Hurricanes have long been with us

And so we begin another hurricane season. The gurus say this year will see fewer big storms than usual, but we all know how much stock to put in those predictions, and also that it only takes one storm to do damage that will never be forgotten.
Hurricanes have been coming ashore in Louisiana for thousands of years.
Geological evidence shows that powerful storms battered the Gulf Coast at least three thousand years ago, and probably earlier than that. We also know from a variety of records that we were hammered regularly during the 1700s, when Louisiana was just a struggling colony.
The first storm recorded after European settlement within our borders hit New Orleans even as it was being built. The ramshackle buildings that housed the workmen were no match for the wind and the few substantial buildings in the city were damaged.
Some records refer to a storm that destroyed the St. Louis church in New Orleans in 1711, but that can’t be correct, as there was no St Louis church in 1711.
That reference is more likely to Mobile, which was established in 1702 and was first known as Fort Louis de la Louisiane.
The storm that destroyed Louisiana’s new capital-to-be probably came ashore on Sept. 23-24, 1722, although there is some debate about the precise year.
Hurricane historian David Ludlum and Louisiana historian Alcee Fortier, among others, put the year of the storm as 1722, but it has also been variously reported as 1721, 1722 and 1723. Herman J. Deiler, who described the storm in a history of early German settlements on the Mississippi River, is one of those who set the date as 1721.
He notes, “The year of the great storm is stated differently by Louisiana writers … [because] several of the older authorities … began to write their works many years after these occurrences, and so it seems, partly from memory; and therefore confused dates in the retrospect.”
Whenever it occurred it was, in Ludlum’s estimation, “no doubt … a storm of major proportions [that] should be listed among the great hurricanes of the area.” Ships sank in the New Orleans harbor and buildings were blown down across the town. New Orleans residents said hurricane winds were felt for 15 hours.
Three-foot storm surges were reported at Bayou St. John, close to the city and eight-foot surges were reported on the Mississippi River near New Orleans. Dead fish caused a great stench in New Orleans as storm waters subsided.
According to Dieler, “The people of the two old [German] villages were drowned out by the storm water. There being large bodies of water in the rear of the German Coast, ‘Lac des Allemands’ on the north, ‘Lake Salvadore’ on the south and the ‘Bayou des Allemands’ connecting the two, it must have been the waters of these which were hurled against the two German villages.”
Like Katrina and others, this New Orleans storm had political as well as physical repercussions. According to one account, “The storm’s destruction in New Orleans raised much political bickering, particularly from the older settlements who felt slighted by [the choice of New Orleans] as the site for the Louisiana … capital. Their rancor was furthered when a major flood inundated the city three years later.”
Those discontents argued that the site was vulnerable to storms and floods and that New Orleans should not have been rebuilt there. As history shows, they had a good point.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jhbradshaw@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.