Quarreling through Katrina: A saga of survival

Kari Huus Reporter • Profile • E-mail

WAVELAND, Miss. - As Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on the Gulf Coast one year ago, George “Sonny” Hoffman drove his camper against the flow of evacuation traffic. Sonny had a longstanding hobby of riding out storms and wanted to intercept Katrina when it hit land.

The former Green Beret — missing an arm and blind in one eye from a munitions explosion during the Vietnam War — was planning a date with the biggest hurricane of his life, a one-on-one with Mother Nature. Instead, he ended up confronting human nature as self-proclaimed savior to a group of people who were tough, argumentative, stubborn and, in some cases, drunk in the face of crisis.

It is an epic tale of survival, no matter who tells it. But a year after the storm, it also is a fractured saga, filled with conflicting memories and recriminations. And Sonny's role in the ordeal is perhaps the most controversial point of all.

On the storm's eve, Sonny left Biloxi, Miss., for nearby Waveland, his destination a cheap roadside inn on Highway 90 run by a friend. The one-story, cinder block Texan Motel enjoyed a slight rise in the otherwise flat beach town, and he thought it was a good spot to witness the fury of Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane.

“What I really wanted was to be the only person left in Waveland,” Sonny says.

For decades, Sonny had been “intercepting” storms because of his love of violent weather. He lives in a camper moving along the Gulf Coast, from Panama City, Fla., to Brownsville, Texas. MSNBC.com tracked him down in Corpus Christi, Texas, living at the South Padre Naval Air Station.

Left behind at the Texan
To his dismay and irritation, he found 10 people and six dogs at the Texan who weren't budging. In one room, two women and two men were drinking hard and had two pet dogs. An older couple who lived at the hotel was sequestered in a rear room with three dogs. And a younger couple with two kids and a dog had retreated to the motel from a rental near the beach.

“I spent the first two hours trying to get rid of them,” Sonny says. “I said, ‘Is there something you don’t understand about a Category 5 hurricane?” (Sonny has developed his own theories on hurricanes, and he maintains that Katrina was wrongly downgraded to Category 4.)

Those survivors from the Texan who could be found say they had debated evacuation but gave up the idea as the storm approached. It was getting dangerous on the roads. They were out of cash. The family of four had $60, barely enough for a tank of gas and a stop at McDonald’s. Shelters would not allow the dogs.

“Most people don’t really consider animals as part of the family,” says Michael Cupp, a wiry auto mechanic who was living in the motel’s back room with his wife, Carol, and three dogs. “To my wife and me, they are just like kids. ... Wherever we go, they go.”

The holdouts also thought the Texan would be safe. The area hadn’t flooded in Camille, the whopper hurricane of 1969, so they reasoned that it wouldn’t flood this time.

‘I thought he was nuts’
Sonny believed the group was in a world of trouble and appointed himself commander. As he tells it, he began formulating plans and back-up plans.

To the others, his presence was something of a joke. A paunchy, self-professed expert on hurricanes who said he was a writer and took pictures with his cell phone. And he was damned bossy.

“I thought he was nuts,” recalls Colleen Saurage, who remained with her husband, Robert Abadie, and two children.

Her husband, Robert, didn’t like being ordered around, even by a decorated soldier, and took an immediate dislike to the outsider. Robert, a fiery man who works as a landscaper, questioned Sonny's motives, figuring he wanted to write a book taking advantage of his family’s misfortune.

Prophet of doom
Sonny was alone in his belief that the Texan Motel, a mile and a half from the waterfront, would flood. He predicted the storm surge would reach 20 feet on Highway 90 and 7 feet at the hotel.

John Brecher / MSNBC.com Richard Abadie at the FEMA trailer he lives in with his parents, Robert Abadie and Colleen Saurage, in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Richard had just turned 6 and lost all his birthday presents, when Hurricane Katrina hit.

As the evening wore on and the winds picked up, he began preparing for water, recruiting Robert and Colleen’s kids, Richard, 6, and Aaron, 9, to help blow up two inflatable kayaks.

“Which (their father) thought was stupid,” Sonny says. “He’d just walk off in disgust every time I brought out one of these ‘beach toys.’”

By nightfall, Sonny had persuaded no one except the kids about the coming deluge. So he focused on trying to prepare them for the storm.

“I said the hurricane has got a voice,” Sonny recalls telling Richard. “She’ll tell you when it’s time to take cover, and when she does, she’ll scream real loud, and when she does you run into that concrete shower with your mom. But when she’s not screaming you can come out and look around.”

As the night wore on, the wind did scream, littering the parking lot with trees and ripping the awning off the office. Sonny darted from one room to another checking on the residents throughout the night.

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