I often marvel at how resilient human beings are in the face of adversity. When we are hit unexpectedly by an act of nature, we discover just how good our coping skills are. Sometimes we learn just the opposite. Such was the case for me in July 2005. We got hit smack dab in the face with reality. My husband handled it very well, but I did not. It still affects me today. And just when I should have been writing in this blog as an outlet, I quit.
A number of years ago we purchased a small cottage on St. George Island of the North Florida Gulf coast near the town of Apalachicola. Apalachicola has been described as what Key West was before anyone discovered it. Like many barrier islands, St. George Island (SGI) is about 27 miles long, but very narrow and is located about 90 miles from Tallahassee. Given the narrow, winding, two lane roads, it becomes an approximate two hour drive. Some close friends of ours had the house for years, using it as a weekend retreat. When all their kids were out of their house in Tallahassee, they decided to move to this very small house. After one year there, they decided to become permanent residents there and build a larger home on the Bay side of the island.
At the time we purchased our little house about 11 years ago, SGI was mostly undeveloped and populated by a combination of old time residents and weekenders plus a growing number of rental houses, most of which were along the Gulf or across the road from the Gulf. This little house was three blocks inland and on a dirt road with no cable available. Most of the permanent residents lived on these inland roads and the area was so undesirable for investment and rental purposes, that our house and area in which it was located were valued similar to mainland property.
We decided that our goal would be to spend two weekends a month down there. What happened was that we ended up spending nearly every weekend down there plus our vacation time. There were only two houses nearby, both of which were occupied by full time residents. Nearly all the vacant lots around us were also owned by one of the permanent residents. We came to love the quiet and solitude of our little place and would leave immediately from work on Friday afternoon and not return until Monday morning. I would bring my work clothes into the office on Friday and we would leave SGI at about 5:15 am so that I would arrive to my office by 7 am which was my usual time of work.
After I retired in 2001, I began spending more and more time there and eventually we made it our permanent residence. About this time, prices began to rise and more and more huge rental houses were being constructed. Still we felt secure because the lots around us were owned by our neighbor. We had told him that if he ever wanted to sell any of the lots adjacent to us, to let us know. Well, that did not happen and our neighbor sold a block of 12 lots to a developer which included lots in front of us and on both sides. It was only when a "sold" sign went up that we were aware of the sale.
Within one year, the lot to the west of us which had been lower than ours was filled in to a height of more than five feet above our property. Later that year, a huge rental house with a swimming pool was constructed on that lot. Not only did we lose our privacy, but we gained the noise associated with a rental home and parties out by the pool at night. Still the worst was yet to come.
In July 2005, hurricane Dennis threatened the north Florida Gulf coast. Dennis was a relatively weak hurricane (Cat.1 or 2) and its track took it to about 125 miles west of SGI. Apalachee Bay, where SGI is located, is very shallow and therefore vulnerable to storm surges. Forecasters had predicted a storm surge for our area of Apalachee Bay of between 5-8 feet. Most residents of the island remained, but several friends who lived in lower areas went to a rental located in higher area in the center of the island. They brought their boat and a trailer to our house for safe keeping since the base elevation of our lot was 9 feet. And because our house was three blocks inland, it was relatively safe from the predicted surge.
The storm surge from Dennis hit on a Saturday night. The next morning we received a call from our friends telling us to get down to the island right away because our property had sustained major storm surge damage. My husband went down there immediately.
Most of our end of the island from the Gulf to the main road was under water. Our property is another block inland from the main road, but my husband could not get to it because the storm surge had washed away our driveway and left an eight foot deep gully where it once was and along the side of our house next to the big rental house. The front of the property toward the Gulf was fine because the water ran naturally over the land and under the house like it should. However due to the filling in of the lot next door, the water funneled along the side with such a force that it destroyed a natural dune and our bulkhead walls, and created the gulch where our driveway once was. Since the water had to cross the main road which is approximately at an elevation of 12 feet, my estimate is that the storm surge was somewhere between 13 and 15 feet.
I have tried but it is hard to express in words what I felt when I saw this and how deeply it affected me to this day. Everything changed.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Hurricanes and Resilience, Part 2
In January 2005, I wrote a piece titled Hurricanes and Resilience, http://bloggingo.blogspot.com/2005/01/hurricanes-and-resilience.html in which I described how well my 80 something year old parents coped with three hurricanes in a less than three month period during 2004. The community in which they live in Central Florida had the dubious distinction of being ground zero for the eye of three separate hurricanes in 2004. When first hurricane left them without power for eight days, I was amazed at their resilience throughtout their ordeal and their steadfast determination to make the best of a very trying situation.
The last couple of years have been among the worst for hurricanes in the Southeast but Tallahassee, in the Big Bend of Florida, has been largely spared from direct hurricane damage. The last really damaging hurricane to affect Tallahassee was Hurricane Kate in 1985 when nearly the entire electrical system for the city was wiped out by fallen trees. The destruction of the city electrical system was so extensive that the day after Kate hit, only one gas station in town was able to pump. Because my neighborhood was in the unincorporated area, it was eight days before our power was restored. Some homes in my neighborhood went as long as eleven days.
Thankfully Kate hit in November, so the lack of air conditioning was not a problem. However, being mostly in the darkness during the entire time we were home was mind numbing. We were more fortunate than most. We had a gas hot water heater which meant we had hot showers. We also had camping equipment to cook with, a lantern for some light, and and a tiny portable tv that we could plug into the car cigarette lighter to watch the news each night. But each morning we would get up in the dark and get ready to go into work in the dark. By the time we got home in the evening, it would be dark again. Luckily we both worked downtown where the power was first restored. Going into work was the highlight of my day.
In the intervening years, the coastal areas had impacts from hurricanes and other storms, most notably Hurricane Opal in 1995 which hit much further west near Destin, but caused major damage to coastal areas in the Big Bend. But because Tallahassee sits about 25 miles inland from the nearest coastal area, it was usually spared. That was until 1994 when tropical storm Alberto moved into North Florida and South Georgia and stalled while dumping massive amounts of rain over the region.
As a result, 14 homes and several vacant lots in my neighborhood flooded with anywhere from one to three feet of water which came in the middle of the night. One of my friends in the flooded area ais that the water rose so fast that they went from a completely dry backyard to nearly two feet of water in less than an hour and a half. Most of the affected residents barely had time to escape their homes and by the next morning, some of them had three feet of water standing in their homes. Since the area was not in a FEMA flood hazard zone, none of the lenders had required flood insurance, and not a single home of the fourteen had flood insurance.
My entire neighborhood pulled together to help these families clean up and repair their homes. Eventually all the homes were repaired, but the cost to the families was much more than financial. Two couples ended up divorcing, several families sought stress counseling for themselves and their children, and several families moved away. Despite the hardships they endured, most of these families recovered from this disaster to resume productive lives.
The last couple of years have been among the worst for hurricanes in the Southeast but Tallahassee, in the Big Bend of Florida, has been largely spared from direct hurricane damage. The last really damaging hurricane to affect Tallahassee was Hurricane Kate in 1985 when nearly the entire electrical system for the city was wiped out by fallen trees. The destruction of the city electrical system was so extensive that the day after Kate hit, only one gas station in town was able to pump. Because my neighborhood was in the unincorporated area, it was eight days before our power was restored. Some homes in my neighborhood went as long as eleven days.
Thankfully Kate hit in November, so the lack of air conditioning was not a problem. However, being mostly in the darkness during the entire time we were home was mind numbing. We were more fortunate than most. We had a gas hot water heater which meant we had hot showers. We also had camping equipment to cook with, a lantern for some light, and and a tiny portable tv that we could plug into the car cigarette lighter to watch the news each night. But each morning we would get up in the dark and get ready to go into work in the dark. By the time we got home in the evening, it would be dark again. Luckily we both worked downtown where the power was first restored. Going into work was the highlight of my day.
In the intervening years, the coastal areas had impacts from hurricanes and other storms, most notably Hurricane Opal in 1995 which hit much further west near Destin, but caused major damage to coastal areas in the Big Bend. But because Tallahassee sits about 25 miles inland from the nearest coastal area, it was usually spared. That was until 1994 when tropical storm Alberto moved into North Florida and South Georgia and stalled while dumping massive amounts of rain over the region.
As a result, 14 homes and several vacant lots in my neighborhood flooded with anywhere from one to three feet of water which came in the middle of the night. One of my friends in the flooded area ais that the water rose so fast that they went from a completely dry backyard to nearly two feet of water in less than an hour and a half. Most of the affected residents barely had time to escape their homes and by the next morning, some of them had three feet of water standing in their homes. Since the area was not in a FEMA flood hazard zone, none of the lenders had required flood insurance, and not a single home of the fourteen had flood insurance.
My entire neighborhood pulled together to help these families clean up and repair their homes. Eventually all the homes were repaired, but the cost to the families was much more than financial. Two couples ended up divorcing, several families sought stress counseling for themselves and their children, and several families moved away. Despite the hardships they endured, most of these families recovered from this disaster to resume productive lives.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
