Hurricane Helene
I’ve lived in South Florida since the 1970’s. Hurricane David was my first, in 1979. Me and my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, lived in Rio, a tiny hamlet about an hour north of West Palm Beach. We rented a three-room apartment that was carved out of an old house, probably very illegal (the bedroom didn’t have a window and was just big enough for a double bed – literally, it fit wall to wall.) We were in the middle of moving south to West Palm Beach. The hurricane warnings came, and the storm was expected to make landfall in WPB, so we decided to stay put. We put plywood on the windows in the living room – there was no such thing as hurricane shutters back then. David ended up as a Category 2 storm, so not too horrific. My husband had the foresight to move our cars around the side of the house; it was fortuitous because the huge tree in the front yard was destroyed by the storm and both of our cars would have been smashed. We were fine, but the surrounding area was not. We were minutes away from Hutchinson Island, and when we were able to get over there, the devastation was surreal.
We went through many more hurricanes after that one. Eventually, we purchased hurricane shutters but they are the type that need to be manually installed and it takes a full day or more to do so. We have six sliding glass doors and several windows, including clerestory windows, long narrow windows above the sliding glass doors. My house is normally filled with light, and it is eerie once those shutters go up. We didn’t have enough shutters to cover all the clerestory windows, and by the time Hurricane Andrew, a category 5 storm, hit in 1992, we were very lucky it hit south of us in Miami. My daughter was just a few weeks old, and while we didn’t get hit by the storm, a few days later we got hit with the aftermath, tropical storm winds strong enough to knock out our electricity. We had no power for several days. Meanwhile, one of my neighbors had a big van and went around the neighborhood collecting whatever we could give. I sent all my diapers, wipes, and formula to Miami. I was lucky that I could still go to the store and buy more.
That was nothing compared to Hurricane Wilma in 2005. It hit in mid-October, and again we were without power for about a week. By that time we had a lot more supplies and camping equipment. We had a giant cooler, and a grill and a two burner camping stove. We lost the roof of our house – actually, my entire neighborhood was roofless. The homes were about eighteen years old, and the building codes had changed by then, because of Andrew. But we didn’t get those improvements until we lost our roof. We didn’t have hurricane shutters on two of the clerestory windows, so we had a front row seat to debris flying over the house, things like big swaths of fencing, toys, bicycles, and pool furniture. It was quite something to see most of a shed flying over the house. The shingles coming off the roof damaged our cars, which were in the driveway. Our garage was full of stuff, and we moved all the patio furniture in there as well. And we put our crazy cat, Edgar, in there, too. He bit my daughter in the process of moving him. She ended up in the hospital the next day on intravenous antibiotics. Cat bites are no joke.
We’ve had many storms since then, but no direct hits from another hurricane. In fact, in the past few years, all the hurricanes seem to be either hitting the west coast of Florida, coming up through the Gulf of Mexico, or heading north of us up the eastern seaboard. And that’s what Helene did, with more devastation that could be imagined. A hurricane hitting the mountains?? That’s just impossible. Until it wasn’t.
More than 120 people have died already, and over 500 more are still missing across six states. There are too many horror stories, too much destruction, too much devastation.
If you want to help, here are legitimate places to offer your money or time:
The Washington Post (Asheville, NC)
WCK’s Relief Team is on the ground and in the skies over Florida, identifying communities most in need of support after Hurricane Helene. Water, sand, and debris blanket our search areas, but we will continue to do what it takes to provide nourishing meals. #ChefsForFlorida pic.twitter.com/jLHomeBmYT
— World Central Kitchen (@WCKitchen) September 30, 2024
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As always, thanks for reading, and stay safe.
Thanks to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal for allowing me to “gift” my readers with free access to these articles, a lovely perk for subscribers.
Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™ 