Class News
Tony Lavely ’64 on hurricanes and climate change
There is no “evacuation plan” for climate change
by Tony Lavely ’64
September 15, 2020
It seems like every day there is at least one headline about a weather event caused by climate change. Perhaps the frequency and magnitude of these events inoculate us from anxiety about the problem of global warming that is their cause. The complexity of the global climate and the underlying science may also cause us to “look the other way.” Yet, like any of life’s challenges, when one experiences them personally, then reality sets in. For me, climate change became a personal matter when I experienced Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The summer of 2005 was one of the best periods of my life. I needed all the buoyancy it provided when Hurricane Katrina devasted New Orleans in late August. My daughter got married in The Washington National Cathedral on my birthday, and my mother was there to experience it. 
Then, in early August, Ruth’s Chris Steak House went public on NASDAQ. As Executive Vice President, I planned the event in Times Square and watched the first trade cross the tape. We had just purchased an historical home in New Orleans, only a block from the iconic St. Charles Avenue streetcar. 
We lived in an apartment while major renovations were underway. On August 26th, I rented a car and drove to Biloxi, Mississippi, where we had scheduled VIP parties for the opening of a new Ruth’s Chris restaurant in the Hard Rock Café. Mississippi laws required that the Hard Rock casino float over Mobile Bay, rather than being built on land.
The pre-opening party on Friday went perfectly, and I was preparing for an even bigger event with the mayor of Biloxi on Saturday when my wife called. Wanda asked: “Have you been watching the news on TV?” “No,” I answered, “I’m very busy getting this new restaurant open.” She continued, “Well, you better listen to what they’re saying about an approaching hurricane. They’re issuing evacuation orders in New Orleans.” I told her that I would get up early on Sunday morning and drive back to New Orleans, so we could begin our evacuation.
Most of New Orleans is below sea level and protected by levees. Not to be cavalier, but New Orleanians wait until the last minute before heading for high ground. As I drove back on Sunday morning along the coast road (the Interstate highway had already been converted to outbound traffic in all lanes), the seriousness started to hit me. Mine was the only car driving into New Orleans! All the gas stations had already been boarded up, and all the fast food places were closed.
I met Wanda at our new property in Uptown and boarded up the bigger windows; the house was empty during the renovation, so there wasn’t much to protect. Then, we rushed to my office to load PC towers up onto the desks. Finally, we went by our small apartment and took everything off the floors. The apartment sat right beside the 17th Street levee (which eventually broke on the other side). We headed for Houston, where I had been lucky to get a reservation with Marriott. What was normally a 5-hour drive took us 10 hours because the traffic on I-10 was bumper to bumper. We had to turn off the car air-conditioning to conserve fuel, since all the gas stations were closed. I mention these details because there is a domino effect to these powerful events caused by climate change.
Finally, we got to Houston and checked into our hotel in the early morning hours of August 29. We turned on the TV just in time to see the storm hit New Orleans. The massive pump systems failed, and many levees were overrun. Seeing the amount of devastation, we worried about our two cats that Wanda had boarded. All cell phones originating in New Orleans were inoperable, but Wanda still had her Louisville-based number. We were able to connect with other members of the leadership team and decided to meet in Orlando to decide what to do.
The markets were already dumping the stocks of any New Orleans-based company. By utilizing our Atlanta-based website, we were able to make contact and provide emergency cash to 288 of the 290 Ruth’s Chris employees who were in the hurricane-devastated areas.
We did make two emergency trips back to New Orleans which was under martial law, and we found our cats. They had been transported to Lake Charles, about 50 miles away. The table at which I dined with the mayor ended up at the bottom of Mobile Bay, and the restaurant never opened to the public. Ruth’s Chris relocated to Orlando, and we sold the home we had never lived in. We fared much better than many people who lost everything.
When our lives returned to normal, I reflected on the impact of Hurricane Katrina and the ever-increasing number of storms just like her. In August 2020, Hurricane Laura hit Lake Charles, Louisiana, with the U.S. Meteorologic Service warning that “This storm is unsurvivable!” What they should have said is: “Climate change is unsurvivable!” To get a more scientific understanding, I read Mark Lynas book Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency. I learned that hurricanes provide penetrating insights into the temperature and hydrologic interactions in our climate. They are the canaries. Mark Lynas writes “Climate models do seem to suggest that the disaster caused by Katrina would simply not have been so destructive in a pre-industrial climate that had not been altered by accumulating greenhouse gas emissions.” 
He explains: “Hurricanes are fueled by warmth in the oceans, and the ocean heat in the Gulf of Mexico was the highest on record [referring to Hurricane Harvey] in 2017.” Lynas goes on to say: “These changes are signs of a planet where weather systems are beginning to move into more chaotic and unpredictable states, with globl circulation patterns increasingly different from today’s.”
If the deep science that Lynas presents is not for you, read Douglas Brinkley’s heavily documented book, The Great Deluge, that chronicles how “in the span of five violent hours on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed major Gulf Coast cities and flattened 150 miles of coastline.” For a book with a plot even more gripping, read Erik Larson’s book, Isaac’s Storm, about the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. 
After the devastation of Galveston, Willis Moore, Director of the US Weather Bureau, covering for his own poor forecast, said: “Chances are that not once in a thousand years would Galveston be so terribly stricken.” But Larson points out that “Another intense hurricane struck in 1915; other hurricanes struck or came very near in 1919, 1932, 1941, 1942, 1949, 1857, 1961, and 1983.” Most experts agree that the dramatic increase in violent weather events is the direct result of global warming caused by carbon-dioxide emissions.
Climate change. For me, it’s personal. I want the world that my granddaughters grow up in to be like the Camelot that summer of 2005 was for me, not like the apocalypse New Orleans became at the end of August that year. I take personal responsibility. Will you?
Anthony M. (Tony) Lavely is a career food-industry marketing executive. He was a principal in the Ruth’s Chris Steak House IPO in 2005 and was instrumental in finding and helping almost 300 employees displaced by Hurricane Katrina. In his role as Secretary for the Yale Class of 1964, he publicizes the environmental work that has been done by classmates over the years. Currently, Tony is engaged in a series of climate change workshops with a curriculum developed by Elders Climate Action. He is also part of a small working group of Yale classmates to foster communications about climate change.