Pre-Hurricane Michael- October 2018

My mother has lived in the little neighborhood of Xanadu, near Calloway, just east of Panama City, Florida for about 40 years and she loves it. Many of the residents are retired military, since it is near Tyndall Air Force Base, and they are friendly and look out for each other. Her husband passed away almost a year ago so she has been transitioning to being even more independent and trying to enjoy the process these past few months.

At 88, my mother leads a full and creative life. This summer she got back into her oil painting by giving twice weekly lessons to the neighbor girl, Zoe, who is just 9 years old. The two of them had so much fun that once school started back they continued their painting time on Sundays. On Wednesdays she meets with other seniors at the local community center and takes part in Tai Chi, dance exercises, lunch and visiting. Friday brings the Encore continuing education classes at the Community College, a program she was instrumental in planning for many years, which now supplies her with intellectual stimulation and camaraderie. At home, the covered and heated lap pool and her garden complete her peaceful and calm life.

She still drives with confidence so is able to go wherever she needs and shops at the commissary at Tyndall Air Force base regularly, getting a Philly Cheese Steak once a week. She eats out at Appleby’s and Olive Garden and local seafood places, making a second meal of the leftovers she brings home. She carries a cane sometimes, but doesn’t always need it. She loves to go on cruises and went to Alaska this summer, with two trips planned this winter, one in the Caribbean and one that will travel through the Panama Canal and then up to California.

Mom and Stan, her late husband, have weathered many storms and hurricanes while living in the Florida panhandle. Their small brick rancher has roll down hurricane shutters, which they had installed many years ago, after deciding that evacuation was too stressful for them. The Base sits on a barrier island that protects their area from storm surges, so although you can see East Bay at the end of their street, flooding has never been a problem.

Then Came Michael

When hurricane Michael first formed in October, glancing by Cuba on its way North into the Gulf, it was not expected to strengthen into a category 4 storm. The weather service was calling for maybe a Cat 3, which people have weathered before. Mom and some of her hardier neighbors planned on staying, hunkering down with the usual emergency supplies of food, water, flashlights and emergency radios. When the storm suddenly grew stronger and aimed right at them there was only a small window of time to rethink that decision. The possibility of being trapped in a traffic jam during a hurricane was much scarier to her than sheltering in her house. She had done it many times, although never totally alone.

Meanwhile, up here in West Virginia, I had not been following the weather down in the Gulf. I was not even aware a hurricane was headed mom’s way until she called on Tuesday, October 10 to tell me she was staying home for it. I looked at the weather predictions on my phone but Mom told me not to listen to the Weather channel, saying,

“The Weather channel always blows things out of proportion in an attempt to scare people into evacuating. Then it turns out to be just a normal storm we can all handle just fine. I listen to the local stations instead.”

Later that day, I looked up the NOAA reports and radar maps and what I saw was alarming. Hurricane Michael had started gaining strength and was aiming for a direct hit on my mother. Back on the phone, she kept telling me not to worry. She had weathered storms before. I tried not to worry. She said her neighbor, Jeff, was staying too, so she would not be alone. I did not realize at the time that he only stayed because she refused to leave.

Wednesday morning came and the storm was steadily gaining strength. It was now a category 4 and about to make landfall. Mom and I were texting back and forth every few minutes as she sheltered alone in her hallway with her emergency supplies and a mattress for cover. The wind was howling and she could hear trees hitting the house. She lost electricity, then the land line went dead. We could no longer use voice on our cell phones, but texting still worked, we were still connected.

Her emergency radio warned of tornadoes and flying debris and told everyone to take cover, NOW. The shutters were shaking, the roof was creaking and the emergency radio had gone off the air. She heard the aluminum pool roof tear apart and blow away and the wind sounded like a jet engine at full throttle. She texted,

“I’m terrified! I have never heard anything like this noise before. I am so scared.

We are in the eye wall.

Lp….”

I did not hear from her for 58 minutes and I was frantic. I was getting no answers to my texts and I was afraid she was gone. I was in a panic. Lp? Does that mean help?! I could not even pretend to be useful from this far away.

I paced, I worried, and finally, after what seemed like forever, I got another text. From her neighbor. She was OK. He was OK. They were in the eye of the storm, that small circle of calm just before the wind shifts and the other side of the storm gets you. He was able to get outside and across the street to my moms and talk to her through the downed trees blocking her door. She was Ok. He had to get back inside before the second eye wall hit. Then we lost all cell connection. I was worried sick and unable to function. I kept trying to text both her and her neighbor, but got nothing back.

All this time my husband kept sending me graphics of the extremely low pressure readings and radar pictures of the eye sitting directly over my mother’s house. This was not helping my state of mind. The radio here was saying that the weather stations blew apart at 100 MPH and that the winds were likely over 155 MPH, maybe a category 5. The second eye wall hit, even worse than the first, and I kept texting, Are you Ok?

After a couple more hours, Mom managed to get a brief cell signal and texted that she was Ok. Her neighbor Jeff, had chain sawed enough limbs off the house to get her out and the other neighbors were checking in with each other as they wandered around in shock. All the trees were down, shingles and metal roofing panels had peeled off and blown away, some roofs were just rafters, others had whole sections of house missing. Windows had blown in and broken, power poles were leaning or had snapped clear off and electric lines hung twisted up everywhere. Fences lay strewn about, the roads were blocked, but everyone seemed to be OK. They had survived, even if some of their homes had not.

Grateful to be alive, they starting pulling the debris away from their homes, sweeping nails and broken glass out of the way, assessing the damage. It was obvious there would be no power for a long time. No well water, no air conditioning, no power tools, no refrigeration. Everything in the freezers would be lost after a few days. Those who had them, dug out their gasoline powered generators and were able to plug in a few things. They had all prepared as usual for a few days without power, with water jugs, flashlights, batteries, radios, and camp stoves. They were not prepared for weeks without power.

My mother was camping out during the day with her neighbor, Jeff, who’s Airstream camper had survived. He had a generator and a fan, she brought her coffee pot. They ate steaks and the best goods from her freezer as they melted. The daytime temperature was up in the 90’s, and it was not raining. At night she took her flashlight and slept in her dark hot, house.

Mom assured me I did not need to come down, but I talked to the neighbor, who sent me horrific pictures of the devastation in the neighborhood. Her house was all electric and had no power, no water, no air conditioning. It was 95 degrees during the day and not cooling off much at night. There were holes in the roof. She could not stay there. She said she could drive the 6 hours to my sister’s house, taking all her important papers and things, on Sunday, after the insurance adjuster came out. My sister was away and would not be back until the following week.

Then her neighbor called and told me he had taken her for a drive after a path was cleared on the road. He and Mom were so upset by the ruined homes that they had to pull off and just sat in the truck together, crying. It was unbelievable, the devastation.

There was no way she could pack up and make that drive alone. I booked the last seat on a flight for Sunday morning into Orlando, since the Beaches Airport was only open for emergency equipment and first responders.  I would drive from Orlando with my niece and bring Mom back to my sister’s house in her car.

The Drive from Orlando to Panama City

The 2:20 minute flight on Southwest was packed with boisterous people wearing Mickey Mouse ears. My niece, who luckily had a week break from college, met me at the airport in Orlando for our 6 hour road trip over to Panama City. First we had to stop at Lowes and fill the car with bottled water, gas cans, roof tarps and nails, and a tabletop icemaker. When we finally reached I-75N it was crowded with emergency vehicles, police convoys with blue flashing lights, along with power line and tree service trucks. Trailers full of transformers and Rack’em Stack’em type housing quarters for construction workers all vied for position. We got off the busy 4 lane twice to go around the backed up traffic and eventually exited onto I-10 West. We stopped shy of Tallahassee to fill up on gas and ice for the cooler. There would be none available after that.

We turned south onto Route 20 and then Rt 71 and drove down through the little town of Wewahitchka, onto Route 22 West, where we were suddenly surrounded flattened pine trees, stripped of needles and all pointing north. Dodging freshly cut tree tops and all the downed electric poles made it a slow go. Transformers hanging from toppled poles leaned over the road and the sun was quickly going down. We were not going to reach Mom’s before the newly implemented 7:00 p.m. curfew. We started worrying about what we would do if we were turned away at a checkpoint. There was nowhere else for us to go.

The downed trees abruptly changed direction as we drove the long straight road. Convoys of police with flashing blue lights heading the other way paid us no attention. It was creepy driving under power poles held up only by sagging wires, then driving over even more wires snaked across the road. It was full dark now and we could only assume all these lines were dead. The closer we got, the worse it looked. Calloway looked like a war zone. It was horrifying even in the dark, with silhouettes of broken buildings and trees tossed about like trash. It was hard to believe anyone had survived this.

We inched our way up to mom’s house and a small beacon of  light emerged from the garage, Mom instantly crying with relief at our late arrival.  Jeff came from across the street and after hugs and many thanks for his help, we all toted the ice and gas cans over to his place, where he was cooking us dinner.

Jeff’s Airstream travel trailer, wedged up against his pickup truck, had survived with only a few dents and he was well set up for camping, with a charcoal grill, mini fridge, and a few lights. We ate the last steaks from Moms melted freezer and they enjoyed having ice cubes in their drinks. It was still hot, even with the sun down, and we were glad he had requested we bring the little plug in icemaker because it was obvious the bagged ice in the cooler would not last long.

That night we slept in Moms dark, airless house with sweat rolling down our sides. We remembered the old days when we had no air conditioning and we would sleep in the cool basement or out on the porch in the summer.

Daylight

I woke at first light, grabbed my camera and stepped outside. The backyard was a mess. Trees down everywhere, the pool building torn to shreds and thrown about, all kinds of debris in the pool, the new porch screen ripped off, and the door gone, fences down, roof shingles everywhere.

I went back through the garage to the front and looked up and down the street. Power poles snapped and leaning, roofs totally gone, broken windows, piles of trees and debris, wires laying across the road. I walked down to the end of the street and saw people making coffee on their camp stoves, waiting for the sun to come up and illuminate the wreckage. People were just starting to come back home from where they had evacuated to and survey their damage. The roads had not been opened long. Some people had nothing left to come back to. My Mom was really lucky. Her house and her four closest neighbors had faired better than most. Three of them had gotten new roofs put on in the past few years and they held up better than Mom’s, which was almost due for replacement anyway. She had some holes where trees went through, one corner of the garage roof was missing, and many of the shingles were ripped off, but not much water had come in. The living room ceiling and rug had gotten wet but were dried out already. Down the block though, there were many roofs, both metal and shingle, that were demolished, with major water damage throughout. Entire walls and sections of homes were torn off, leaving everything inside exposed to the weather. Many houses were not livable at all.

I hated to ask anything else of our friend and camping host, but I needed to get up on the roof and get the tarps nailed down before any more rainy weather came. He is the most thoughtful and amazing neighbor, regularly checking on mom, sharing a cup of morning coffee, staying home for her during this hurricane. He is the youngest man in the neighborhood, a Veteran and a retired firefighter, fighting his own battle with cancer these past two years. He offered himself and his chainsaw and I accepted his help. I lopped off the smaller branches and hauled the tree debris out to the road while he cut the big parts. We managed to clear the roof of the magnolia tree before the heat became too much for us and then we sat in the garage drinking ice water. Clouds were starting to form to the south but we were hoping they were not coming this way yet. Tarps would have to wait until the next day.

The 5 plastic woven tarps I had brought were of assorted sizes, blue on one side and dark green on the other. The biggest was 40 x 60 and I was disappointed by how thin they were. Still, it took two of us to spread them out evenly and tack them down with the roofing nails. We did the two ends first, then the porch ell, and finally the center, pulling the tarps tight and having to remove a couple of vents that stuck up too much. The roof was getting hot fast and Jeff’s son was recruited as well. Frequent water breaks were required, which we promptly sweated right back out, but we got it done. For a small house, it sure has a big roof.

Two Month s Later

Now, in online aerial photos, you can still see miles of Blue tarped roofs and huge piles of debris lined up along the roads. Amazingly, electric service has been restored to the houses that survived with an intact service entrance connection. Considering all the giant erector-set-type of high-power lines that I saw toppled, this is amazing. Many, many power crews have worked long days to make this happen. Running water, refrigeration and air conditioning are appreciated more than ever now. The tarps have held up so far and the roofers say it will be a couple more weeks. They keep saying that.

A buyer has been found for the house. Mom does not want to go back. Everything she was used to is gone. A Korean War veteran and his Iraq veteran son, who lost their home to Michael, will move in soon.  The Realtor has been really helpful in finding repair people to clean up the mess and fix the house up.

I went back down with my sister and we sorted through everything in the house, giving away everything we could to people in need. Her paintings have been divvied out to friends and neighbors and we each took our share as well. Mom left with two carloads of belongings from my first trip and she wants nothing else. She is staying with my sister outside Orlando, while looking for a CCRC (continuing care retirement community) near her. My resilient mother calls this next step, her 8^th life, and is optimistic that there will be new adventures and people to meet. She is a survivor.

The house got the new roof, garage door, sheet rock repairs, the pool cleaned up and fenced, and was turned over to the new owner last week. It all went very fast. It has been only two months.

Her neighbor, Jeff, has also sold his house and is moving closer to family up in Tennessee. We wish him the best and hope to stay in touch.

_The next post will be about our trip to Iceland in September, I promise. Things have gotten sort of in the way.

-Wendy lee, writing at Edgewise Woods, Gardens and Critters