The Storm and I
Part 1: The Gauntlet
The weathermen had been talking about it for a day or two. It was a tropical storm and it was headed to Ft. Lauderdale. A whole county away from us. My brother and I had spent the last 3 days painting a friend’s condo. It was an old South Florida style building. A historic landmark that Al Capone allegedly lived in for a time. It was a beautiful 1 bedroom that was a steal for $200k.
The storm was on its way early Thursday afternoon. I was harboring illusions of finishing the project that day. The wind was picking up and it had been raining pretty much all day. By about 5:00 the power was going off sporadically in the unit and the DJ on the radio announced that the storm had been upgraded to a hurricane. I kept thinking about the amount of gas left in my car and how it was not enough to get me home. I could have gone to get gas at any time but the lines were long and I knew it would take too much out of the workday.
You see there is an all-encompassing panic that comes over Miami when a big storm threatens. Everyone rushes to do 4 things:
1. Go to the ATM and get a lot of cash.
2. Go to the grocery store and buy all the water and ice that you can. And some canned goods that you will never eat.
3. Go to the gas station to fill up.
4. Go to the local hardware store and get batteries, tape, and plywood. (No matter how many storms come everyone needs plywood every time.)
So getting gas was an ordeal that I did not want to face.
By 6:30 it was starting to get rough. The power outages were getting longer and more frequent. We decided to wrap things up, unfinished as they were. We headed out to find a gas station. We passed by 2 with no power and eventually found one with cars at all pumps. But no gas was pumping. They were out. Then another with lights and patrons. Damn! They were out too. Now I was worried. With an ever-dwindling reserve of gas we had no choice but to hole up in my other brother’s place. He lives a few blocks from the bay in North Miami. Of course he had no power. The storm wasn’t even bad yet. Just a little windy and rainy. Actually it was getting much lighter. I wasn’t thinking much of this storm. It seemed to be everything the weathermen said it would be. We stared at the walls for a while and decided to take his car to find a gas station. It was dead calm outside but still cloudy. Daniel said it was the eye of the storm. It wasn’t a well-formed hurricane at the time or the eye would have been clear and sunny. I figured if this was the eye then we had seen the worse. I was wrong.
Now I was gassed up and heading home. We were out of the eye now and the rain and wind were worse than ever. As I drove down I-95 South a shitstorm of Mother Nature pelted my car. It was dark now. After 8:00. What streetlights remained working were randomly exploding in a flash of green light and sparks. In the distance massive flashes of green light coming from exploding transformers could be seen. It was like watching a war through night vision goggles. I haven’t seen anything like it since hurricane Andrew 13 years ago. We were feeling the full force of a category 1 hurricane.
While the gusts were pushing cars around, the sustained winds were not enough to keep the many droves of foolish drivers off the highway. Of which I was one. We rolled along at about 40 MPH all determined to get where we were going and resolute that our cause justified our being in such a hazardous situation. The highways were the easy part. You didn’t have to dodge trees on the highways. I don’t live far off the highway but Brian does and I had to get him home. We were both praying for power at our homes. I slowly snaked my way down the street avoiding fallen trees as best I could. The entrance to the community Brian lives in was blocked by a tree. Luckily the gates were open out back and I got him home. He had power. That lucky bastard. I had been lucky so far. ‘Lets see if it holds out’, I thought. The road to my 1st floor apartment was flooded. I turned in to my complex, which was more flooded. At one point my headlights went underwater but I made it to my parking space with my car still alive. I tried to run as fast as I could in a foot of water to my building. The rain was shooting right at my face. Shivering in a dark hallway I fumbled for my keys and eventually made it in my apartment. My luck had run out. No power. I lit some candles and an old oil lamp. I got out of my dripping clothes and put on a bathing suit. It was almost as if I knew this wasn’t the last time I was going to get wet tonight.
Part 2: The Long Night
I was in dry clothes and had a source of light. I felt relatively safe and decided to start making calls. My cell phone had such a faint signal I couldn’t sustain a call for more than a few seconds. I had to stand by the glass doors just to be able to make call. My 2-bedroom apartment has 3 sets of glass doors. None of them had shutters. Outside all hell was breaking loose and it was causing the 6-foot high walls of glass to bow in and out to a degree that I was not comfortable with. There was bottle of wine in the fridge with about one glass left in it. I poured a glass and sat down to watch the show from a safe distance. After awhile the storm seemed to be past it’s worst. Or maybe the wine made it seem that way. I decided to step outside and spend some time with Katrina. There was no debris flying around and all the trees were down already so it seemed relatively safe.
The wind brushed across me like waves. A hard gust to my right. Then a light one to my left. Another hard gust to the right and then it would swirl around chaotically until it jumped up and hit me in the face with a violent mist. Were it not for the weather reports I would not have known where this storm was going or where it had come from. The canal out back was flooded over. Everything was underwater. The surface was 1 inch from seeping through the glass doors and rising. This was not good.
I went back inside and sat at the dining room table to start writing this. I was writing on junk mail envelopes because I had no paper. Cozy in my apartment and reminiscent of the day, I playfully tapped my flip-flops on the tile floor. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, splash, splash, splash. Wait a minute! Why are my feet splashing in a puddle? Oh shit! My apartment’s flooding! Okay, okay, first things first. Get the oil lamp and survey the damage. I placed it on the floor in the middle of a pool of water that was flowing in through the front door. The pool had engulfed the table and was getting bigger. Priorities in order: Get these old wooden chairs and table out of the water. I have a china cabinet that wasn’t going anywhere without about 3 more guys so I had to leave it to its fate. Next was to get every towel in the house stuffed against that door. Then I got a bucket and started using the hand towels to dredge the water into it. I dumped it 5 gallons at a time into the sink that, thankfully, was not backing up. There was a small rivulet of water sneaking toward the carpet in the master bedroom. I was out of towels. Ah, I didn’t use my roommate’s towels yet. I went to his bathroom to get one. As I stepped on the carpet in front of the bathroom door my bare foot squished into what felt like a saturated sponge. ‘Dammit! I can’t do this by myself’, I thought. Water was seeping under the wall into the bathroom. I wrote that room off and got back to saving the living room. About 15 gallons of dredging later it seemed I was making headway. The puddle had subsided. I took a break to rest. Looking out the back doors it seemed that the flooding was going down. Thank God!
I tried to call my roommate for help several times but his phone was off. It was around 11:30 and I couldn’t imagine where he could have been but home. 10 minutes must have gone by and that damn puddle was there again. Back to work. I decided to text every one in Florida and let them know that my apartment was flooding. I don’t know what they could have done about it. I guess I was looking for advice since my method of water removal could theoretically have me wringing towels through the night. My dad called and told me that he had used sand bags before. Hmmmm, too late for that. My cousin’s husband called and asked if I needed help. That man was going to drive in the hurricane to help me when he has a house of his to protect? Props to Romeo!
My roommate finally came home. Sam had been working at the Biltmore Hotel prepping them for the hurricane the whole day (and night). The rain had finally stopped. It was just windy now. I walked out the back door and circled around the building to see what kind of pond was lying in front of my apartment. I had no flashlight because mine broke a few days before and Sam’s didn’t have batteries. A neighbor was smoking a cigarette in the hallway and shined a light down it for me. It seemed that a pool of water had blown in and was trapped by the mere coincidence that my apartment is the low point of the entire building. Isn’t that a fun fact? Yeah, I thought so too. I decided to go back inside and resign myself to draining the entire hallway through my towels. I told Sam the good news. I said we might have to take shifts of sleeping and dumping water. He passed out of the couch. I could have killed for a giant broom or squeegee.
I was beyond tired now. It was about 2:00 in the morning. The water wasn’t coming in as fast anymore. The puddle was much smaller and seemed to be stable. Screw it; I’m going to bed.
Part 3: The Aftermath
I woke up thankful that I’m insulated from the heat on 3 sides of my apartment. My phone still had a charge so I knew it was 10:30 in the morning. I got dressed and prepared for the worst. The puddle was gone. Just a sloppy mess of stinky wet towels now. Outside it was obvious what plants were non-native to the area. Big bushy trees with shallow roots were lying on the grass. The palm trees knew how to hold up. All of their fronds were aiming North like a weathervane. Palm trees have a way of just going with the flow. They’ll even grow at a slant after a hurricane. If you ever go to Universal Studio’s Islands of Adventure in Orlando you can see a bunch of them in Dr. Seuss Land. They are bent in all sorts of wonky ways. My aunt tells me they are all trees that survived hurricane Andrew years back but I’m not so sure.
My 2 cousins arrived with their spouses while I was clearing debris from my patio. They had been sight seeing all morning, which is frowned upon, but everyone here can’t help themselves. Plus it’s the only way to stay cool. If you have gas you have air conditioning. Did I mention it was about 90 degrees now? Hurricanes just love hitting Miami in August. The hottest goddamn month of the year. We went to get something to eat. Remember when I said that everyone stocks up on canned goods? Well they don’t eat that shit. Who wants to sit and eat beans out of a can in a hot ass, mildew-smelling house when Texas Taco Factory is open? Not me. And let me tell you, sitting in a nice cool restaurant with a fountain Pepsi and a heaping plate of macho nachos was heaven. Who cares that I looked and smelled like a homeless person?
I took a shower by candlelight. I used the last remaining hot water in the tank. Sorry Sam. I was clean but had few clean clothes. I was going to do my laundry on Thursday but, you know, the shitstorm and all that. My mom still had power, and a washer and dryer. I gathered up all of my laundry, which included the stinky wet towels, and I headed down the road. More dodging trees. Easier this time, though. The Florida Power & Light hotline said power would be restored to 80% of customers by Tuesday. It was Friday now. I got a cooler from my mom and went home to empty the fridge of anything worth saving. A full ice tray and every ice pack I own was in the freezer so I knew that the contents would be all right. Except for the ice cream which Sam had to eat.
When I got back to my mom’s place she had decided to invite all of her refugee friends that had no power over for a “clear out your fridge and cook it” dinner. I was the cook. Ironically, I grilled hamburgers and shrimp outside. No electricity necessary. We feasted and commiserated about our situation for a while. How once again we underestimated a hurricane. It’s almost embarrassing when I think back to how many times we’ve made fun of all the idiots desperately trying to get to the store for supplies only to have the storm hit Cuba.
This is a lifestyle that South Floridians have to get used to. The cleanup started almost immediately. My power was on by Saturday night. Like most people, I got about the business of clearing the debris and shredded vegetation that surrounded my living space. A lot of work ahead. Insurance agents to call. Plenty of work for an unemployed, able-bodied man. So we get back to work and we get back to normal. And, just like before, we tell ourselves that next time we will be prepared.
It’s a week later now as I wrap this up. Still working as a “freelance landscaper”. Lost about 5 pounds. Obviously the attention of the nation has shifted to New Orleans. After all, it is by far the worst disaster that we have ever seen. It was never my intention to make it seem as if Miami had it worse than New O. I don’t envy them their cleanup time. But I am confident that the city will thrive again. We like to live where we like to live and there is very little that can keep us from our desired dwellings.
