Magazine Tells of Hurricane Frederic

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Some 20 years ago, in September 1979, Hurricane Frederic ripped through the Gulf Coast, tearing the roofs off buildings, slinging freighters ashore, and wreaking havoc on the lives of half-a-million Alabamians.

Mack Lofton details the life of the devastating tempest in the winter 2000 issue of Alabama Heritage, charting the storm`s course from its infancy off the coast of Africa all the way to its last gust off the coast of Maine. Along the way, Lofton presents eyewitness accounts of the Mobile area`s preparations for the storm, the damage it caused, and the subsequent clean-up effort.

Stella Allen, who was working at a Pensacola marina at the time, remembers boat owners taking "all the big boats as far away as they could, moving them back in little creeks and coves," where they dropped anchor and secured the boats to trees on the bank.

Mobile home residents moved to designated shelters, like the Azalea Middle School in Mobile. Mary Collette, 6-years-old at the time, vividly remembers those hours before the storm. "As we watched the storm coming in, I was a very sick little girl. I required medication which had to be kept on ice. My dad was frantic, going around everywhere trying to find ice for my medication. He found some, but had to pay $20 for a small chunk."

Cathy Kloss, then a student at Mobile College (now the University of Mobile), recalls her harrowing experience that night sheltered in the school`s main administration building along with at least 150 other students. Frederic unleashed winds in excess of 130 miles per hour, snapping trees and power lines, and ripping into the city`s once-sturdy structures. "We were a Christian college, and I can assure you that there were many prayer meetings during the night."

All told, Hurricane Frederic wrought over $2 billion in damage on Mobile and its surrounding areas -- much of it on uninsured property. "Frederic caused the largest single insurance catastrophe in the world -- until that time," recalls insurance executive and Foley Mayor Tim Russell. Indeed, Hurricane Frederic is listed by the National Hurricane Center as the seventh costliest storm to hit the United States this century.

Ironically, Russell and others see a silver lining in Frederic`s very dark cloudsóone that still reaps benefits for the areas that were so devastated in 1979. The flood of insurance money, the frenzy of clean-up and repair, along with the national attention the area received, all served to fuel a kind of "mass urban renewal," propelling the economic prosperity the area now enjoys.

J. Mack Lofton, Jr. has published two books with the University of Alabama Press, Voices from Alabama (1993) and Healing Hands: An Alabama Medical Mosaic (1995). For this article, Lofton followed the same technique he used for his books: he began collecting personal stories from eyewitnesses along the Florida-Alabama line and worked his way west, talking to scores of survivors, all of whom had vivid memories of the storm.

Alabama Heritage is a non-profit quarterly magazine published by The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. To order the magazine, write Alabama Heritage, Box 870342, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0342, or call 205/348-7467.