It’s time to write about the hurricane. It was named Ian. pronounced “E-an.”
Ian was blowing up our side of the Gulf of Mexico. Forecasters said it was headed toward Tampa. Then it wasn’t. My husband, John, and I wanted to evacuate, but the specter of traffic jams and our inability to find a place discouraged us. We are not the kind of people who can just throw our pets in a car and head for the hills without a plan. There are no hills in this part of Florida. And we did not have a plan.
After paying him a large sum, a nice man put up our storm shutters, and we sat in the dark. (For those of you who do not know, storm shutters are corrugated aluminum shields that are screwed on over windows and doors.)
The next day, Wednesday, Ian came barreling toward us for real. We had flashlights, food and water. Our phones maintained the texting feature. Our children in Vermont and California were having a fit and tried to find a place we could go. Our daughter found a place in Kissimmee but it was too late and too far.
Bike helmets are good protection, so we donned some and went to the only windowless closet in the house, just big enough for two and a dog. I jettisoned stuff on the floor, and we made ourselves quasi-comfy. Power was out. The cat was hiding elsewhere.
Ian came on full force around 11 am on September 28. We had a battery radio in the closet for a number of hours. It was comforting to know other people were around, broadcasting. Eventually, the radio kicked off. The station flooded, wiping out its power.
Without the radio, the wind sounds in our little closet were deafening. Like a freight train. Like a tornado, which we had experienced in Kansas. But this wind never let up, it just kept howling. And howling. The eye was supposed to come through at some point, but we never felt or heard it. The house shook.
After seven hours, I said to myself, “If this doesn’t stop soon, I WILL go crazy.” At that point, I was laying on the closet floor with the dog, helmet off, ears covered with my arms to block the noise.
John, who was patrolling the house, reported that someone had just texted that there was water in the neighborhood —in the street and up to the porch steps. Indeed, when we opened the interior door to the garage, the kitty litter was floating and bumping into other garage things, which were also floating. Both cars were still parked where we left them. In don’t-let-the-water-come-inside-the-house mode, we used duct tape to seal off the cat door (which led to the garage) and began rolling up towels, which we thought might help. How silly.
The water rose to the second of three steps. The official name of such water is surge. In previous hurricanes we’d heard about storm surge, but it failed to materialize, making fools of us all. This time, salt water came roaring down the road from the Gulf of Mexico, about two and a half miles south of our house. Later, we discovered dead fish in our yard. Water-born and debris came close, but it didn’t come into the house.
We lost a car, stuff in the garage, huge tree limbs and foliage, plus many of my favorite plants and smaller trees in the yard. The pool cage took a hit and the dock was upended and unmoored. Our mailbox was down the street in someone else’s yard.
We were lucky, many others around us—specifically anyone with a low-lying house or mobile home lost everything.
When it was finally over, neighbors helped us remove our shutters. Daylight felt tenuous for some reason. But, the tin roof held. No one was injured. Our 21-year-old cat was mightily upset, but our vet, who lost her entire office, came to the house to ease his pain and put him to rest.
We made mistakes, but it could have been much, much worse. Life is a roll of the dice. But this year we are making a plan. And we are leaving if there is anything in the Gulf coming our way.
Floridawoman 