← Harold's Old Time Radio
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Narrator
Now the rest of the story. How does a reporter emotionally handle the disasters on which he reports? Well, it would seem some newsmen and newswomen actually thrive on them. I want you to meet Kathy Kidrick, alias Calamity Cathy. She's been covering national disasters for 15 years now. The biggest of the big ones, beginning with Hurricane Eloise 1975. 25 people died on the island of Hispaniola, 34 in Puerto Rico. Hardest hit in the United states was the 50 mile resort strip between Panama City Beach, Florida and Pensacola. 140 mile an hour wind, 16 foot tides, 150 million damage. And calamity Cathy was there, talking to the disaster victims, writing the story of what hell is like from the inside. Five years later, Mount St. Helens blew her top in the Pacific Northwest. Calamity Cathy was there too, standing in the hail of volcanic debris, watching the plume of ashes and gases reach 15,000ft into the sky, writing the story of what hell is like from its chimney. Later that same year, Hurricane Allen ripped the Caribbean and the Texas Gulf coast, cutting a swath of destruction 1200 miles long. And there in the eye of the storm in Corpus Christi, was Calamity Cathy, interviewing the wind ravaged citizens. Kathy also covered the hurricane that slammed into Hawaii in 1982. Ewa Iwa was her name. It would cost some 200 million to clean up after her. And then Coalinga, the 6.5 monster earthquake that rocked central California. Coalinga, closest to the epicenter was the town for which the quake was named. A community of 7,000 who were driven from their homes as the business district fell flat to the ground. Electricity, gas, telephone service were wiped out in less than 30 seconds, leaving the citizenry stunned and hurting. And Calamity Cathy was there to record the story finally. San Francisco, October 1989, the night that became a nightmare. Millions watched the World Series on television. They were among the first to learn of the earthquake. But Calamity Cathy was on the scene, toughing it out magnificently as always, and returning to the world of the living to tell the tale. But the rest of the story is that Calamity Kathy Kidrick is not a professional reporter, rather an amateur chronicler of the most spectacular natural disasters in recent American history. Kathy is otherwise a mother, a wife of a peripatetic Navy pilot, and yet, if her husband's job explains why she is always moving, it does not explain why she's always moving to the most dangerous place on the planet. For Kathy Kidrick travels to the scenes of our greatest natural disasters before they occur. A calamitous coincidence, it's been called. Well, three hurricanes, two major earthquakes, a volcanic eruption. Kathy has moved directly into the path of each before each happened, only to stand once again midst the rubble and to record the emotions of her neighbors in her private journals. In fact, after her own house in Alameda was leveled during the San Francisco quake last October, her own house was leveled. Kathy was going to move in with relatives. But the homes of the relatives, the homes of her parents and brothers and sisters in Charleston, South Carolina, were so badly wrecked by the Hurricane Hugo days before that there was no place for her to stay. And one thing more. Kathy's husband today is being transferred to Fallon, Nevada, to the naval air base there. His wife and his children will soon follow. If you are living in Fallon, Nevada, right now, I thought you'd want to know the rest of the story.