Here are some pictures of the damage we came home to:
Our "beach" area was washed away. One of the protective walls is completely gone and all the structures that were out there were destroyed.
By: Davy Wavy and his live-in editor
Yay! Our internet is finally back on, two days after escaping hell on earth.
The Weather Channel had said that anyone evacuating needed to get north at least as far as Orlando. So we had evacuated to Ocala, a town just north of Orlando. All the hotels were full except for one. It cost $100 a night. The hurricane came and went and all we noticed was a tornado warning, a little rain, and a chilling cold front (50 degrees). The t.v. channels up there didn't provide any information at all about conditions in the Keys. Mostly they just kept talking about how trash cans at Disney World and Universal Studios had been knocked over, or how Sea World wouldn't reopen until the afternoon. Luckily the lobby had internet service and Myra had the foresight to search for our county's government website. She also called the Florida Highway Patrol (they are in charge of overseeing all hurricane recovery) and a few other numbers that she found, and she was finally able to find out that electricity had been restored in the Keys and that people were allowed to return there. So we decided to leave on Tuesday. The only "useful" bit of information we were told by the Ocala news was that the Florida Turnpike/tollroad that we had used to evacuate was now closed, so we would have to take the longer route of I-95 down the east coast instead. This turned out to be completely FALSE, but we didn't find that out until several days later. Tuesday morning we topped off the gas tank, drove for several hours through pretty but remote state forest land and everything was fine. We tried to stop to get gas when we reached I-95, but emergency signs said the electricity was out in that city, so we kept going. But the same thing happened at the next exit we came to, and the next one after that. Then there was a long stretch without any exits or gas stations. Once the interstate made it back into developed areas the emergency signs had disappeared making it seem as if things were okay. Finally we found a gas station. Nope. No electricity. We kept on going. No electricty, dark, empty, shut down. Wait a minute... this wasn't on the news in Ocala... what's going on? No gas for a hundred miles?
We had looked for gas for 3 hours on the interstate. By that time we had made it to the the city of Hollywood, just north of Miami. We were at the point of no return. We were too far south to turn around. We had to get off the highway and get gas soon so we decided to stop while we still had enough gas to drive to a gas station. We tried an exit, but all the gas stations there were shut down. We tried another exit, but all the gas stations there were shut down too. All signal lights were down at every exit we passed by for the next 20 minutes, so we knew the electricity was out at each of them. The needle was on empty. We tried another exit as a last hope. The gas station there was closed, so we parked in the nearby Target parking lot. There were lots of people driving around, parking to shop at Target, and milling about like normal. Myra got out to talk to a friendly Jamaican who was standing in front of his car. She found out that he was also out of gas and had no way to get home. This was our first small clue about the nightmare that was about to hit us, but everyone else around us was going about their business as usual, so the true situation didn't sink in right away. We remained hopeful that the gas station next door would be open the next morning. After all, Target had their lights on as did two buildings across the street, so obviously this exit had electricity. It started to get dark and the customers started to thin out. Myra asked the Target security guard if we could camp out there, and he said yes. Soon it was pitch black and cold. A curfew was in effect. The city police started patrolling the surrounding streets in a circular pattern with their lights on. We had no choice but to sleep in the tiny cab of our pickup truck and wait for the gas station to hopefully open up the next day.
Thirteen hours of cramped, sleepless, miserable shivering hell, watching police drive down the empty black streets, watching Target employees show up around us for the night shift and listening to their car alarms go off. Finally the sun rose. We found out that the only reason Target was open was because they had a generator and the only reason the big building across the road had tempted us all night long with their lights on was because it was a hospital. It didn't look like the nearby gas station would open up any time soon. Myra and I asked a cop who was parked in front of Target what our options were. Lucky for us he ended up being the only police officers in the entire city (that we encountered) who was actually polite and helpful. He told us about a gas station a few miles away that was running on generators and we left for it immediately. We used up even more of our dwindling fuel but found it. It's difficult to miss a line of 60 cars and 200 hundred people with gas cans. I collapsed in utter despair (no way were we getting gas with that kind of line). I didn't even want to get in line, so Myra parked the car and got out. She talked to people in line and found out that the station had already run out of gas, but that the gas tanker was on its way. Because the line of people standing with gas cans looked shorter than the line of cars, she decided to find out where we could buy our own cans. None of the people in line were helpful, so she decided to ask a nearby cop. When she asked, he swirled around and yelled into her face "NO, I DON'T KNOW WHEN THE GAS TRUCK WILL COME BACK!!" She tried to clarify that she was asking about gas cans instead of when the station would have more gas, but he purposefully turned his head away and stubbornly stared at nothing for the next 5 minutes refusing to say anything more. She finally decided to start walking. A block away, the owner of a local grocery store told her that he had heard they were selling gas cans at a Home Depot up the street and gave her directions. After 45 minutes of walking, dodging downed power lines and piles of debris that were so big that they forced her into the busy road, she had almost made it there. But blocking her way was a scene of mass chaos. FEMA was giving out ice in a nearby parking lot and they hadn't thought to announce this in any way (there was no electricity to do so over the tv). As word of mouth spread, people started congregating on the area. However, for some inexplicable reason, the cops had decided that they wouldn't allow anyone to enter the area to pick up ice unless they were in a car. FEMA themself was okay with giving out ice to people who weren't in cars as evidenced by the fact that they were giving it to anyone who snuck through the police line. But the cops were set up in layers scattered along the mile of road to try to prevent people from coming in. They demanded that anyone who wanted to get ice waste gas by sitting in a line of idiling cars for 3-4 hours! The police had slammed some pedestrians to the ground. An old couple with their little dog was in tears as they told Myra about how they needed ice but weren't allowed in because their car had run out of gas. On another corner a yelling match broke out between the cops and a group of pedestrians who wanted to walk in. National guardsmen were brandishing their guns and pointing them at any bicyclists who dared to try to get through (bikes weren't allowed either, only cars). Unfortunately for Myra, the Home Depot was located on the opposite side of the parking lot where FEMA was giving out the ice, past the police. She was finally able to evade the police by following two foreign girls who were daring to pick up ice on their bikes by dodging and hiding behind trees with them and quietly sneaking through a nearby apartment complex. A nervous, furtive 10 minutes later and she had finally made it past all the police to Home Depot! There was a 20 minute wait in line but that didn't matter because they still had gas cans left!! Hallelujah! There was a shining mountain of gas cans piled up and being rationed out by smiling Home Depot employees. Finally! $25 later, with gas cans in hand, she started the 45 minute walk back. Caught by the police! Her luck had run out. "You can't walk through here. Only people in cars can pick up ice." She held up her gas cans and explained that she was just trying to make it back to her car. They told her to stand there and "don't do anything." 5 minutes later after standing in the sun while they stared at her, they finally said "Okay, you can go, but stay on this side of the street, just don't go near FEMA" She retraced her steps, dodging downed power lines, debris, and flooded soccer fields, happily answering the 10+ people who stopped their cars along the way to ask her where they too could buy gas cans. Myra had saved the day! We got in line to get gas. Just then, (it was around 11am) the police decided that the gas truck wouldn't arrive at that station before sunset. They made the owner shut down the gas station and forced everyone in line to leave.
But wait! We were told by a lady who lived nearby that there was another gas station! I went off to look for it while Myra started making phone calls to any organization she could think of that might be able to help us. It was much easier to find the second gas station since it's hard to miss a line of cars that's a mile long. In the two hours I observed that line the same people had moved forward only a block. At that rate no one would get gas before the curfew shut down everything. It was impossibly long. No way was I even going to think about waiting in line. We found out later that this other gas station had shut down too; a fight had broken out in the line because someone had looked at someone else's girlfriend, people were threatening each other with knives and guns, and since the police weren't doing anything to control the situation the owner himself decided to shut down the gas station.
Meanwhile Myra had called every number she could think of to try to find help:The police officers who were milling about looked at her like she was an annoying bug when she asked them for advice. The only answer that the group of them told her was "Well, it sucks to be you" and then went back to eating their donuts (honestly not kidding) and gossiping with each other, without offering us any information or help. The only help she was able to get during the 3 hours that I was gone was that the gas station owner let her know that we would be better off using the last of our remaining gas to get back to the Target parking lot before dark because that current neighborhood wasn't safe to sleep in. I called every number I could find for a taxi (busy signals or disconnected). No tow trucks could give out any gas because they didn't have any because everyone was panicking over gas even though they weren't stranded. People were getting gas for their huge pick-up trucks that were idling in line for five hours straight. How dire could their need for gas be if they can idle their truck for five hours straight blasting the AC?
We resigned ourselves to another sleepless night in the cab of Myra's truck. Target was open and
so was Publix, so we wandered through their dark, shadowy aisles and bought blankets and a sleeping bag so
we wouldn't freeze again, some food, and cash from the
ATM. I finally got ahold of a taxi! Yeay! We paid the
taxi to drive us to every gas station he could think of that was open
and as far away as he needed to. He drove us to a 3rd gas station
in Hollywood (but the cops had shut it down because someone had spilled
gas on the ground), then down to Miami (we waited in
line, but the station was shut down because there weren't any police
and the owner was scared fighting might break out) and then Miami Beach (but the
police wouldn't let us get gas because we weren't residents). We
finally drove all the way to Florida City (an hour away), north of
Key Largo. Everyone there had electricity!! And ... the same
damn thing. Everyone panicking to get gas. People were saying even Key Largo
had the same lines. This was the first that we learned it was a state wide crisis. We got in line
and inched forward for thirty minutes. Myra got out to check the local hotels
to see if we could at least get a bed for the night. If so, we would figure out getting back up our car after we got gas in the morning. But there
weren't any vacancies anywhere in town. She called all of the hotels in the area. We were ten cars away from
salvation when the police arrived at the gas station and forced
them to shut down because they claimed it was getting too close to
curfew. It was still a full two hours before curfew, by the way.
Our taxi driver continued to drive us around, and there were no more gas stations nearby that were pumping gas. Even though
they had electricity they were all closed for some reason, probably the police
had shut them down too. We had to leave. We had get the taxi to to drive us all the way back up to
Hollywood while he still had gas. Hollywood was now far enough away that we were risking arrest by violating curfew by the time we got back.
Away from the friendly glow of electricity, back into a depressing sea of darkness.
Empty handed and $350 down the toilet.
The taxi driver felt so bad for us that he knocked $100 off the fair and offered us his spare bedroom where it was safer (and most importantly, horizontal). I collapsed immediately. The next morning (our third day of exile) the cab driver led us to a different gas station in Hollywood. We thanked him profusely, and then waited in line. It wasn't moving. Hmmm... I got out and walked up to the gas station ... and it was dead! No power, no one inside, no gas. People were just waiting in line at a defunct gas station for no reason! The only reason they were waiting was because they were hoping it might open some time that day. I asked a guy why he was waiting here and he got all defensive "The same reason you are! Why are you waiting here?!" "Uh, I'm not." Did they think the gas would precipitate from the sky? People are a little too easy to believe in false hope against all rationality. So I told people at the end of that line that the gas station was down and we left, dejected again and went after the one and only gas station we could think of - the one that had broken out in a knife fight the day before. At least we knew this one had gas. We parked and took our tanks into the walk-up line of about 120 people. We deemed it was better than the 2 mile long line of cars (not an exaggeration). After standing in line for awhile, I watched the progress and estimated about 1 minute per person equalling about 1.5 hours wait, which was definitely the better choice than 10 hours in the car line. My estimate ended up being a little off, but it was still the quicker option.
Time ticked by, it was still morning and I just kept hoping no fights would break out, no one would spill gas, or any other reason the cops might use to close the gas station. The people around us in line were actually really nice and friendly. The only gas left was premium at $3.20 per gallon, but I didn't care. We had fifty bucks and 6 two gallon cans. Two and a half hours later we were at the front of the line! I couldn't believe it! It was actually our turn! It wasn't real. We filled up our cans in a frantic dreamy haze, walked straight to Myra's truck and spent the next 20 minutes filling it up (it takes a while to fill a tank manually).
It started to sink in that we were finally free while thirteen gallons of gold trickled into the tank. I just hoped no one would jump us while we filled up in front of all those hundreds of desperate people still in line. There were people who had been waiting in their cars in that line since 4am and still hadn't made it even close to the front of the line. I was still paranoid despite how nice the majority of residents actually were. The owners of a nearby shut-down motel even let Myra use their toilet.
If only we had just sucked it up and paid $200 to stay in Ocala two more nights after the Keys had re-opened... if only the news channels had known about the gas shortage... if only we had been able to find a gas station before the dead zone... if only the Ocala news stations hadn't been wrong and we had known that we could have taken the toll road after all... But none of that mattered now. For the moment, even the $700 down the drain didn't matter. We finally had gas and we were going home! Myra had saved us both by walking for an hour and a half to buy gas cans and dealing with hostile police officers and walking around on sore feet and standing in the sun getting extremely sun burned. Myra's awesome!
We arrived in the Keys, driving reverently, three hours later and it was like a different country. It was like ... paradise, like leaving a third world war zone, like waking from a horrible nightmare. We got food and water from the Key Largo grocery store. We were now surrounded by tourists and residents acting the way normal people are supposed to in a normal society. But I don't think I'll ever look at gas stations the same way ever again.
Was there any damage here from the hurricane? You bet. Trees shattered,
the oceanfront looked like someone had dropped a bomb, and the storm
surge had flooded onto our lawn and stripped away the beach. Some people 30 minutes south (in Marathon) had suffered flooding inside their homes. There
wasn't any damage to our apartment itself but the faucet water
still isn't drinkable or showerable due to the water line from the mainland being broken
in several places. But this is nothing. At its worst it
doesn't even compare to what we had just been through.
Sadly, it sounds like all those friendly people we encountered in Hollywood and the rest of Miami are still going to have
to suffer through 2 to 3 more weeks without electricity and who knows when
their gas crisis will be fixed.
After our 3 days of hell in Hollywood we can only imagine what the people in New Orleans
went through with Katrina. It's quite different on the other end of the television. Especially how unhelpful and downright hostile the police forces are to everyone. And what we encountered
isn't even close to what New Orleans went through. They had ten feet
of water and dead bodies in the street. We at least had the Miami radio
for news, and were merely stranded in the
middle of a city void of electricity with a gas
shortage. This seemed to be the general mood of most of the
Hollywood residents we encountered too. People in the gas lines kept saying, "We're lucky. At least we
aren't wading through waist deep water full of corpses." Plus most
residents in Hollywood were behaving themselves, no looting and no widespread violence
like in New Orleans.
Here are some pictures of the damage we came home to:
Our "beach" area was washed away. One of the protective walls is completely gone and all the structures that were out there were destroyed.
Everyone we know had ignored the mandatory evacuation orders. Our two newest neighbors rode out the entire storm in their large sailboat seen in the picture above. At one point it threated to ride up over the wall with the storm surge, but it made it through the storm without any damage. The foreground area (the resort next door) used to be full of sand but has now been washed down to bare concrete just like on our property.
In our backyard:
In our frontyard. The dead grass marks the storm surge line:
This large deck at the resort was completely ripped off its foundations, spun around and thrown onto the opposite shore:
This tiki hut at the resort was ripped right out of the cement. Impressive.
None of our neighbors had evacuated. According to one neighbor, the crashing waves had been so big during the storm that it looked like the coast of Hawaii.
And I had missed all of it!
The resort's iguana had ridden out the storm outside and was fine.
Satellite pictures from official weather websites before it hit our area:
