On this date 26 years ago, after a wild and sleepless night in Mobile, photographer Dwayne Syltie and I wrapped up a frantic session of shooting video, and was in the process of making the long drive up I-65 to Birmingham. It was part of my first week as the lead weather anchor at WAPI-TV, Channel 13; a week I will never forget.
We were dispatched to cover hurricane Frederic; storm that wiped out much of the Alabama Gulf coast ( and started quite a building boom), and also created major damage in the city of Mobile. We rode out the storm in Azalea Middle School in Mobile along with about 500 evacuees. To this day I still think that is a great story that is rarely told; now you mostly see the pretty TV people standing on the coast with their hair blowing, as though they are the big story. We opted to tell the story of the people in that shelter from the storm. This, of course, was before satellite trucks, so there was no way to provide live video. However, I did manage to find one working phone line in the school and did a “phoner” during the 10:00 news on Channel 13 with Frederic approaching landfall. The storm peaked in intensity around 2:00 a.m. on September 13, and conditions improved greatly around sunrise as we finally came out of the shelter. We only had a few hours to shoot damage video before having to hit the road the get the video on our 5:00 news in Birmingham. We flew back down a few days later when President Carter toured the coast.
Dwayne passed away a few years ago after a long career at Channel 13; I miss the times we got together and reminisced about the Frederic experience. We wound up doing a thirty minute special on the storm; I would imagine that is still stored away in the video vault somewhere up at Channel 13.
The memories of Frederic are amazingly fresh in my mind despite the years flying by at light speed.
We were dispatched to cover hurricane Frederic; storm that wiped out much of the Alabama Gulf coast ( and started quite a building boom), and also created major damage in the city of Mobile. We rode out the storm in Azalea Middle School in Mobile along with about 500 evacuees. To this day I still think that is a great story that is rarely told; now you mostly see the pretty TV people standing on the coast with their hair blowing, as though they are the big story. We opted to tell the story of the people in that shelter from the storm. This, of course, was before satellite trucks, so there was no way to provide live video. However, I did manage to find one working phone line in the school and did a “phoner” during the 10:00 news on Channel 13 with Frederic approaching landfall. The storm peaked in intensity around 2:00 a.m. on September 13, and conditions improved greatly around sunrise as we finally came out of the shelter. We only had a few hours to shoot damage video before having to hit the road the get the video on our 5:00 news in Birmingham. We flew back down a few days later when President Carter toured the coast.
Dwayne passed away a few years ago after a long career at Channel 13; I miss the times we got together and reminisced about the Frederic experience. We wound up doing a thirty minute special on the storm; I would imagine that is still stored away in the video vault somewhere up at Channel 13.
The memories of Frederic are amazingly fresh in my mind despite the years flying by at light speed.
on September 13, 2005, 8:17 am
We had lost power around 7 that night in our neighborhood, and had lost the phones around 8. No dial tone, nothing-just dead. The winds really started roaring around that time as we hunkered down in the hall with a kerosene lantern for light. At 10:00 I was looking out the windows, as my neighbor lost their roof, and the dead phone started ringing. When I answered it, there was a voice that said,"Mike, Is That you? This is John from Atlanta." I explained my name wasn't John and he had the wrong number.
Turns out he was calling his brother in Mobile and wanted to know about the storm. Since I was next to the window, I opened it, (lee side of house), and let him listen to the winds for a minute. We wound up talking just about the storm until the phone really died about an hour later.
Never did really find out who he was, or where he lived in Atlanta.
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