Dateline October 11, 2016, Hurricane Matthew and Flagler Beach
Our lights are on and the internet is back, so, as the man used to say, here is the rest of the story.
We started to worry last Tuesday, as Matthew picked up strength and turned toward the Florida coast. We walked the yard and took stock of everything that could turn into a missile in a hard wind, and it all went into the house, the pool house, or the garage. There was a running conversation with the neighbors and with Janice's brother Steve and his wife Marilyn about whether to evacuate or stay put.
By Wednesday the forecast had it becoming a category four, and we finished tucking away anything that could fly. There was, we will admit, a little thrill in the idea of riding it out.
Wilma, 2005. We had done that once before. Back in 2005 we lived in Plantation, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, when Hurricane Wilma, a category five, was supposed to be no threat to the east coast and was headed for Fort Myers. Instead it did the unexpected and ran straight across Alligator Alley, east from Naples to Fort Lauderdale. It came so fast that the eye passed right over our house, like a train coming through. We watched trees and debris fly past the windows, and in the morning the mango tree was gone, the screen over the pool was long gone, and parts of the roof tiles had disappeared. Been there, done that.
The plan. We still had power and internet in Flagler Beach, so we looked into places over on the west coast. Janice's brother Brian lives in Sarasota, and there is always room at the Robert's Inn; that was where we landed in 2005 after Wilma left us with no power. The main route to Brian's runs across the state on Interstate 4, from Daytona Beach through Orlando and all the Disney traffic and on to Tampa, a misery to drive on a good day. Google Maps showed it far worse than that, a parking lot, with the whole east coast trying to leave at once.
The real question, if you leave, is what you do once you get there. Golf.
By way of background, we bought another Roadtrek RV after we got home from Europe. Ten weeks on the road had reminded us that we are Gypsies at heart, and we missed the freedom of it. We found a 2012 Roadtrek Adventurous laid out almost exactly like our old 2008, so when the storm came we had it ready, and we went looking for an RV park out of the weather on the west coast.
Ho-Hum. Thursday morning we headed out. We picked the Ho-Hum RV Park in Carrabelle, about five hours west, an hour south of Tallahassee, the state capital and the grateful recipient of our tuition checks for our children Kieran and Courtney at Florida State. Steve and Marilyn decided to evacuate too and followed us as far as Carrabelle before going on to their hotel in Tallahassee.
The people at Ho-Hum were fantastic. There is a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot fishing dock off the beach, so we mixed a Mount Gay rum and Diet Coke and went out to enjoy the dock and the water. We fell in with a whole crowd of other evacuees, some from around Florida, some from Georgia, some from Beaufort, South Carolina, and passed the evening over appetizers, drinks, and easy conversation. It was just beautiful.
Brian's Ganesha. Janice's brother Brian wanted to help any way he could. He told us he had aimed his statue of Lord Ganesha out toward the ocean. Ganesha is a Hindu deity, known as the lord of obstacles, the one who sets them in your path or clears them away. Years ago his friend Keith had pointed his the same way when Hurricane Charley was bearing down on Sarasota, and Charley swung east and struck Punta Gorda instead. Hard on Punta Gorda, but it spared Brian's house. It worked, Brian said. We, of course, were blessed by God.
A quick dinner, and then some television for the latest on the storm. The news was not good.
Matthew was bearing down on the coast after tearing through Nassau in the Bahamas. Our hearts broke for the devastation in Haiti, which has been through so much already. The storm kept coming up the coast. We thought of our dear neighbors across the street, Linda and Frank Ruff, who had decided to ride it out, and Linda and Dave Culver, who had just finished building their new home over the past year. We went to bed fearing the worst and praying for the best. Our house is an old beach place, built in 1958, nothing close to today's hurricane code, and a category four direct hit, the way the storm was pointed, would have been the end of it.
The morning. We woke about 5:30 and turned on the news. The storm was two hours south of Daytona Beach, which is thirty miles south of us, and sitting just off the coast. We knew then that we would not take a direct hit in Flagler Beach unless it lurched suddenly to the west. After a hard night with the mind running in circles, we both had tears of joy and thankfulness that the worst we would see was some wind, not a total loss. The brunt was not due until around noon on Friday.
We knew that sitting and watching a slow-motion train wreck work its way up the coast was no good for anyone, so we did the more sensible thing and went to play golf. Steve and Marilyn drove down to meet us at Saint James Bay Golf Club for a 10:40 tee time. Marilyn does not play, but she rode along in the cart and kept her phone going, so we stayed in touch with Frank and Linda, hunkered down at home, and with Flaglerlive.com, which was updating all day. It is a good course, not an easy one, with long carries from the tees to the fairways, and worth a return.
As we played, Marilyn pulled up a video from Anthony, who owns the Oceanside Restaurant on A1A. He was driving through town posting clips of the storm, and we were shocked at the damage along the beach road. The houses he showed did not look too bad, but the road itself was a disaster.
We kept checking on Frank and Linda and on Linda and Dave, and everyone was safe. Matthew moved on north to St. Augustine, where it did a great deal of damage. We left the course and drove into Carrabelle for an early dinner with Steve and Marilyn. What a friendly little town; we will be back to Ho-Hum in Paradise.
Home. Saturday morning we set out about 7:30 for Flagler Beach. Frank and Linda told us the house looked fine, with little damage. It is a funny thing: you brace for losing everything, and then you find out you are fretting over a fence. You have to laugh. We pulled into Flagler about 1:30. The police and the National Guard had set up a barricade at the Route 100 bridge, and only residents were let across. We drove to the house and were so glad to be home. Steve and Marilyn came by, and we all went over to Frank and Linda's for celebration cocktails and the neighborhood's stories.
The beach. The next morning we walked the beach together to see what Matthew had done on its way by. The house had come through because the storm stayed about thirty-five miles out to sea. The real damage was the ocean itself, the surge chewing away at the beach. It ran about ten feet, up to the level of the road, and it collapsed the big rocks and boulders that had lined A1A down into the water.
In many places the beach road was half washed away. It made for dramatic news video, so a good many of you probably saw our little stretch of coast on the national broadcasts.
After. Our old generator would not start, a failure of planning on our part, but the Roadtrek has a propane generator, and that ran a few lights, the refrigerator, and, since we have Dish, the television too.
We were blessed, and lucky, to come through this one. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all our friends and the many others who took the worst of Matthew and still cannot get home to see what is left. A special prayer for Richard and Carol, stuck up in Athens, Georgia. And our thanks to all of you for the notes and the encouragement. We were fortunate, and we are grateful.
