Home for the hurricane

This year, Fr. Tracey made it back in time for Katrina’s unwelcome successor, Gustav.
He arrived back home to Bay St. Louis and his church, Our Lady On The Gulf, last Friday, just a weekend away from a storm that at one point was looking like a grim replay of Katrina.
Thankfully, however, Fr. Tracey and those of his parishioners who hunkered down as Gustav barreled in from the Gulf of Mexico were able ride out the storm and walk into the streets of Bay St. Louis Tuesday to a sight that, while less than welcome, was a good deal less devastating than the aftermath of Katrina in 2005.
“We survived,” Fr. Tracey who is from Killawalla near Westport, told the Echo on Tuesday.
“The power went out, the beach was torn up and the roads are torn up in places and there are lots of pelicans taking shelter along the shore,” Tracey said.
“There are some remnants of the storm still but the worst is over.”
Not too many of the Bay St. Louis’s residents were around to get an early look at Gustav’s effects. Given their experiences of Katrina, many had evacuated the waterfront town late last week and over the weekend, just as Fr. Tracey was making his way back in after a holiday in Ireland that, ironically, was dominated by wet and windy weather.
Bay St. Louis was cut off at the height of Gustav due to highway and road closures. And while there were forecasts of tornadoes during the peak of the storm, none struck the area where Fr. Tracey works and ministers.
“We took all the files and the computers from the trailer and took it to the house,” Fr. Tracey said in reference to the trailer that has been a parish office since Katrina washed away the parish rectory.
Fr. Tracey said Mass as usual on Sunday in Our Lady of the Gulf church. The shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico is less than a hundred yards away and that was no distance at all when a wall of water over 30 feet high reared itself and surged inland on the end of August night that Katrina unloaded mercilessly on the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
The church suffered considerable internal damage than and has only recently been restored to its former glory.
That glory took a soaking from Gustav but only on the outside.
“I think the experience of Katrina really put things in perspective. But again, Gustav brought people together,” said Fr. Tracey.
One of our parishioners owns a restaurant and he had everyone over for a meal on the house,” he said.
Katrina caused roughly $3.5 million in damage to Our Lady of the Gulf, that being the church, the parish complex including the lost rectory and the adjoining school.
Fr. Tracey’s new home, right next door to the church, should be ready by the end of October. It has been built to specifications that should be proof against even the most powerful hurricane.
It has windows designed to take winds of 150 miles per hour and it certainly withstood the test of Gustav,” Fr. Tracey said with more than a hint of relief in his voice.