We sat around and watched that bitch for over a week, skulking around the lower Caribbean. Oh, they kept telling us that eventually she'd head our way, but we really didn't pay much attention. I mean, afterall, who'd ever heard of a hurricane hitting this late in the season? And even if they did, hurricanes NEVER, EVER hit Broward County and Ft Lauderdale. They might hammer Miami-Dade, or sneak up the coast and create a nuisance to Palm Beach, but somehow, someway, Ft Lauderdale always managed to avoid getting hit. It was really amazing.
And so, we watched and kept listening to those guys from the Weather Channel tell us that we were sitting there, like a huge target, and that it was inevitable that Wilma was heading our way. But there was this massive cold front, and we were positive that it would come down in time to send it south of Lauderdale, and once again we would mark smart ass remarks about how those guys from the Weather Channel were wrong--again. And then we heard about how Wilma was sitting on top of Cancun and the Yucatan, hammering them relentlessly with high winds and heavy dosages of rain. But it wasn't going to happen to us. Nope, OTHER people get hit, not us.
And last Friday, we prepped our office, as we've done seemingly hundreds of times in preparation for yet another hurricane that wouldn't really hit us. We covered the desks and computers in plastic wrap, laughing to ourselves at how ineffective it would be if a hurricane ever did hit Lauderdale. And we went home.
And on Sunday I took my wife to the bookstore, so she had something to read if she got bored during preparation of our home. And I drove right past the gas station even while I noticed that my wife was sitting at around 1/2 to 3/4 a tank of gas. Didn't matter...the hurricane wouldn't hit us, so who cares if our tank isn't full?
And my wife told me, as we were putting up our shutters, to leave one shutter off of our sliding glass doors so that she could "watch the storm" when it came through.
And my wife went to bed, as the talking heads on television told us that Wilma was coming. But I kept thinking that, like always, something would happen at the last minute and Wilma would turn north....even maybe up to the Palm Beach, and we would maybe get a glancing blow. And I went to bed, wondering if I had made the right choice in leaving that sliding door without that last shutter. And as I got in bed, I heard the wind begin to pick up outside.
I awoke the next morning and the first thing I noticed was that the fan above our bed was still turning. Power still on. I asked my wife what time it was, and she told me that it was about 7:45am and that the storm was hitting Broward County dead on.
We still couldn't believe it...this just didn't happen. I fell back asleep for about another 15 minutes until my wife came back into the room and told me that she was starting to get freaked out by the noise outside and wanted me to come into the living room. A few minutes later we heard on the radio that the eye of the storm, which was large enough to literally cover the entire county, was now passing over the area.
So we did what any idiot would do in that situation. We went outside (Hey, I never said we were the brightest bulbs in the box). The two trees in our front yard were down. We walked outside in front of the house and saw a few other neighbors who were out surveying the damage. We stayed out there about 5 minutes, or until I began to notice a very subtle increase in the wind. Time to go in, I told my wife.
We were inside about 5 minutes when the power finally went out. Through the space in the shutters we could see the wind pick up dramatically and watched our tree in the backyard struggle to not go down. Kim finally went and laid down on the couch, and I stood next to the sliding door. A few minutes later one of those notorious feeder bands came through. I stood at the door watching the wind whip through my neighborhood worse than I had ever seen before. I could hear the wind.
I watched as my sliding door seemingly began to breathe, as it absorbed the hit from the wind and began to bend with it. This was not a fun time. I heard my front door begin to shake on its hinges, and thought about how the guys at Home Depot had sold us a new door a few months before but had yet to put it on for us. Why? Because, although it met "code"....meaning city or county code, but not "hurricane code", they couldn't install it for us. So there we were, with last year's doors, the ones that we knew hadn't done a good job for us last year in a lesser storm, hoping that they would hold together one last time until we could get the new doors, the ones that did meet "code", put in.
About an hour later, it was all over. The storm I mean. The damn thing was moving at about 25 miles per hour, and literally blew right through Broward County. I told my wife how lucky we were that we weren't like the Yucatan, where the storm sat for almost 36 hours before it finally decided to keep on moving.
The only word that captures what happened is devestating. I mean, just hammered.
The trees are all gone. It looks like the good lord himself came down with a scythe or a machete and just chopped off the tops of the trees. So the rest of the day was spent doing an extraordinary thing. Everyone in the neighborhood came together to help. I had a chainsaw, my neighbor Sal had a generator with plenty of gas, and we helped get fallen trees out of people's driveways. A couple of doors down from us was an older lady who was in the house with her special needs daughter. Her husband was still in the hospital recovering from hip surgery. I had been told that her husband had been part of the Big Red One, which was one of the first divisions to land in Normandy & Omaha Beach during D-Day, WWII. After we cut down her tree, she thanked us. I told her that compared to the sacrifices her husband had made more than 50 years before, cutting down a tree didn't seem like too much to do. Luck was with us that evening, as the cold front finally arrived and sent the temperatures down into the low 60's and made the weather very comfortable for sleeping. The following morning we got up and decided that we would go in search of some gasoline. It was like a scene from the Road Warrior.
"The juice....the PRECIOUS juice....was hidden in the back of the bus......"
Seriously, it was that bad. We decided that even without power or electricity, the turnpike would have gasoline at the service plaza. It was a good idea, which unfortunately about 5,000 other people had at the same time we did....judging by the line that we ran into on the turnpike. We finally got off at Lake Worth, hoping that maybe gas station around there might be selling fuel. Uh....no. We did get to see a few stores that had been looted the night before, in keeping with a fine american tradition. We went back home (after wasting gas in, ya know, searching for gas) and awaited word on what had happened at my work. I was hearing reports on the radio that there had been a lotof damage to the courthouse building. Needless to say, by this point, cell phones were pretty useless. The ones who didn't have their towers destroyed by the storm were overloaded and would often result in either a busy signal or a "system busy" notice. Finally I was able to get through to my boss, who informed me that meetings were going on while we spoke that would determine when the courthouse would re-open. A couple of hours later, she called me to tell me that the building was closed until at least Monday (the 31st). I told Kim to throw the bags in the car, load up the dogs....cuz we were heading north! We finally hit the road at about 6pm, ready for our drive to Orlando, which usually takes about 3 1/2 hours. Traffic was pretty heavy on the turnpike, and Kim was pretty worried about the gas situation in her car (we took two cars), since she only had about 1/2 a tank.
We got to the first service plaza in Palm Beach, and the line was still almost 2 miles long, JUST TO GET GASOLINE. And they were limiting everyone to only $20 worth at that! So I told Kim to keep pushing north, that eventually we'd find a place that we could get gasoline without waiting 2 hours in a line. We got to the Port St Lucie service plaza, and found that the line there was only about a mile long. Uh, no thanks. I told Kim to get off at Ft Pierce, because I knew there were regular gas stations on the road that the exit was on. Well, there were and there are, but their lines were about a mile long. I told Kim to jump on I-95, figuring that we would have an easier time finding gas on 95 as opposed to the turnpike, plus we wouldn't face the restrictions that the turnpike had. The Vero Beach exit had a line at least a mile long. We kept going. We got off at Sebastian. All the gas stations were dark.
Sold out so they closed early. I told Kim that we would probably have to go through to Melbourne. Kim admitted that she was getting worried about the possibility of running out of gas. She had a digital readout in her car that tells her how many miles she has left before her tank is empty, and she was below 30 miles.
She finally got off at the exit before Melbourne, in a town called Palm Bay. We are talking about a town approximately 150 miles away! That's the first place we were able to get gasoline without as much as a one hour wait! Sowe find a gas station that is selling gas, and even here, so far away, there are maybe 2 or 3 cars in line ahead of me. I'm doing some people watching while I wait, and its pretty fascinating stuff. The guy in front of me has at least 10 cannisters that would hold 5 gallons of gasoline and he's filling them up and putting them in the back of his van.
"Dude," I told him, "I sure hope you don't get rearended when you leave. If you do, your going to turn into the Human Torch."
But I don't think he was as out of his mind as the guy who pulled up next to me.
He was driving a Jiffy van, and when he opened the backdoor, I noticed that he had 3 huge Rubbermaid garbage cans, with no lids, and he began to fill them up with gasoline. He was planning on filling these garbage cans, without lids, up with gasoline and drive 150 miles back to Ft Lauderdale. I silently hoped he wasn't planning on smoking on the return trip.
We got back on the road, encountering traffic congestion all the way past Melbourne. We finally arrived at my parents house around 11pm. A five hour trip that usually takes 3 1/2. A hot shower and air conditioning sure isn't appreciated when you have them every day. Trust me.
My friend Greg called me the next day. He had been up in New York City with his son on a vacation, and got stuck without a way to come home. His wife Mary had to ride the storm out in their Ft Lauderdale home by herself. Greg finally went and rented a car and began the long drive from NYC home to Lauderdale. When I talked to him he was just outside of Fayetteville, N.C. He told me that while he was in Virginia.....now remember this....VIRGINIA....he stopped off at a Lowe's in order to buy a couple of 5 gallon cannisters to fill up with gasoline later in the trip.
No 5 gallon cannisters. They were sold out, people heading to Florida. Virginia!!
Later on last evening we got a call from our neighbor with the good news that power had been restored to our neighborhood. We were thrilled that our trip would have to be cut short and we could return home. But we weren't kidding ourselves that we would be returning to anything resembling normalcy. The early word is that the damage to the courthouse was so severe that we may not return until November 7th.
Our neighborhood is a mess. We're the lucky ones, as many, many people in Broward are still without power. Gasoline, ice and patience are in short supply.
It would never happen to us. It'll turn at the last minute and go somewhere else.
We kept thinking that up until the last minute.
Later,
Jeff
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