‘Hit by a doozy’: Stockton man recounts harrowing tale of survival 50 years after Hurricane Camille

STOCKTON -- Joseph Randazzo was 19 years old studying electronic counter measures as an enlisted airman stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi.

On a summer evening in 1969, Randazzo and other airmen and support personnel hunkered down for several hours during one of the most devastating storms ever to hit the United States.

Hurricane Camille was the second-most intense hurricane, ranked by pressure, to strike the continental U.S., according to the National Weather Service. Though wind velocity measuring instruments were destroyed, published reports estimate they were 175 to 200 miles per hour. The resulting 24-foot storm surge devastated the Gulf Coast. More than 200 people lost their lives, more than 15,000 lost their homes and damage was estimated in the billions, according to the Hurricane Camille Project Report.

On Aug. 17, Hurricane Camille marks its 50th anniversary.

Randazzo, a longtime Stockton resident and native New Yorker, survived the storm and assisted with the cleanup. He said the base was warned the day before the hurricane struck.

"Camille started around Cuba three days earlier," he said. "We were told the Gulf Coast was going to be impacted severely by the hurricane as it gained strength. They told us we were going to get hit by a doozy."

Hurricane Camille is one of only three Category 5 hurricanes ever to make landfall in the United States, according to USA Today Weather. The others were the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane in the Florida Keys and Hurricane Andrew, which struck the Miami area in 1992.

Randazzo, 68, remembers much of what happened in Biloxi. He has tangible reminders, too, including a commemorative certificate the city issued to those who helped with the cleanup. He has dozens of photographs. One shows him and his roommates seated on a mattress in a hallway inside their multistory, cinder-block barrack. They're wearing T-shirts and shorts and are near a fan to combat the stifling heat. They appear to be smiling, perhaps resigned to the inevitable storm. After those shots were taken, Randazzo and his roommates braved several hours in the dark, helpless as the air pressure dropped and the wind howled. Randazzo said the sound was "louder than you can imagine." Only afterburners of jet engines, he said, could rival the wind's deafening roar.

"None of us knew at the time what to expect," Randazzo said. "We were just like, 'Oh my God. Is this going to be the end of it? Can these buildings be blown down or not?' "

Randazzo said he never feared for his life. He knew the sturdy barracks would hold. Plus, he experienced blizzards growing up the oldest of seven in New York and was somewhat hardened by tragedy.

"My mother passed away when I was 12," he said. "I was pretty much in touch with mortality long before (the hurricane)."

When the storm passed, Randazzo's concern shifted outside the military base.

"It didn't take very long after you got off the base to find out how badly impacted the city was," Randazzo said. "Cabin cruisers were lifted out of the water, over the beach, over the freeway and dropped in front yards. Buildings were completely demolished."

Randazzo said sinkholes rendered impassable the city's only highway that ran along the beach.

"Houses were obliterated, sides of buildings were knocked off," he said. "There was, apparently, a cow found on an island that was about four miles offshore; dead bodies, animals and people. There was a pencil stuck in a tree."

Randazzo had a friend who married a week prior to the hurricane. The friend and his wife, both airmen and classmates, moved all of their belongings into a home they rented a day prior to the hurricane.

"Twenty four hours later, they basically had what you could make toothpicks out of," Randazzo said. "They lost all their clothes, all their furniture, all their appliances; like everybody else, it was all leveled. They had lost everything."

Randazzo was close to graduating when the hurricane struck. The school closed for two weeks while he and others helped with the cleanup. Eventually, he graduated from the electronic counter measures program and was assigned to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Then, he was sent to a combat support air base in Thailand during the Vietnam War. From there, he was sent to Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento. Randazzo immediately liked Sacramento and knew he wanted to start his post-military life there.

After his honorable discharge, Randazzo attended Sacramento City College and earned a bachelor's of science degree and a master's degree at California State University, Sacramento and a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. All of his degrees are in social welfare. Randazzo has worked in Oakland, Sacramento and Stockton as a clinical social worker. He is semi-retired and has a 41-year-old son in Seattle. These days, he walks 15 miles every day and listens to audiobooks as he recovers from recent triple shoulder surgery, the result of an injury sustained while lifting weights. Randazzo was a competitive powerlifter, referee and commissioner and makes annual trips to New York.

Perhaps, if anything, surviving Hurricane Camille focused Randazzo's outlook on life.

"Being out there, just knowing, 'There but for the grace of God go I,' " Randazzo said. "I'm a man of God, a faithful person. I believe when it's my time I'll go and when it's not I won't. I don't think looking back I ever really thought any good would have come from worrying about it."

Contact reporter Bob Highfill at (209) 546-8277 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @bobhighfill.

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