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 'We had some tense moments'
By Jeff Flock (CNN)
Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news. Jeff Flock, reporting on Hurricane Lili as it slammed into the Gulf Coast, filed this report Thursday. MORGAN CITY, Louisiana (CNN) -- I don't suppose I've been as afraid as I was last night when we heard that Hurricane Lili had become a Category 4 status storm. We had been spending some time with a team of hurricane chasers. Their information was that they thought the hotel we were in, if Lili had maintained Category 4 status, would have been washed away in the hurricane's powerful storm surge. So we had some tense moments last night and this morning. As the storm has weakened, the weather hasn't been as bad as previous storms we've covered. There's been a lot of water, some wind, but nothing serious at this point and we're a pretty experienced hurricane team, having been through the likes of Andrew, Hugo, Gilbert -- a lot of the big ones. For Lili, we were holed up at a hotel that was next to a building under construction. That caused us particular concern because meteorologists were forecasting winds of 130 to 140 miles an hour. In that situation, you would start to see debris come off of the unfinished building. Luckily, that did not prove to be the case. However, there has been damage from Lili. We've had two telephone polls sheer off near us and occasionally a piece of some sort of debris will come through the air. In a preventative move, we were able to park our satellite truck in a location where it's protected on two sides and it's not taking the brunt of the wind. As far as our equipment was concerned, we had underwater housings for our camera -- for two different cameras actually. We were able to lash one camera down and have the worst of the storm hit it and it would be undamaged. That was a lesson learned after the loss of more than one camera over the years. Getting your equipment to the hurricane isn't as hard as you might think. It's never difficult traveling to a hurricane because you're one of the few people going in one direction while all the rest of the folks are going the other direction. For Lili, we drove in on Louisiana Route 90, which is the one that traverses the bayou. We were one of few vehicles that were headed toward the storm after flying into New Orleans. Everybody else was bumper-to-bumper headed out away from Lili as fast as possible.
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