect. So the water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were higher than they d ever been, and that s why Katrina was so bad. Stork: And why do you say September? Is that hurricane season? Brister: That s it. That s the biggest big month of the hurricanes. Stork: OK. Bowen-Swan: What, when, and how did you hear about evacuation for Hurricane Katrina? Brister: OK. The Weather Channel, I m sure you watch that from time to time. They re very good, and I was amazed at how good they are. And CNN [Cable News Network], they had people here by the droves. They had Anderson Cooper; they had everybody down here, and that stayed on it twenty-four [hours], seven [days a week].

18 14 And they were constantly broadcasting and telling you what to do and when to do it and where to go, you know, this thing. No, but I always leave in a hurricane. Bowen-Swan: Yeah? So how did you prepare? Brister: Prepare to leave? OK. I m self employed, so I got my work that I had to do out of the way and all that. And I brought enough clothes in case it did hit us that I would be OK in that regard, and gathered up what valuables I thought I had to have. And I know the whole time thinking, This is all of no use because it s not going to hit us anyway; if it does it won t be that bad. We ve had at least five or six hurricanes that passed close to us in the last ten years. Some went to Florida like Ivan in 2003, and it really tore Florida up, like Charlie the year before in Florida. Florida had a lot of them that year. And I thought it would then they go to Texas, and they go to Louisiana, and Mexico, even. We haven t had one since [19]98 that hit us fairly close, and that was Georges in 1998, and it did a lot of damage. It actually did more wind damage than Katrina did, but the water damage was minimal. I said, Well, this couldn t be any worse than Georges in And I said, And we had no water then and not likely to have any now. So that was my attitude when I left, and I really didn t expect this to happen. Bowen-Swan: Please tell your story of evacuating and the immediate aftermath. Brister: OK, I ll try to do that. And as I told you earlier that I did not, I didn t really have an emergency evacuation. I quietly left town days before the storm came in and knowing that it could hit here, but I left anyway because I had this trip planned to go see my son in North Carolina. So I said, I m not cancelling my trip; I m going anyway. Normally, with a hurricane coming in, I would go into a place in Alabama that we got to in all hurricanes. It s an old country retreat that we have up there, and it s way inland, and it s high ground and never a threat much of water, and there surely is not threat for water; sometimes the winds can get pretty high. But I went on to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, drove up and made a leisurely trip up there, but I kept my ear tuned to the radio the whole time. And as the days progressed I left on a Thursday. Bowen-Swan: Did you just go on your own then? Brister: Yeah, I went on my own, yeah. Nobody asked me to leave. I wasn t forced out or anything. Bowen-Swan: And did you have any family or friends up there? Stork: His oldest son was there. Brister: Yeah, my son was in North Carolina, yeah. Bowen-Swan: OK.

19 15 Brister: And he was just moving there, and he had a new apartment, and I mainly went up there to help him move his furniture in. Bowen-Swan: OK. Brister: And so he s single; he didn t have anybody to help him. So I said I wanted to see him anyway, and I wanted to make the trip. But I kept tuned into the radio and TV while I was there. And when Saturday come, I knew that we were probably going to be in trouble. Bowen-Swan: How did you know that? Brister: Watching TV and tracking the storm on television and on the Weather Channel and everything. And I ve had a lot of experience with storms; I ve been through a lot of them, and I can usually have a good feel for what they re going to do. Bowen-Swan: So what did you take with you when you evacuated? Brister: Enough clothes to that I would at least have several changes in case I couldn t get back in, and I m really glad I did that because that was the case. All my clothes were destroyed in my house. And so I brought lots of shoes and clothes and things like that. I brought my papers that I couldn t afford to lose, such as stock and bond papers, securities and stuff, you know, and bank statements and things like that. And I was able to do that, so. But I didn t a lot of my valuables such as carvings, paintings, believe it or not, I saved most of my paintings. Bowen-Swan: Do you paint? Brister: No, I just like to collect art. Bowen-Swan: OK, right. You brought them with you, or you were able to salvage them? Brister: No, they were that s one thing I always do when I leave in a hurricane, I take my paintings, and I put them up on something up higher, whether it s a piece of furniture or something. I get them off of the floor from the low areas, and I put them up. Some of my paintings did get wet, and some of them, you know, washed out, but I was able to clean them up and most of my paintings were saved. Stork: How many times have you moved since evacuating? Brister: OK, when I first assessed my situation when I come back, I knew that I would not be able to live in my house for a long time.

20 16 Stork: How did that what was that like when you first saw your neighborhood and when you first saw your house? Brister: That was the saddest part because my neighborhood also includes the beachfront. On the beachfront here and all the old coastal Mississippi, they have a lot of old historical homes that are 150 years old, two hundred maybe. And I went down there, and most of them were gone, and that s history. And this to me, that s the saddest part of losing your history. And you can try to replace it all you want to and replicate it, but you can t. It s gone. What s the name of that old hotel in Quebec? Stork: Chateau Frontenac? Brister: Yeah, like if it would that s part of their history. Stork: Um-hm, you can t replace that. Brister: You can t replace that, no. Bowen-Swan: So how many times sorry, I interrupted my own question how many times did you move after evacuating? Brister: OK, I m self employed, and the kind of work I m in, my services are very much in demand after a hurricane. Stork: Oh, what oh, you re a real estate appraiser. Brister: Yeah. Stork: OK. Brister: So I decided that we have a sort of like a second home up in Alabama, we call it it s just a country retreat that my wife s family once owned before they died. We took it over, and we keep it up, and we go there a lot. I still go there a lot. It s only a two and a half hour drive north of Mobile, so I decided that I would live there; commute every day or every two days or whatever it took. And the hardest part then, though, is you could not buy gasoline. Yeah, you could buy it, but I mean it was a real chore. The lines were really long, and they would run out, and it was not a good supply. You may have felt that all the way to Canada because the whole United States had a problem with gasoline after that. This is often. I think we ve always been kind of of all the US, we re the least-known area to foreigners, really, nobody, the American South, you know. But one thing they found out after the storm hit; most of the gasoline and gas come from this area. (laughter) Stork: You re in the Gulf, yeah.

21 17 Brister: And if we re not pumping it to them, they don t drive. (laughter) So everybody suddenly knows where we are now, and we re on the map. So anyway, but the gasoline got very expensive. We were used to paying like a dollar and a half a gallon. And I know in Canada you ll laugh at that because you pay so much up there for it. You buy it by the liter up there. But it suddenly doubles to three dollars here, and you know, us ugly Americans, we said, Oh, my goodness, we can t pay that, you know. (laughter) We re some of the spoiledest people on earth, you know. And I noticed that when I went to Quebec in [19]97, they were paying really high prices for gasoline, and I drove up there. Stork: I think we re paying about three dollars a gallon. Brister: Yeah. Stork: Like it s a dollar ten Brister: Yeah, I don t know what the exchange rate is right now; there s not a big gap, you know, between the exchange rate. Stork: A dollar a liter is what we pay now. Brister: That s not bad. Not much difference than what we re paying here, you know. Stork: Right. Brister: But then in the [19]90s it was higher, but anyway that was a problem, being able to see, I drove a Toyota Sequoia, which averages about fourteen miles to a gallon. And my I had two other vehicles, but both of them was destroyed in the hurricane, so I was stuck with my Sequoia, which was not here when the hurricane came through, and my fourteen miles to the gallon. So you couldn t buy a car or rent a car then. There was no way to all the dealers were shut down. And the gasoline was a problem, not just paying for it; it was a matter of just getting any at all. I would ve paid ten dollars a gallon if I could get it, but I just couldn t get it. So it was difficult coming back and forth. So I decided to come down here and work one day, go back and stay two days up there, then come back, and try to put in two or three days a week. And so we just got by until I you ve heard of FEMA? Stork: Um-hm. Brister: All right, I went to FEMA who had a big trailer here and applied for a FEMA trailer; that s what you do in a hurricane. And being a government bureaucracy, they said, We ll be with you, Mr. Brister, in about three weeks. And it was actually about four weeks or five, but they did the best they could, and I finally got me a little trailer that come in there. It was livable, and they set it up, did a good

22 18 job of setting it up and everything. And I lived there for, right in my front yard, for months, until just recently, really. I got back in my house last November. Bowen-Swan: You re back in your original house? Brister: Um-hm. Bowen-Swan: So you fixed it up? Brister: Yeah. Bowen-Swan: Did you do Brister: I ve got everything but neighbors. Bowen-Swan: Did you do a lot of little, did you do work on your, a lot of the work on your Stork: Yourself? Bowen-Swan: Yourself? Brister: Yeah, I did the simpler stuff. I m not a skilled carpenter or anything, so I hired most of it done, yeah. And we had a lot of contractors here, and my contractor was from Nashville, Tennessee. And it was very hard to get anybody to do it. And I want to praise the Mexicans; gosh, they did such good. You know, the kids from Mexico came in here and worked like dogs. And I ll [always] have respect for them, you know. I hope they stay (laughter) because they are really good workers, and they did a lot to my house. This is the good part about Katrina. This is the good part. This is absolutely I ve never been so surprised in all my life. I didn t think that there were a lot of good people left in this world. I was very cynical in my old age. And there s people from everywhere, including Canada, converged on this area well, you re here and offered anything they can do to help, anything, no charge, no. And sleeping on the ground in tents, and they came from everywhere, every state. Particularly in my first group that came in was from Florida, and they were from the Mormon Church, and they did and the people from this church from Kentucky came in from over there. The Episcopal Church sent people in, and they totally cleaned my house, got out all the debris, got all of what we call toxic mold out of it, offered any service they could possibly do for you and then wanted to do more after that. I ve never seen so many good people in all my life, and I ll never be skeptical again about people. And they re still coming. I just wish I could write a letter to all of them telling them how much I think of them, you know. Stork: Like this. Brister: But it s the only way I can thank them there s only one way I can do it.

23 19 Stork: How s that? Brister: Is when they have a disaster, to go there for them. Stork: That s a nice way of doing it. Brister: It s the only way you can say, Thank you. Bowen-Swan: I m sure that they know that you re appreciative. Brister: Um-hm. Bowen-Swan: You don t need to say thank you, though; I m sure they know. Brister: Yeah, and things will happen. We re living in a time now when we could have a 9/11 tomorrow and not know it, you know, and you could we could have an earthquake and not only you know, there s a very much of a danger with an earthquake in the Central United States? Bowen-Swan: and Stork: I didn t know. Brister: You know, it s not imminent or anything, but one of the worst earthquakes they ever had here was in Missouri, what they call the something, [New] Madrid Fault or something like that. And it came all the way down to Mississippi. It caused quite a bit of damage about two hundred years ago. Bowen-Swan: Wow. Brister: And the scientists are looking at that now; they said this fault could do that. This place could move again, and if they did, we d be in trouble all the way down into Florida, not just the West Coast. Stork: Um-hm. You don t hear about that, eh? I ve never heard about that before. Brister: They call it the [New] Madrid fault. Out in California they ve got the San Andréas fault. Because I was in the Army in California, I know a lot about the territory out there. They will eventually have a big quake in California, and it s going to do a lot of damage. Bowen-Swan: So could you describe any experiences you may have had with local, state or federal officials? Brister: Yes, well, I can the first federal official I met was a representative from FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency. They got a lot of criticism after Katrina, and I think a lot of it was undeserved. They had a particular they have lots

24 20 of people down here working, and the one that came to my house was from Florida. He was very experienced in handling disasters and especially after hurricanes, and he assessed my problems, my damage, and my whole situation. He had asked me a lot of questions, such as How much insurance did you have? And, How much have you lost? And this and that and the other. And he actually there were some trees down in my yard, and he actually gave me a chainsaw, you know, which was very nice because they cost three or four hundred dollars. (laughter) And so that was the first one I had. Then I went and got a loan. See, the insurance companies were you don t get your money real quick with them; so if you need money, a good bit of money, the Small Business Administration was in here. I applied for a loan from them to help me get some bills, some of the contractors paid, you know. They did that. And then as far as the federal officials, the volunteers like you outnumber them twenty to one. I really didn t see a lot of federal officials in here. I remember when, one case in particular; I was standing in my front yard, and this big man he must be six, ten or six, eleven, and he came in with a big truck, and he was hauling debris off. I thought he looked familiar, and it turned out if you ever follow basketball, the NBA [National Basketball Association] or anything like that. Bowen-Swan: and Stork: No. Brister: You ve got a team; Toronto has a team, I think. Bowen-Swan: Yes. Stork: Rafters. Brister: Toronto Rafters, yeah. This guy, they call him the mailman. He played for Denver; he s Carl Malone. He s one of the all-time NBA greats in basketball. That was him. And he owns a big construction he s retired now, but he owned a big construction company. He says, I m in here to help, and, he said, I don t want anybody to know who I am, what I m doing. I just wanted to help. And so we all knew who he was; it was Carl Malone. And he was a world-famous, really, a basketball player. (laughter) He was worth now he s worth millions of dollars. Stork: And did a lot of people find out who he was? Brister: Yeah, they did. Stork: Yeah. Brister: Um-hm. Stork: Did he Brister: And he had and then once he got he owns big trucks; he owns a construction company somewhere in Arkansas, and he used that to pick up and see,

25 21 here you couldn t drive down the streets here then; they were littered with debris and trees, furniture, just everything. And all that, it was a massive cleanup; it was unbelievable. And so people like him really helped, you know. He got there way before the Feds did. The Feds were slow to react, and like a lot of bureaucracies, they are who s going to get the contracts to do it and how many (inaudible) they re going to get to do it, you know, this kind of thing. But that s the way it works. Bowen-Swan: Were you injured at all, or was anybody you knew well injured? Brister: Yeah, I was no, most of the people I know evacuated. And I heard some rumors about some people I knew that were killed or drowned, but it turned out to be not true. Bowen-Swan: That s good. Brister: And that was, (laughter) rumors fly like wildfire after a hurricane or any disaster or any tornado or whatever. Stork: When you hear the rumors, would you because of the hurricane and you know that there s rumors going, do you think would you tend to believe them right away because Brister: Yes, I did because the people that were telling me were credible. They weren t people who would just see a UFO [unidentified flying object] somewhere, you know, daily like some of them people that way, you know; they were reliable people. But they got it from somebody else that was supposedly reliable, and that s the way it passes along, you know. Stork: How have you been treated in your time of evacuation? Brister: Well, if I want to rate it from fair, average, good to excellent, I would say excellent. Stork: Excellent. Bowen-Swan: Would you tell me a little bit more about the FEMA trailer that you had in your yard? Brister: Oh, yeah, I sure will. When the people from FEMA came in, now, they knew what they were doing. They somehow managed to tap into my sewer system and tie a pipeline into my sewer system so I would have sewerage, and they found a way to get water to my trailer from my water system, and electricity. And it was a very nice little trailer. They knew my situation. There was only two of us, so they gave me a very small one, which was OK, but it was a little bit too small, as big as I am. (laughter) But it was adequate. It was warm in the winter and cool in the summer, so who cares, you know. And it was free.

26 22 Bowen-Swan: Um-hm, right. Stork: So your wife did go up with you to visit your son? Brister: Yeah, she was almost everywhere I go, she goes, yeah. (laughter) Stork: I was just confused. I thought before you said that you went up alone. Brister: No, yeah, she was with me, yeah. And she generally is very good about picking up any kind of thing, valuables that we couldn t afford to lose. It was sad for her, though, because she lost her silverware and silverware that her mother had given her that was hers that she treasured, you know. And somehow the water got in the house, and it was not put in a place where it was up high, and it washed away somewhere. Those kind of things you hate to lose. Stork: Yeah, they can t be replaced. Brister: And your pictures. Stork: Yeah, all the sentimentals. Brister: Yeah, the photographs we got we got every photograph we could find. We combed the yard, and we found a lot of them. I had some old rugs that I thought a lot of because I paid a lot of money for them. There was some, a few of them came from India, and one of them was a Persian rug, and I found those, and I took them with me back to my place in Alabama. And I got me a pressure washer, and I washed them down, and I cleaned it and cleaned and cleaned it to the point where they were actually restored them to like they looked before the storm. So I didn t throw them away. A lot of people threw their furniture out. A lot of my furniture looks bad, but I kept it, and it can be restored. Stork: What interesting, horrible, or funny experiences did you have in the little while right after the hurricane? Brister: Right after the hurricane, let me see here. I ll probably think of something great when I, after I leave, but I was thinking. I called my brother, and knowing him he lives alone over in the little town of Gautier, which is west of here. I said, I wanted to check and see if you got out all right. He lives on a bayou over there close to the Gulf, and I hadn t heard from him, and I was trying to track him down to make sure he was OK. And I told him when I I really hadn t fussed at him before the storm about he said he wasn t leaving or wasn t evacuating. Actually evacuation is mandatory to a point, but they cannot force you to evacuate, by gunpoint; they can t do that. The authorities can t. So he came in, and he s lived in a house that was well above the waterline; he was seventeen feet up on piers. And he told the story about he was sitting there thinking everything was going to be OK. His house was shaking