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Category 5: The Story of Camille, Lessons Unlearned from America's Most Violent Hurricane
". . . the authors sound a pessimistic note about society's short-term memory in their sobering, able history of Camille" --Booklist
"This highly readable account aimed at a general audience excels at telling the plight of the victims and how local political authorities reacted. The saddest lesson is how little the public and the government learned from Camille. Highly recommended for all public libraries, especially those on the Gulf and East coasts."
— Library Journal online
As the unsettled social and political weather of summer 1969 played itself out amid the heat of antiwar marches and the battle for civil rights, three regions of the rural South were devastated by the horrifying force of Category 5 Hurricane Camille.
Camille's nearly 200 mile per hour winds and 28-foot storm surge swept away thousands of homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. Twenty-four oceangoing ships sank or were beached; six offshore drilling platforms collapsed; 198 people drowned. Two days later, Camille dropped 108 billion tons of moisture drawn from the Gulf onto the rural communities of Nelson County, Virginia-nearly three feet of rain in 24 hours. Mountainsides were washed away; quiet brooks became raging torrents; homes and whole communities were simply washed off the face of the earth.
In this gripping account, Ernest Zebrowski and Judith Howard tell the heroic story of America's forgotten rural underclass coping with immense adversity and inconceivable tragedy.
Category 5 shows, through the riveting stories of Camille's victims and survivors, the disproportionate impact of natural disasters on the nation's poorest communities. It is, ultimately, a story of the lessons learned-and, in some cases, tragically unlearned-from that hard lessons that were driven home once again in the awful wake of Hurricane Katrina.
"Emergency responses to Katrina were uncoordinated, slow, and--at least in the early days--woefully inadequate. Politicians argued about whether there had been one disaster or two, as if that mattered. And before the last survivors were even evacuated, a flurry of finger-pointing had begun. The question most neglected What is the shelf life of a historical lesson?"
Ernest Zebrowski is founder of the doctoral program in science and math education at Southern University, a historically black university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University's Pennsylvania College of Technology. His previous books include Perils of a Restless Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters. Judith Howard earned her Ph.D. in clinical social work from UCLA, and writes a regular political column for the Ruston, Louisiana, Morning Paper.
"Category 5 examines with sensitivity the overwhelming challenges presented by the human and physical impacts from a catastrophic disaster and the value of emergency management to sound decisions and sustainability."
--John C. Pine, Chair, Department of Geography & Anthropology and Director of Disaster Science & Management, Louisiana State University
"This highly readable account aimed at a general audience excels at telling the plight of the victims and how local political authorities reacted. The saddest lesson is how little the public and the government learned from Camille. Highly recommended for all public libraries, especially those on the Gulf and East coasts."
— Library Journal online
As the unsettled social and political weather of summer 1969 played itself out amid the heat of antiwar marches and the battle for civil rights, three regions of the rural South were devastated by the horrifying force of Category 5 Hurricane Camille.
Camille's nearly 200 mile per hour winds and 28-foot storm surge swept away thousands of homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. Twenty-four oceangoing ships sank or were beached; six offshore drilling platforms collapsed; 198 people drowned. Two days later, Camille dropped 108 billion tons of moisture drawn from the Gulf onto the rural communities of Nelson County, Virginia-nearly three feet of rain in 24 hours. Mountainsides were washed away; quiet brooks became raging torrents; homes and whole communities were simply washed off the face of the earth.
In this gripping account, Ernest Zebrowski and Judith Howard tell the heroic story of America's forgotten rural underclass coping with immense adversity and inconceivable tragedy.
Category 5 shows, through the riveting stories of Camille's victims and survivors, the disproportionate impact of natural disasters on the nation's poorest communities. It is, ultimately, a story of the lessons learned-and, in some cases, tragically unlearned-from that hard lessons that were driven home once again in the awful wake of Hurricane Katrina.
"Emergency responses to Katrina were uncoordinated, slow, and--at least in the early days--woefully inadequate. Politicians argued about whether there had been one disaster or two, as if that mattered. And before the last survivors were even evacuated, a flurry of finger-pointing had begun. The question most neglected What is the shelf life of a historical lesson?"
Ernest Zebrowski is founder of the doctoral program in science and math education at Southern University, a historically black university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University's Pennsylvania College of Technology. His previous books include Perils of a Restless Scientific Perspectives on Natural Disasters. Judith Howard earned her Ph.D. in clinical social work from UCLA, and writes a regular political column for the Ruston, Louisiana, Morning Paper.
"Category 5 examines with sensitivity the overwhelming challenges presented by the human and physical impacts from a catastrophic disaster and the value of emergency management to sound decisions and sustainability."
--John C. Pine, Chair, Department of Geography & Anthropology and Director of Disaster Science & Management, Louisiana State University
- GenresHistoryNonfictionScience
304 pages, Hardcover
First published November 21, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 7, 2017
This was an exceptional read all the way around. It combines a kind of reconstructed oral history of Hurricane Camille with that of her predecessor, Hurricane Audrey, and gives enough (but not TOO much) of the science and history underlying the disasters to give the story some context. Unscientific me only got lost a couple of times in the discussions of wave and wind dynamics. The authors did not really succeed in giving me a sense of the scope of the disaster, even the the extent of giving some ballpark figures concerning damage costs or casualties. But it was a gripping read nevertheless. Well-written and well-copyedited; the only noteworthy error I found in here was using "meddle" when they meant "mettle." They even used the word "normality" instead of the repugnant, ubiquitous non-word "normalcy" (she sobbed gratefully).
March 18, 2018
There is something to be said in the discipline of history for simply telling a story, and in that this book has much in common with Hurricane Camille: Monster Storm of the Gulf Coast, published only a year earlier and with the same goal of giving the storm's survivors a voice in the historical record. Category 5 broadens its sites beyond the survivors to encompass the scientists who played such an important role in determining the path and power of the hurricane, and also in including the stories of local and state government officials whose job it was to respond to the storm. In this way Category 5 gives a more complete picture of the depth and meaning of the devastation. However, it is the narratives of the survivors themselves that take precedence over scanty but tantalizing analysis of survivor's relationships with the government, and the way race and class define disasters for distinct groups of people. Category 5 would have been a much longer but more academically fulfilling book if it has given these issues the same amount of weight and page length as it did to the harrowing narratives of survival told in the oral histories the authors mined and conducted. This kind of analysis might have added further depth of our understanding of what happened in Hurricane Katrina, which happened the same year Category 5 was published. Also missing is a more piercing look at the role of the federal government in the disaster, another pressing topic when compared with FEMA's current-day failure to abate the horror in New Orleans. Because of its human interest angle the book is readable and interesting, but as an academic text it fails to adequately scratch below the surface of what happens during disaster to what makes it one in the first place.
January 3, 2026
A five for Category 5. The authors did a fantastic job mixing personal experiences with scientific facts. They really brought Camille back to life and honored those that survived her and didn’t survive her.
October 23, 2021
A gripping account
I highly recommend this book to anyone studying historical storms in the US.
This account is well researched and told.
I highly recommend this book to anyone studying historical storms in the US.
This account is well researched and told.
November 28, 2024
If hurricanes, history and real life stories, interest you, this is definitely the book for you. I was researching hurricanes during the developing of Hurricane Milton, all the while wanting to start reading again. This book caught my eye and the first chapter had me locked in. This is definitely a book that you need to be able to pace yourself with. I checked this book out on the libby app and quickly ran out of time to finish it. I knew this book would be a heavy and difficult read, with it being a true story. However, I was not prepared for the sheer amount of stories and detail this book provided. I should have planned to spend two or tree days reading and digesting each chapter of this book. It is griping and interesting, but devastating and too heavy to binge read. Which is what happened to me. I don't know if it would be a book I will read again, but I may check it out again so that I can finish it.
April 9, 2016
4.5 stars
This is a nonfiction account of Hurricane Camille, which hit primarily Mississippi and Louisiana in August 1969. It also caused massive flooding in Virginia with an amazing amount of rainfall that hit there.
Wow, this was really good. It was a very interesting mix of personal stories and information about the hurricane itself. The hurricane/weather information wasn't dry in the least. I do love storms and reading about them, but occasionally, I will admit that the science can be dry. But I didn't find it at all dry in this book. And the stories just kept going even after the hurricane hit, with the devastation the flooding caused in Virginia. There was even some politics mixed in, as Mississippi, in particular, was still very segregated and resisting any attempts to desegregate. The book was published just after Katrina hit. There were a few brief mentions of it, but they were pretty much finished the book at the time of Katrina.
This is a nonfiction account of Hurricane Camille, which hit primarily Mississippi and Louisiana in August 1969. It also caused massive flooding in Virginia with an amazing amount of rainfall that hit there.
Wow, this was really good. It was a very interesting mix of personal stories and information about the hurricane itself. The hurricane/weather information wasn't dry in the least. I do love storms and reading about them, but occasionally, I will admit that the science can be dry. But I didn't find it at all dry in this book. And the stories just kept going even after the hurricane hit, with the devastation the flooding caused in Virginia. There was even some politics mixed in, as Mississippi, in particular, was still very segregated and resisting any attempts to desegregate. The book was published just after Katrina hit. There were a few brief mentions of it, but they were pretty much finished the book at the time of Katrina.
October 16, 2013
I've read one other book on the subject of Hurricane Camille -- Roar of the Heavens: Surviving Hurricane Camille, by Stefan Bechtel -- which I really enjoyed and found very thorough and moving. Didn't think I'd find this one as good, but I did. This book is a more journalistic treatment, slightly more dry and less emotional. But it's thorough, well-organized, very well-written and has a great index and notes section. I have to say that I'm going to go back and re-read the other one now to make sure I remember it correctly, but it seemed a bit more on the human interest angle of the disaster survivors, especially in the part of the disaster that took place in Virginia. If pushed on the topic, I'd say if someone wanted to get a comprehensive, well-rounded overall picture of this notorious weather disaster, they should get both titles. I will proudly add this to my personal library for future reference.
May 12, 2009
An excellent overview of the birth, life and death of Hurricane Camille, the most violent hurricane to strike the United States, in August 1969. Because of familial ties to this weather event, it has always been a particular cause célèbre for me. I have read much and studied much about this particular hurricane, and about weather phenomena in general. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, everything on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was measured as B.C. (Before Camille) and A.C. (After Camille). It was a life-changing, life-challenging experience for those in Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia, who survived its wrath. This book is an easy yet engrossing read.
September 6, 2010
Well written mix of social history with science of hurricanes and their aftermath. Several interesting themes related to the strength (and weakness) of social systems and institutions designed to protect.
January 28, 2013
Very interesting read!! Excellent book.
June 18, 2015
I liked the book. It was filled with true story account of indivuals experiences as well as an overview of what happened and why.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews