Hurricanes and Me: Change in Our Relationship

Amid the beautiful calm before the predicted Irene, I protect my plants and anything else I can batten down – and I recall my awe-inspiring experiences with hurricanes past.

When I was chasing bad news for the Los Angeles Times as the paper's Atlanta bureau chief, I covered several of these big blows, but, fortunately, I was not in them, not lashed to a tree or pole getting whipped around with wind and rain battering my face. Rather, I metaphorically parachuted into the aftermath and wrote about the devastation that storms had left.

Most notably, there was Hugo, which in September 1989 raked Caribbean Islands and South Carolina, killing scores of people and causing billions of dollars in damage. Like journalists everywhere, my job was to get into places that others had fled. So, I wound up in the Virgin Islands, writing about destruction and death.

Then, as soon as conditions allowed planes to take off from the crippled St. Croix airport, I hopped aboard a tiny plane and headed home toward Atlanta, where I did a touch and go before dashing by car to Charleston, South Carolina. All around this elegant old city, overturned boats littered front yards well away from the ocean, and the hurricane's path up U.S. Highway 17 north was marked by trees snapped in half.

In August 1991, I covered Bob, the most recent hurricane to directly strike New England. I wrote about Bob's northbound path, its grazing North Carolina's Outer Banks, the preparations and apprehensions up the coast.

And, I wrote this from Atlanta, again escaping close contact with a hurricane, in much the way people in many places have seen hurricanes bearing down on them, only to be spared when the storm veers away, blowing out to sea.

Now, for the first time, I am like those people; I know how they must have felt as they waited to learn their fate. I live in the path. I am looking at images of Irene churning and moving north toward my home region, my state. My home. Now, I am wondering whether Irene will slam Connecticut. Or, somehow, not.

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