Friday Night Lights

I wanted to write this a week ago because I was supposed to be covering the Cypress Lake High School football game.  But I had no internet and I didn't see the point.  Tonight I was supposed to be in Naples covering another game but with Lee County not playing football I wasn't needed.  So I figured now was as good a time as any to write.

We rode out Hurricane Ian in our home.  After Irma I had vowed never to do it again.  I really didn't think this storm would get us.  But like Hurricane Charlie in 2003, this storm made the right hand turn and wham.  Except this time it was like a slow motion execution.  This thing was the slowest moving monster I could have ever imagined.

The morning of Tuesday September 27th I asked the Czarina if she wanted to go to West Palm Beach.  Miami and Fort Lauderdale were out of the question.  I-75 was jammed with traffic headed to the east coast.  I thought it might be wise to get the family together and head to West Palm.  That suggestion was rejected.  At about 11 p.m. that same day the Czarina said we should go to West Palm.  I told her it evacuation at this point was out of the question.  It was too late and too dangerous and given the direction of the storm there was nothing to say that it wouldn't head straight east to West Palm Beach.

The entire family huddled down Wednesday morning for the big blow.  We lost power very early on in the storm.  It was gone before 1 p.m.  I had forgotten about the radio I had left behind so we couldn't hear the news and our cell phones were useless.  We had no idea what was going on except for the wind.  With hurricane proof windows we could see what was happening outside and it wasn't pretty.

The Czarina wanted to hide in the small guest bathroom area which has no window exposure.  I chose the master bedroom because I couldn't see anyway that the tiny bathroom window would blow out.  Pretty soon I was joined by everyone else including a portable battery powered light that was a life saver.  A card game ensued and eventually Baxter the Boston Terrier was allowed to settle with me in bed.

The wind was endless.  My past hurricane experiences told me that the bad wind lasts three or four hours.  This storm went on for eight hours.  The Czarina was terrified.  The rest of our Russian clan seemed pretty composed.  The Czarina fretted about not having hurricane shutters.  I told her that's why we invested in the windows.  By the time the storm had calmed down it was too dark to see much of anything in our neighborhood of about 300 homes and condos.

The next day showed that Ian had meant business.  We had suffered minimal damage.  We lost some big tree branches and had some soffit damage to the back of the roof.  Our new roof appeared to be intact.  The same couldn't be said for dozens upon dozens of our neighbors.  Shingles were everywhere.  Huge pieces of aluminum from lanais were laying around yards everywhere.  One neighbor had lost a nice size chunk of their entire roof.  I can only imagine the terror.  Some huge trees had tumbled.  The only saving factor was the lack of rain.  We had missed the major flooding that we had figured was a certainty.

Thursday morning I jumped in my SUV and made my way to my store fully expecting to find flooding as it sits less than a half mile from the river.  Every traffic light was out which made major intersections a sometimes exasperating game of chicken.  Once on McGregor Boulevard, Fort Myer's main drag, you could see the giant palms resting against the power line.  Some were laying across the road.  I got to the store, saw a few shingles missing and a gutter ripped off.  The store itself was bone dry.

The yard clean up went quickly.  It mainly a matter of stretching food supplies and praying for a return of electricity.  After Irma power was restored within 24 hours.  This time it was a different story.  But again we were lucky.  Power was restored after only 48 hours.  As I write thousands of people in Lee County still don't have power.  We were lucky because Ian had sucked out all the heat and humidity and our weather was cool and comfortable like a mid-February winter.

The Russians returned to their home on Sunday when power was restored to their neighborhood which was closer to parts of the county that had been severely punished by Ian.  Fortunately their home was spared from the winds and water. Sunday night I was supposed to travel to Tampa to watch the Chiefs game with Ron and Tracy Tabb.  But I couldn't justify the trip and instead went to Walmart where I purchased the last available antenna and watched the game in all of its HD glory.

Monday our internet and cable returned.  I had gone to the store to find power had been restored and my lone customers was an evacuee from Sanibel who had lost everything.  Her husband needed running clothes so I gave him a couple of singlets and some heavily discounted a pair of shoes.  I sat there pondering just how I was going to pay my bills as I knew that business would be really, really slim for the next month or so.  Plus my store relied heavily on Sanibel and Fort Myers Beach residents and those communities in reality, no longer exist for at least the next several months.

Each day I've gone to work and had one customer, sometimes two.  But today, Friday was different.  Several people came in, many to replace shoes lost to flooding, some to replace shoes left filthy but all the yard work.  I helped those who really needed it with the price and gave away a lot of socks.

I reached out to a couple of my main shoe suppliers, Hoka and Saucony, to see if we could get some free shoes for nurses who had lost theirs to the storm.  Hoka has come through big time, I'm still waiting to hear from Saucony and I suspect they will come through.  

I can't believe the pictures I see.  Much of my community looks like some post-apocalyptic hell.  I look at my neighborhood and marvel that a matter of six to seven miles can make such an incredible difference.  I really like living here.  Even the miserable heat and humidity of the summers are worth the incredible late fall, winter and early spring weather we enjoy.  But this is the third major hurricane I have lived through in less than 20 years.  I just don't know.

This was a thousand times worse than Charlie which was really, really bad.  Irma was a walk in the park compared to this storm.  We bounced back quickly after Charlie and Irma.  I believe we will bounce back sooner than a lot of people probably believe from Ian.  Southwest Florida is one of the few remaining parts of Florida that isn't overpopulated.  The state needs the income that Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel tourism generated.  I suspect heaven and a lot of earth will be moved to make these communities livable sooner rather than later.