The day of the 23rd was one of excitement, as a weather enthusiast, I had been tracking
the storm since its genesis in the Carribean. The system was now
picking up speed and heading directly towards South Florida. News agencies and
such reported it would only be a minimal hurricane event across South
Florida, about a cat 1. Of course, this was proven wrong quickly. Nevertheless, I
put up the shutters, as all native Floridians did. Some newcomers didnt, which
proved to be a large error.
Starting at about 5 PM, an eery silence settled across the landscape. Rarely a bird
would chirp, not a leave rustled. This was of course the calm before the storm.
In regards to the animals, they either hunkered down or flew north about
a day before. This calm, and the scorching heat above 90 degrees that
was brought with it, would last through the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Around 10 PM, the wind started to pick up. First a rustle, then a stiff breeze. As I
walked the dogs one final time before the storm at around 10:30 PM, the first 20
mph gusts were being recorded across my area. At this point I was watching
the pressure drop systematically from the Keys towards to the Palm Beaches. I
started to become very tired and fell asleep. At this point Wilma was rapidly
strengthening, as it would until landfall, unexpectedly at that.
At about 6am in the morning an extremely loud boom woke me. It was our
transformer exploding as perhaps a branch from my Australian pines fell on it.
This coincided with the first strong spiral bands to pass through my area. As
you may have guessed, power, telephone, and cable were lost at that point. All
I had was a radio, and it would remain that way for a very long time by
modern standards.
I was able to sneak a peak just under my shutters, and saw aqua blue flashes every
few minutes, rapidly popping and then diffusing through the stormy skies.
This was a side affect of the entire South Florida power grid being
simultaneously destroyed. As for my property, once in awhile through the
freight train like sound of the storm, I was able to discern trees splintering, and
perhaps roofs ripping. My house shook violently for many hours. The
windows went in and out as if we were in a giants lung.
Sometime after noon, the wind dropped for a few minutes. This was perhaps the
edge of the eye. My barometer at that point dropped to around 950 mb.
Damage reports started to stream across the radio as some went out in the eye
to look. A very large eye it was. The backside came shortly for me though,
plunging my house back into violent shaking. Large debris could be seen flying
past our skylights. The back side was worse and longer than the front side for me.
Eventually, the storm cleared enough for us to go outside. We looked out the back
briefly, as winds were still high. A scene of destruction met me at that point.
Almost every tree had been destroyed, our entire property was a mess. At
around 2 PM, me and my family ventured outside. Shockingly, it was very cold
outside. 60 mph gusts and a temp of 60 degrees I reckon. Quite a windchill factor.
Now begins the recovery, as Wilma departs to the Bahamas and beyond. News
reports continued to come in on destruction across the state. Skyscrapers with
all the windows blown out, perhaps a thousand houses with ripped off roofs,
defoliation to a massive level (since it was fall, one of my jokes was we
sure as hell beat up north this year in regards to leaf fall). The news wasnt of
that great of concern to me and my family though. Our house was surrounded
on all sides by a 20 foot wall of downed Australian pines, power lines
intermingled through some of it. The cops confirmed that the power lines were
dead, thankfully.
Work began, we were still in shock of course. We repaired damages to the structure
very quickly, as well as removed some shutters for light. The next
day, we still had to face our biggest issue, how to gain access to the outside
world. We were lucky enough to have a generator, brought 2 months prior, but,
the gas would only hold for 2 days or so. I did some reconnaissance on the
situation, as well as fetched the newspaper. What normally would have been a 2
minute walk, turned into a 1 hour escapade. I never thought I would go
mountain climbing down here but, thats the closest thing I could compare to it. I
climbed over 20 foot mounds of downed forest and eventually got to the newspaper.
Me and my dad then broke out the chainsaws and began to carve a path through the
driveway. Basically, we had to go through a 50 foot thick wall of trees that was
20 feet high. After an entire day and many chains lost, we were still trapped.
Eventually we got to the other side, 2 days of total time. Problem was, the road
was blocked in the same way for over 200 feet. We had to cut through. All of
the neighbors then began to chainsaw through, and we made very slow progress.
Ice and water was now starting to get a bit short. This is when the FEMA check point
proved to be good. Me and my friends got on our ATVs and were able to get
quite alot of ice and water. Sadly, people were fighting over supplies there.
People act like animals in situations like that for some reason.
As for the road, one of the neighbors was able to contact the owner of a bulldozer. He
came in and helped up clear the trees. So in 3 days time, we were able to
drive a car out. At this point, we never got short on supplies again. The gas lines
were horrendous though.
So life continued, as well as the cleanup/ repair. We hired a crew to clean up our
property, which was utterly destroyed, for a large amount of money. They
turned out to be crooks and charged more in the end. As for school, it was
closed for 3 weeks. Roughly the amount of time I had no power. Telephone and
cable was out for 2-3 months time. When you dont have these things, you
realize how unnecessary they really are.
When school returned, a large portion of it was destroyed, in regards to portables. It
ends up that the whole roof of the school was ripped off from the hurricane. The
hurricane basically made that part of our year very easy due to the fact
they had to reteach everything.
Landscape repairs continued until next spring, which included a new lawn, new trees,
and a lake. Part of our property was so destroyed the only real option
was just to dig it more and make it a lake.
All in all though, everyone in my family was fine, which is all that really matters.
|
