Grandfather rode out Betsy with his dog in the car
Matthew Thiel and Evelyn Thiel Boreros by Caroline Gerdes, 2012; 4700.2457
Click photo to enlarge
Mathew Thiel.
TEMPESTS: Storms in the Archives
Caroline Gerdes: Do you remember hurricanes when you were younger hitting and affecting the Ninth Ward?
Evelyn Anna Thiel Boreros: There was something bad in in 1927, I know that.
Gerdes: In '47, too.
Matthew Thiel: In 1927 they had a bad storm, yeah. I don't remember too much but it was pretty bad. It destroyed some houses, you know. But it wasn't as bad as these storms. See, it passed in the same way, you know. But in 1915, they had what they called a [?] storm and my father and them used to tell everyone the bad storms they had. And we never had hurricanes like that come along [at their time?] until later years, you see. Of course, they never worried about them too much like that. Like right now, you see, the first of October is hurricane season's over and you're not going to get any . . . In fact we haven't been getting any lately because every time if a hurricane's coming down and the cold front's coming down, the cold front would push the hurricane back, and they go up the other way. See, that's why we're always praying for a cold front to come in, you see.
Boreros: When I was growing up, the hurricanes was just a lot of rain, a lot of wind and maybe blew some shingles off or whatever. Nothing like the ones they have now. And then Betsy in '65, my husband and I were living in a house on [Renee?] Street, right on the side of the St. Claude Bridge and we got . . . It's like after the storm's over, that's when the water comes. Well the storm was over, everything was fine, it was morning, and then the water started coming under the walls. It got knee deep. I was talking to my mom on the phone and she says, "Oh my God, the tree's coming through the house!" And blomp, the phone went dead. I didn't know if they were dead or alive. But the next day he came walking to get us and we walked to his car. But where he lived never, ever had water. What year did you buy the house on Douglas Street?
Thiel: In 1948.
Boreros: And never, ever had water.
Gerdes: Katrina was the first incident . . . ?
Boreros: The first time.
Thiel: Yeah, the first time we had ever had water that year.