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| Category 5
ISBN: 9780472025879
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of Michigan Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Cyclones; Hurricanes; Hurricane Camille 1969.;
Camille, which swept through coastal Mississippi and Louisiana in August 1969, was the storm that inspired the five-level scale currently used to predict the damage inflicted by hurricanes, and remains the only Category 5 storm-the strongest-to make landfall in modern American history. Zebrowski and Howard ground the storm's story in personal narratives, opening with the tale of a couple who fear their son has been killed when the storm hits the Mississippi coast. They interview other survivors in the region and up in Virginia, where Camille collided with another storm system, tracking the destruction and the confused response of local authorities. Zebrowski, a physicist, and Howard, a political columnist for a northern Louisiana newspaper, also focus on the role of Southern racial politics in shaping the civic response, particularly in one remote Louisiana parish. It's a serviceable recounting, with a thin layer of analysis discussing how Camille influenced the eventual creation of FEMA. Brief reference is made to Hurricane Katrina, but at this early stage, the authors can't say more than that authorities appear not to have learned from the earlier storm's effects. Photos, maps. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Ernest Zebrowski is founder of the doctoral program in science and math education at Southern University, a historically black university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University's Pennsylvania College of Technology. His previous books include Perils of a Restless Planet: Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters . Judith Howard earned her Ph.D. in social work from UCLA, and writes a regular political column for the Ruston, Louisiana, Morning Paper . |
