BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Hurricane Frances

Thanks! for asking, Marcy--here's the story. Decision to leave or stay really had to be made on Thursday night in light of hotel reservation problems. Another alternative was to leave Thursday night or Friday morning and head north, probably to Virginia or further.

On Thursday there was already doubt as to the actual heading of the storm. We might have headed out to a place and had the hurricane overtake us. I decided to stay in the apartment, with the knowledge that we had windows that were hurricane proof--supposedly. Well, they were marked "safety glass" anyway, so if they would break, like the windshield in your car, they would break into small gravel like pieces and wouldn't kill us. That sounded okay to me. There are two buildings in our complex and during the summer they are about 40% full. That meant that there were 160 apartments occupied before the storm. The rest are owned by snow-birds or travelers.

Thursday afternoon, we were told that it would be a "mandatory evacuation." That means that the authorities will not assist you if you stay. People will not be forced out. But they are on their own.

The people in about 100 apartments decided to leave. That left about 60 apartments occupied, mostly by older couples. This was one time that youth was more prudent than age.

At four PM on Thursday we took a census at a meeting of the "dead enders." Everyone on the Board of Directors had chosen to stay, and several of the maintenance people had also decided to remain. The rest of us, were just the "little people," in Leona Helmsley's delightful phrase.

The wind came up on Friday, but we already knew that it was doubtful that we would be hit by the main force of the storm. The wind was strong enough to bend the trees and send palm fronds flying, but we lost only a few trees over the whole weekend.

There is a reef about five hundred yards out. Normally it is invisible, the lighter waves just pass over it. But now, white caps delineated it all along the shore. Later there was a strong wind from the west which pushed the spray from the reef-breakers about thirty or forty feet feet up into the air. Much of the night there was a moon, and there was light on the waves far out off shore breaking over the reef, the spray looked almost like white sparks, and then like showers of steam coming off the ocean.

To some extent, I think that the reef protects Ft. Lauderdale's beach. But we still lost sand.

As you must have heard, the storm remained over southern Florida from Friday night through early Sunday morning. During that time the ocean blew up, and the waves were larger than usual but still not really scary. I walked along the beach, my body bent into the wind and sand blasted at me, which sometimes felt like thousands of needles against my face and legs. There were hundreds of small holes where baby turtles had emerged from their eggs and dug themselves out of the sand covering the nests laid by females months previous.

Nearby I found some large pieces of coral that had been ripped from a reef about five hundred yards out. Later I brought a few upstairs and was instructed by the misses to bring them back. But as they were my found-treasure they remain in my shower.

On Saturday afternoon I looked down at the roiling ocean from my terrace and saw that the surf had attracted some teenaged surfers even though it was raining. I put on my suit and went down and I talked one of them into letting me try to push out into the sea on his board while he was trying to catch his breath on the beach.

It was almost impossible to get out past the surf line put after some effort and a little help I found myself just past the breakers and waited for a roller to take me in. As I looked around I noticed that the teenagers had circled my board, as though they were a pod of dolphins trying to protect the "old man." Embarrassed, I took the first roller in and returned the board to its eager owner. It was an express train.

Some of the private houses nearby on the beach lost sea walls, and huge buoy floated onto the beach, its light still darkened. I wondered where the power for the buoy lights comes from. batteries? A wire under the sea? A passel of 12 x 12's from some dock or pier came by, but the sea was moving north to south so fast that I saw them only for a short time.

The nights were great--lightning and thunder right over head, but we never really got any heavy driving rain. Maybe that's being saved for next time. One of the nights I almost lost the door to my terrace as I opened it into the wind. But, make no mistake, we only got the edge of the storm, and we never understood its full force.

When I went out to the street, A1A was deserted, the stores had all boarded up, the traffic lights had been re-set to flash only red. The red reflections on the wet highway went as far as I could see. Several signs had been knocked apart and pieces of sign material blew along the highway.

Ironically, many of our neighbors went to places out west where they lost electric and had to stay for two or three without a/c and in the dark. I am fine with darkling nights; but to have a series of hot nights--well. ... Of course, the air on the beach is always cooler so it might not have been so bad....

Now, the next question is Ivan....