Dr. Patricia Bixel

For decades before the storm, there was always discussion about how to adapt to the flooding.

Salt cedars were planted along the dunes and along the beach to try and help with that.

There occasionally were discussions about looking to the state for some funding for a seawall or some sort of barricade.

But this is a tricky thing because to do that, to say we need to protect the island, acknowledge the level of risk that was there.

And if you acknowledge a level of risk, you also risk...

investors and development and economic growth.

And so to say that the island was in this dangerous situation was seen as an economic killer.

And so people whispered about it, but there was not a really serious discussion about major efforts to protect the island from a hurricane.

Well, unfortunately, that didn't happen until the storm was well underway in a lot of cases.

People would try and go to their neighbors' homes up on higher pilings.

They would go down to the business district where the buildings were also more substantial and built of brick and stone.

At that point, there was really no way off the island.

So you would go up to the upper floors of your house.

In some situations, people used axes to cut holes in their floors and open doors so that the water would come up and perhaps anchor the house rather than sweep it off its pilings.

So to the extent that it was possible, people tried to get to higher ground or more substantial buildings.

About the middle of the late evening, I want to say, I believe it was around 8 or 9 o'clock, there was all of a sudden this rush of water.

And looking back on it, we know that that was probably the storm surge.

And the storm surge was about 15 feet.

And not only did you have the actual water that was coming from the Gulf of Mexico, you had all of the debris and all of the lumber and the stuff from the houses that had been destroyed that was being pushed by this water.

And that in itself caused a lot of destruction.