As waves disintegrate the building around them, seven people and two dogs are forced to enter the full fury of the storm.
- by Ellis Anderson The ninth installment of the award-winning book that follows Bay St. Louis through the very heart of Hurricane Katrina – and three years of grinding aftermath. The Shoofly Magazine is publishing one excerpt from the book each week through the storm's 20th anniversary on August 29, 
Doug Niolet, Kevan Guillory and Nikki Nicholson (Moon) by the tree that saved their lives. Photo by Joe Tomasovsky
Kevan and Doug announced it was time to move the nest to the second floor. Room number five was the obvious choice. It was centered in the back of the house, directly at the top of the stairs. The room was flanked on one side by a walk-in closet and on the other by a bath.
The group began hauling their possessions and supplies up the stairs. The Stamms depended on several medications, and Nadine made sure she had them all with her in a black garbage bag. She also carried up the portable radio, even though the reception had been reduced to static. Nadine knew they were in for a “very challenging time.” She settled on a daybed, with Kay at her feet. Kay chanted a soothing mantra, while Nadine repeated more traditional prayers. When Nikki commented on their composure, Nadine smiled. “It’s in God’s hands now,” she said serenely. The men remained below trying to brace the doors against the Gulf of Mexico. The waves pounded against the front of the house as if an outside army sensed victory and had taken up battering rams. Doug took a last look through the cracks in the plywood. The front porch was no longer attached to the building. “That’s extreme,” he thought. He shouted over the thunderous noise, warning the other men that it was time to go. They fled up the steps, crowding with the women into room five. Kevan was the last to leave, racing behind the others. "Just as I turned to go upstairs,” he said, “the water broke through. A gush raged through the house. At the same time, water poured in the back from the kitchen. "I’d taken my glasses off, but could see the waves coming up the stairwell. They just slashed against the back wall where the nest had been. Then the entire staircase broke loose. It went crashing through to the back of the house. I wondered, now how we are going to get down from the second floor? "That’s when I first realized we really had a problem.”
At the top of the stairs, Kevan veered off into the doorway of a bedroom directly to the left. He could see the rest of the group huddled in room five, but he could also look down into the gaping chasm below.
Breakers smashed through the bottom floor, hurling antique furnishings against walls that were beginning to break apart. Wave after wave mauled the house with a feral ferocity, ripping away sections as he watched. Finally, the entire front of the building groaned in surrender and fell away into a gorging sea. The doorway to number five suddenly opened directly onto an ocean writhing in fury. The front rooms no longer existed. The floor of the hallway had been sucked into the surf. The room behind Kevan began to distort as it pulled away from the back of the house. Nikki screamed when she saw Kevan’s danger. He vaulted toward the others from the crumbling remains of his perilous perch. Propelled by adrenaline, Kevan cleared a six-foot rift that dropped away to certain death below. He made it to the threshold of room number five and was pulled by the others into the last safe haven.
But it wasn’t a haven for long. Number five became the only survivor of the house when the remaining back rooms on both sides were pulled away.
As the final supports of the first floor gave way, number five settled onto the heaving surface of the sea. The walls and ceiling of the room began to cave in on the group. The men struggled to keep it from collapsing onto them while the floor rippled beneath their feet. They weren’t able to save the front wall. The churning water inexorably devoured their last protection from the elements. Now seven people and two dogs found themselves in a shifting shell, open to the fury of the storm. “Hello, Gulf of Mexico,” Doug thought. He realized that the room had become a little boat—and one that was about to sink. Gusts blasted them with bullets of rain. As they fought to keep the ceiling from falling onto them, the room twisted in the water. The open front of number five now faced towards the rear of the lot. A large oak tree that grew in the backyard came into view. Doug shouted to be heard over the wind, urging his friends to enter the water and make for the tree. Nadine, still calm, answered resolutely. “I’m not going into the water,” she said. “I can’t swim.” Dick held her close against his side. He was going nowhere without his wife. The group faced imminent death, but the Cajun in Kevan couldn’t resist the opening for a good line. As he strained against the ceiling to hold it in place, he looked at Doug and grinned. “Houston, we have a problem,” he yelled.
Kevan and Doug didn’t need to speak next to determine their roles. Doug ushered Nikki into the dark, raging surge with Kay and Pete, while Kevan stayed with the Stamms, waiting for a miracle.
Pete persuaded his wife to release their dog from its leash. He led Kay into the water, and, together, they fought their way to the tree. Pete helped Kay grab hold of a sturdy branch, then was pushed ahead by the current. He finally managed to catch a clump of smaller trees further up the street. Nikki held her dog close to her. She scuttled crablike across the debris floating on top of the water, using it like a series of rafts. When she arrived at the tree, she saw that Kay was pinned against the trunk by the same tide of wreckage. Yet Kay took Maddy into her arms, allowing Nikki to climb onto a limb. When Nikki was secure, Kay handed up the dog. Doug kept his head above the water, but the mass of floating debris knocked against him with every swell of the sea. When he reached the tree, he was able to pull himself above the deadly layer of lumber. Once anchored on a branch, he grasped the hand of Kay, who was still pinned. Each undulation of the water pinched her between the debris and the trunk of the tree, threatening to cut her in half. He couldn’t manage to pull her from the water, so hung onto her arm in desperation.
Meanwhile, Kevan and the Stamms got their miracle. A section of roof floated by and began to butt up against the open part of Room Five, as if beckoning them.
Kevan struggled to hold back the last remaining walls as Dick helped Nadine slide into the water. Her husband encouraged her as she did the unthinkable. “You can do it,” he said. “You can do this. I’m right here with you.” Nadine later said that she “felt miraculous guidance with every step. "Our bodies were not harmed in any way. I didn’t step on nails. Nothing even caught our clothes. We tried to catch a tree trunk, but the Lord didn’t want that, so we floated on a little branch. The water doused over me once and then went down to my waist. "When we got to the piece of roof, Dick said, ‘I’ll help you up.’” Once onboard their makeshift raft, Nadine lay down. Dick spooned against her back and covered her body with his own to protect her from the cold and rain. He couldn’t see where they were going, but it didn’t matter. He was with his wife. As they drifted away, Nadine lay against the shingles, still clutching the plastic bag that held their medications. Dick’s arms surrounded her as if they were nesting birds. Their friends noticed the extraordinary expression of peace on both faces. Nikki later recalled, “The Stamms were together and that was all that counted—the two of them were ready to face anything, even death.” “They may have been floating away to never-never land,” Doug recounted, “but it looked like they’d be all right with that as long as they died together.” Kevan had entered the water right behind the Stamms and made it to the tree in time to wave good-bye as they passed. He joined Doug in more attempts to pull Kay from the water, but even their combined strength couldn’t free her. Kay was in agony from the heavy debris battering her torso. If the brutal beating continued, the men realized she would soon die. Finally, in a desperate effort to save her, they shoved at the debris pile with all their strength, trying to push it away from her body. But Kay was impossibly tangled in the mass of lumber. As she moved away with the debris, they were forced to release their hold on her. Kevan was the last to let go of her hand. He watched in horror as she lost consciousness and her face slipped beneath the water. He was certain she was dead. The island of debris carried Kay up the street towards where Pete clung to the top of a flimsy crepe myrtle bush. To get his attention, the three in the oak screamed together, “loud enough to be heard in Biloxi.” But the gusts whipped away their cries and the pile washed past Pete unnoticed. The friends saw it move swiftly up DeMontluzin Street, following the path of the Stamms. Kay’s head did not break the surface again. Shortly after, Pete disappeared from their view as well. For the next two hours, Nikki, Doug, and Kevan clung like barnacles to the oak. At times, Nikki would reach over to Kevan and touch him for reassurance. He encouraged her by shouting, “Just hang on! As long as you don’t lose your grip, you’ll be OK.” Maddy squirmed beneath her with typical terrier impatience, but Nikki only tightened her grip. After all they’d been through together, she wasn’t about to lose her dog now. She thought about her brother the priest and her mother, who had passed away. She wondered if her mother was watching her from the other side. To steady her, Doug held on to Nikki’s boots dangling from above. He tried to watch the storm, but it was difficult to see anything. When he opened his eyes, the rain drove into them. If he shut them, the salt stung ferociously. He silently continued praying for his own life and those of his companions, yet he felt a quiet acceptance. He ended his prayers the way he always did: thy will be done. Kevan spent the long hours “kissing the tree” and contemplating his surreal situation. He marveled over the events of his life that had led him to that particular place and time. Kevan wasn’t sure why he’d ended up hanging on to a tree in the middle of a monster hurricane, but he had a sense that he was fulfilling an odd destiny. His humor never failed him. After one particularly violent round of waves had submersed the trio, he shouted to Doug. “Niolet, next time you want to go hunting a hurricane in a tree, don’t call me!” Finally, Kevan noticed the wind shifting to the south. Nikki watched as the water began to recede slowly. Suddenly, she felt as if she had regained the ability to breathe. It began to look like they might just make it after all. The group waited another endless hour before they thought about leaving their roost. As the surge retreated back into the Gulf, a new problem emerged—how were they going to get down? Doug was on the lowest branch, which was still at least eight feet from the ground. He’d lost a shoe in the escape, so he was reluctant to jump into the muddy water that still covered the yard. While it looked fairly shallow, he could see part of a picket fence directly beneath him, strung out like a line of punji stakes. Doug realized that for some reason, he was wearing a towel around his neck. He supposed it had been white at one time—now it was completely brown. He draped it over his branch and lowered himself tentatively into the water below. As Nikki readied herself to go next, she looked in the direction of State Street, the next block over. She spotted two figures waving to get her attention. They shouted across the debris and the wide lake of standing water that separated them from the tree. No one could hear their words over the wind, but Nikki was jubilant when she recognized one of the men as Pete. Pete and the stranger were dragging a makeshift ladder and apparently wanted to help. However, the group agreed that crossing “the lake” would be too risky and simply signaled to Pete that they were safe. Nikki handed Maddy off to Kevan, and using Doug’s towel technique, scrambled down with his assistance. Kevan gently lowered the dog and followed. They turned in the direction of the only high ground in sight—an enormous pile of sand. It had been deposited by the surge at the foot of DeMontluzin, where the street had once met the beach road. Exhausted, the three friends rested on the mound for several minutes and tried to get their bearings. The sense of disorientation was overwhelming. They could barely recognize each other under the sticky, black silt covering them head to toe. Even the landscape around them was no longer familiar. They might have been standing on the surface of another planet. There was no sign of the Bay Town Inn, nothing even to mark where it had stood. The stretch of beach road, once lined with shops and restaurants, was now barren. The street itself had been eaten away. It was early afternoon when they picked their way across the shredded remains of their town to a neighbor’s house that was somehow still standing. The bottom floor had been demolished, but the upstairs had survived intact. In the kitchen, the group found Cokes and V-8 juice, which they gulped down. On the second floor, they rummaged through closets, hunting for clothes. Doug and Kevan were delighted to discover new men’s bathing suits in their sizes. Everyone changed out of their wet rags, then collapsed onto beds that were miraculously dry. Storm-force winds hammered the house, ripping off sheets of metal roofing overhead. Kevan was kept awake by the racket, but Nikki and Doug were asleep in minutes. Just a block away, the Stamms were sleeping, too. Their raft had floated up DeMontluzin, passing over a large oak that had fallen across the street. When the water began to recede, the tree acted as a roadblock, preventing the raft from being swept out to sea. The roof section had settled gently onto a thick layer of mud. Dick helped Nadine down and they slogged across the street to a row of standing houses. Dick chose one that looked as if it had only flooded a few feet inside. He broke in through a side window and gallantly opened the front door for Nadine. The food in the refrigerator was still cold, so they ate for the first time since early morning. In one of the bedrooms, a four-poster king-sized bed provided a luxurious resting place. The antique had been set up on wooden blocks, so even the bedding was dry. They lay down and both slept soundly, despite the winds still raging above them. By mid-afternoon, they were wakened by a call from the front door. A trustee from the county jail was making a house-to-house search for survivors. He introduced himself as Jeff and told the Stamms he’d escort them to the sheriff’s office and jail a few blocks away. Nadine had lost her slippers in the surge, so Jeff rooted through the closet until he found a pair of men’s shoes she could wear. The jail had been converted to a makeshift MASH unit, and when they arrived, the Stamms were relieved to find Pete and Kay already there. Kay was alive but in grave condition. During a search of the neighborhood, two deputies found her battered and barely conscious and carried her back to the jail. Semiconscious, she lay on a thin bed under layers of blankets, shivering from exposure and shock. Everyone was concerned about internal injuries she’d almost certainly sustained from the battering. Her breathing was labored. Powerless, Pete sat by her side as she gasped. The local hospital was in ruins, and the roads leading there were impassable. Medical help would have to come from the outside world, and it wasn’t going to come quickly. Pete wasn’t in such good shape himself. At first, he’d made his stand against the surge by hanging tenaciously on to the flimsy crepe myrtle bushes. Finally, he found refuge in a wind-beaten house on State Street, about half a block from where the Inn had stood. A man who had stayed there for the storm helped him inside. When the water went down, the neighbor went with Pete to search for Kay. Shortly after, the two had spotted Nikki, Doug, and Kevan climbing out of the tree and attempted a rescue. By the time the Stamms arrived at the jail, Pete been reunited with his wife. Dick and Nadine draped themselves with blankets and remained with the Stevenses until the storm was spent. Kevan found them all there, late in the day. When the winds had slackened, he and Doug had left their temporary refuge to check on other neighbors. They made their way further inland to a friend’s house. It had flooded on the ground floor and lost a major part of the roof, but it could still provide shelter. They decided to make the home emergency headquarters. The two men broke in without guilt, then found the key to a truck parked in the driveway. The old truck surprised them by starting immediately. They commandeered it and were even able to drive part of the way back to the beach to pick up Nikki. Doug and Kevan were on a roll—etiquette took second place to survival. They raided friends’ freezers for ice and food, taking it back to the “headquarters.” Then Kevan picked up the Stamms and the Stevenses from the jail. He settled them for the night into another house Nikki owned on Carroll Street, a few blocks away. It had been battered and flooded, but the upstairs beds were dry. Kay was in a very fragile state. Despite the warm evening air and bundles of blankets, she shivered uncontrollably. Kevan “borrowed” a grill on the way back to meet Nikki and Doug. They’d been joined by two other friends, who’d ridden out the peak of the surge in the cab of their floating pickup truck. Kevan lit the charcoal and cooked a feast of fried baloney, which he rendered down to a crisp. Food had never tasted so good. The meal at the Inn the night before seemed a million years ago, in a fractured past. They ate in total blackness, the glow of the coals their only illumination. They didn’t talk a lot. Adrenaline had been replaced by shock. Each was absorbed by the new reality. Their beloved town was destroyed. Friends and neighbors had perished, or like Kay, teetered on the brink. Communication was impossible; loved ones far away most likely presumed them dead. Yet, this new reality contained gold as well as grit. Friendship had new meaning, and community had become something more than just a word. Courage wore a different face, one that could be lined with age. And faith had broken past the bounds of any church. It roamed freely like a spirit through the dark and broken streets of Bay St. Louis. 
Beach Boulevard, which runs along the bluff overlooking the beach, after Katrina. Photo by Joe Tomasovsky.
Epilogue—April 2006 Kay Stevens was flown to a Jackson hospital the next afternoon. She remained hospitalized for several weeks with multiple injuries and respiratory problems. Months later, she was finally given a release from medical care. Pete and Kay’s home in Waveland was destroyed, and they lost everything they owned. Seven months after the storm, they moved out west. Nikki bounced between different friends’ houses for months after the storm. In February, repairs were completed on her Carroll Street house, and she was able to return to the Bay. At this writing, she’s working part-time for the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. She’d retired from there after twenty-five years, but after the storm returned to her job on a part-time basis. She’s hoping to build another Bay Town Inn when the major infrastructure of the town is back in place. “I’d love nothing better,” she says, “although I might build it back a little bit further from the beach.” Maddy misses all the treats and pats she got from doting guests when she was a bed-and-breakfast pet. The only obvious change in the dog since her traumatic experience is that she’s “more cuddly. She lost everything, too,” Nikki says. “It’s not been easy for her either.” Kevan’s cottage is located in the highest section of Bay St. Louis. Although it lost part of its roof, it sustained little damage in comparison to the rest of the houses in town. He claims he’d stay for another hurricane, although nowhere close to the beach. He also says that he’s in the Bay to stay. “After making love to a tree for three and a half hours, you kind of feel connected to a place.” In the spring of 2006, Doug Niolet remained an active Hurricane Hunter, planning retirement later in the year. He says his co-workers had a universal reaction the first time they saw him after the storm. First, they’d embrace him and tell him they were thankful he was alive. Then they’d say they were going to knock the shit out of him for staying. His daughter, Courtney, finally forgave him, but she made him promise that next time he’ll evacuate. Doug and his wife, Vicki, plan to remain in Bay St. Louis and help rebuild. Vicki Niolet heard from her husband the day after the storm when he managed to get a call through on a borrowed cell phone. She returned to town on Wednesday. Their living quarters at the Lumberyard Arts Center had been wrecked, as well as her own art studio. But Vicki doesn’t need a studio to produce art—she began taking photographs immediately. Her photo study of Bay St. Louis after Katrina, titled “Parting Shots,” was published in March 2006. 
Vicki Niolet in the Lumberyard after the storm.
Dick Stamm says he heard that Jeff, the trustee, received a pardon for his heroic efforts the day of the storm. Nothing remains of Dick and Nadine’s house or any of their belongings. Since October 2005, they’ve lived in a house next door to their daughter, in the countryside of south Louisiana. As of this writing, they have no plans to rebuild in Bay St. Louis. They say they miss it dreadfully. They always loved the community, but the storm brought new appreciation. Dick says that after the hurricane, there were no strangers in town, only family. They both credit their faith in God for their survival. When I asked Nadine how she remained so calm during life threatening circumstances, she evaded the question at first, praising the entire group for being cool and levelheaded. She said that none of them had time to be scared. She told me that thinking back over events, she gets “spiritual goose bumps.” At last, Nadine handed me her answer in a nutshell. She quoted, “‘I will give my angels charge over thee.’ And there’s another scripture that reads, ‘Let not your heart be troubled.’ I believe that you’re only given what you can bear.”
The Shoofly Magazine is publishing 12 of Under Surge's 25 chapters to commemorate Hurricane Katrina's 20th anniversary.
Missed some? Below are links to those we've published to date: 
Under Surge, Under Siege is available in paperback and as an ebook.
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