I asked several long-time ABC13 employees to share their stories about Hurricane Alicia, the category three hurricane which made landfall near San Luis Pass 25 years ago:
Ed Brandon
My most vivid memory of Hurricane Alicia was the brief period of calm that occurred at the Channel 13 studios as the eye of the storm apparently passed overhead. We had been watching the palm trees. The wind blew them violently into an almost horizontal position. During the “calm” the trees returned to their vertical orientation and there appeared to be no wind at all. Then, a few minutes later, the trees again began tilting dangerously as the wind picked up as strong as before, but from a different direction. During the calm, Don Nelson stepped outside into the courtyard and broadcast live what was happening.
Almost as vivid is the memory of driving around our near-southwest side area after the storm had passed. When the hurricane winds finally subsided I left the station to drive to my nearby apartment. My car was the only one on Richmond Avenue as I drove through the Greenway Plaza area toward the HISD administration building. It appeared that I was the first to travel that stretch of road post-Alicia and the experience of swerving around large tree branches and downed power lines is still with me.
I discovered that there was no power at my apartment and decided that if I was to rest, it would have to be somewhere away from home. I went to the Stouffer’s hotel (now the Renaissance) across the street from the Summit (now Lakewood Church) and stopped to get a room since it was apparent they had not lost power. When I got there, all of the guests were in the lobby and I was told by the desk clerk that there would be no access to the upper floors, where the rooms were, until “after the storm.” I told the guy that the worst was over and it was safe to send folks back to their rooms. After all, I had just watched the storm on radar as it moved away from our neighborhood. No amount of talking would convince the people at Stouffer’s that it was safe for me to go up to a room and get some sleep! Thank God for the two-story LaQuinta Inn on Southwest Freeway. I got a good six or seven hours of sleep and then lived there for about the next ten days.
Doug Brown
The biggest impression I had of Alicia was how quickly she formed and became a Category 3 Hurricane. As you know, we often track systems from infancy for days on end. We actually have to fill time on the air with endless facts and forecasts that have to be updated every few hours.
Not the case with Alicia. She formed in the Central Gulf and quickly grew. Over the course of about three days we broadcasters talked about a small disturbance that became a major threat. That experience taught me that from day one, a small disturbance could become significant in a matter of hours. So be prepared and respect Mother Nature’s ability to get your attention quickly.
Tom Koch
As a relative newcomer to Texas at the time of Alicia, I really didn’t know what to expect from such a big storm and apprehension seemed appropriate.
I was assigned to cover the Clear Lake area and the night before the storm, we checked into the Nassau Bay Hilton where I spent the evening doing live reports for our station and phone reports for other stations around the country. When the storm moved closer, the windows began to shake and the power eventually went out and most people huddled in the lobby for the night, reporters included.
At daybreak we ventured out to find the overwhelming destruction right outside the front door: boats tossed across the road, water submerging the bridges and debris everywhere. We spent the morning shooting video and interviews and because we could not feed back a live report, we drove back to Houston through two feet of water on many parts of the freeway and pounding rain all the way. It was just the beginning of a long week for everyone. And it was the day I wished I’d never met a hurricane.
Melanie Lawson
I was a brand-new reporter at Channel 13 when Alicia hit....I'd only been here for a few months. When the News Director announced that we were in the direct path of a hurricane and all newsroom personnel was expected to work until it was over, I didn't even know what to expect. I'd grown up in Houston, but the only real hurricane I could remember was Carla, when I was a very little girl. And my only memory from that time was my father finding snakes in our backyard, after the storm moved through.
I was sent out with a live truck and told to go to different spots around town, set up and report back what we were seeing. So in the driving rain and howling wind, we headed for the Texas Medical Center, where the water was rising by the minute and that normally busy section of town was virtually deserted. As we put up the mast on our live truck, I could see the entire van rocking back and forth in the wind. It was the first time that I felt really scared, especially when I saw all the debris whipping around in the blinding rain.
But my job was to get on the air and report back live, and somehow we did that.
The next few hours and days are a blur, as we all worked long past exhaustion -- watching the damage from Alicia with amazement....seeing the downtown skyscrapers raining down glass as their windows were blown out by the high winds, watching the bayous rise out of their banks, going to neighborhoods made virtually impassable because of all the downed tree limbs and power lines.
But the crowning blow was when I finally got home, and discovered I was like hundreds of thousands of other Houstonians -- I had no power, and a huge tree was blocking my street. It would be almost a week later before the power was finally turned back on, and the roads cleared in my neighborhood. And the recovery was even longer for many other parts of town.
Deborah Wrigley
I remember thinking this storm was going to be an adventure- my first to cover as a reporter. My wonderful mother gave me 'the look', and said, "Deborah, this is not something to look forward to. Hurricanes are not fun."
Mom, as always, was right.
We were sent to Galveston. The other crews from the station were housed at the Galvez. I and my photographer and engineer were told to stay at the Galveston post office.
We did the usual storm spectators stories during the day. Wind and surf were what would be expected. But by 10 PM, the wind was too high to get a liveshot out.
Don Kobos
I had only lived in Houston a year when Alicia hit and had not yet covered a hurricane in my reporting career….let alone one with the anger of Alicia. There are several things I will never forget about that amazing experience.
First of all was the drive to work the morning Alicia came ashore. I drove down Westheimer around 5 AM and remember how everything was surprisingly dark. There was no power, no lights, but there were plenty of live electrical and telephone wires dancing across Westheimer with sparks jumping from them everywhere. As I listened to one of the radio newscasts as a cruised alone down the empty streets, an announcer came on the air and said there were reports a tornado had touched down at Gessner and Westheimer. I heard that report as I was driving through the Gessner intersection on Westheimer. I had a heavy foot that morning and made it to work with no difficulties.
I was assigned to cover downtown Houston. I thought that I was going to miss out on the biggest story of my career because I was not being sent to Galveston and the shore line where the wrath of Alicia would strike first. That was not the case at all.
I spent the next week doing stories from downtown Houston where dozens of glass skyscrapers faced millions of dollars of hurricane damage.
That first morning photographer Jack Combs and I saw our lives flash before our very eyes. As we drove down Louisiana into downtown in the middle of the high winds and torrential rains, we could see debris…mostly glass from the giant skyscrapers….. filling the streets ahead of us. Thinking visually as a most good reporters do, I encouraged Jack to step outside the car and take a few pictures. As he stood a few feet away from the door, two giant pieces of thick window glass crashed though the hood of our vehicle in the engine area. A few inches to the left or right and either of us would have been struck and killed by the falling sheets and chunks of glass that were blown out of their windows and fell 20 to 30 stories to the ground.
Jack jumped into the car and we sped far enough away from the many glass skyscrapers that lined so many streets in downtown Houston. After we caught our breath we reflected on how lucky we were and how you can never take anything for granted when covering a hurricane.
To share Your Hurricane Alicia Story, click here.
Tim Heller
The satellite shows a large area of cloud cover extending eastward across the Caribbean. The National Hurricane Center reports tropical storm force winds over 39 mph are possible up to 260 miles northeast of the center circulation.
NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which oversees the NHC issued an outlook for the upcoming season. Their forecast:
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