19 Years Later: A Conversation on Hurricane Katrina with Ricky Mathews

where were you uh what time is it now 8:07 in the morning 2005 August the 29th where were you you looked out your window what did you see 10ft waves hitting my house literally 10 foot waves hitting my house over 20 feet above sea level and realizing that my family and I may not make it and knowing for a fact based on where my house was in relation to the water that the coast as we knew it was getting wiped off the face of the Earth it's it's an incredible thing to think back at yeah where and and we're going to get to the other thing in a moment I I just got to spend a couple of seconds on this though where was it located in the Gulf about the time of the morning it was making landfall I mean it was uh slowly but surely coming on coming on to shore at this time and there was a point where the water was It was kind of holding you could see it lapping on the windows and you know we're thinking that maybe we've maybe we've uh uh you know that's as high as it's going to go and then as the eye came on in a midm morning all hell broke loose I mean boats hitting the house gas meters you know natural gas meters busting um oil 55 gallon drums of oil and hydraulic fuel coming from 10 miles away hitting the house and busting open and wow it's hard to explain how AO apocalyptic it was were you the last person to sign off on let's make the decision to stay there or was there somebody else to blame well I was going to stay here because of the son Herold I was published for the son Harold but my but my wife an um you know she's she grew up here she um I couldn't convince her to leave and I we had we had we listen we had we lost 90 trees we Lo we paid to have 72 trees removed from our property I was worried that a tree was going to land on our house that's what I was concerned about I wasn't concerned about the water and she you know she convinced me to let her and the family her mother-in-law her brother-in-law a friend of mine from Seattle they all sort of piled into the house and we all kind of fought together to to to get through it but you know next time we'll make a different decision with a similar storm that's for sure were were you the only person there in in maybe as far as neighbors are concerned for close by yes yes we were and it's a good thing because um we're the only house that survived in my neighborhood that was on the water and where my house is built now we built we ended up buying the lot next door and where it is built now is built much higher much stronger than the house that was here but I literally watched the house collapse during the storm two twostory Acadian style house and Anna that my our neighbor that that lived here uh almost stayed and she would have perished like too many others did unfortunately when we talk about this you said 8:00 in the morning and you're under assault now how long did this last it lasted until well yeah well lasted until well after lunch and then you know we had uh we had you know waves and the water eventually started to to fall but for a long period of time we were just you know you could just hear the the wav slamming up against the house and it was it was just incredible ask was there a definable eye that you guys kind of went outside and took a look no we did we were no actually the Gort buxy area was actually in the eye wall had a 30 mile wide uh U eye we were in the eye wall never actually in the eye of the stor we've been in many eyes over the many years but no we we were we never had any relief during the storm at all it was it was constant slamming of water and in the in the whole situation yep about that time when you start looking at around noon did you have any Communications at all to to figure out what was going on or how bad it was outside your confin yeah it was interesting I had a satellite phone uh because I was the publisher of the Sun Herald but I couldn't communicate with the Sun Herald and and I I I was deeply concerned uh the operations director at the time convinced me to let some a a skeleton crew of people stay at the newspaper I was against it and was asking them to evacuate but then she convinced me to let them stay and for a long period of time I just assumed they didn't make it and I was you know feeling the burden of that but I was able to talk with a guy by the name of art Brisbane who was Executive Vice President of uh of night Ritter the company that owned the son Herold he was in San Jose so I could talk to to to to him during art during the storm and eventually he was able to communicate with the folks at the Sun Herald and was able to relay to me that they survived and I can't explain to you that was you know that was the beginning of a long series of very emotional times for me as I sort of worked through understanding you know what what we were going to have to deal with but unbelievable how long was it before you had a chance to go out and and drive or walk through what was left well what was what was interesting is the day the day of the storm uh people who could get to the sun hero went to the sun hero but the but my bridge my bridge you couldn't get across our bridge and they had it blocked and it was debris I went out and tried to convince a a local policeman to to help me get to the newspaper and he he basically told me to get out of the way he he said that you know I I don't care who you are and if you don't stop you know bugging me I'm going to arrest you I mean it was literally everybody was on you know at nerves in um eventually the next morning I was able to make my way across the bridge and um old guy and a pickup truck I told him who I was and he I got in the back of his bed of his truck and we rode to the newspaper and and that was the beginning of a long journey after that yeah just one more thing that did you lose anybody that you knew or an acquaintance or God forbid a relative say it again I'm sorry did you lose anyone that perished there no no thank God no I did not but look um where my and and my wife's mother is from um you know some 50 plus people were killed in her neighborhood and then we had several employees who the Lost friends our family members 67 of our employees lost everything they owned um you know it was just a apocalyptic situation and boy have we come a long way since then Paul yes absolutely the power of Hope because yeah I I had a chance to go down a couple of times uh uh and and I worried because I we got married on on August the 17th uh during Hurricane Camille So I worried that we were going to have that same thing like this the entire Coast is just going to be back to where it was after Hurricane Camille and you worried about that boy was I wrong yeah yeah and thankfully so no I think you know what guided us what we said we learned from the Camille experience we didn't want to rebuild in a way that wasn't going to be safe going forward and we knew that structurally we had to build back stronger and by doing so is going to make us more resilient so the infrastructure the bridges homes and the you know the building codes that we put into place the requirements of FEMA to build higher all of these things I think will help us next time recover faster I want