Wednesday, September 28, 2022 will go down in the annals of Florida as the day of the greatest destruction on several grounds: by the territory it covered (about 660 kilometers), by the height of the waves (from 2 to 5 meters) the floods he brought and by the strength of the wind (255 km per hour with gusts stronger than 300 km per hour).
Although three hurricanes have hit Florida in the past with stronger winds than Ian, none of them have been devastating on all four grounds at the same time.
To that should be added the duration of Ian, longer than 12 hours (in the same geographical location), with the most intense period that lasted in the southwest and west of Florida, over 6 hours non-stop!
Hurricanes usually pass quickly when they hit land, but Ian he “rewarded” us with 6 hours of intense destruction.
How to prepare? Where to hide? Can it be hidden?
Early Wednesday morning. A change is felt that cannot be avoided. The clouds darken, the wind picks up, the birds have disappeared, not even the frogs are heard. You turn on the TV and watch one local station after another of the radar images, as if they will change if you change the TV station! The air pressure warns you of the imminence of an impact!
Preparations were made the day before, water, food that can last even without a refrigerator, fruit, paper towels, inevitable toilet paper. The shelves with the last two items and water were the first to be emptied! The wait begins!
“Waiting kills”, experience the full meaning of this saying every time during a hurricane!
This time, the wait went on and on because the hurricane was moving extremely slowly, about 15 kilometers per hour!
Therefore, the destruction will be much greater, and the trees will not be able to withstand such long gusts of strong wind and rain. And it was the trees, in the part of Florida where I live, that paid the greatest toll. Everywhere you look, broken branches, broken trees, tree roots over a meter high uprooted and left with their roots pointing upwards, reminding of the tentacles of an octopus, unsuccessfully searching for the earth, enter your eyes and soul!
Flood in Naples
But the greatest destruction was in the southwest of Florida, the coastal cities of Fort Myers and Naples or in English Naples!
I am watching the first shots from the streets of this very beautiful and elegant city, vehicles are swimming in the streets, and the water is coming up and coming up. The journalist comments on the destruction, and his voice trembles, and he feels that there is someone in this city, someone very dear!
Every disaster is general for analysts, statisticians and politicians, but very personal for each of us! On nearby Sanibel Island, the bridge is flooded and no one can get to or from the island by car Wednesday or Thursday, and who knows how many more days after the hurricane hits!
Like so many times before, this hurricane has not been successfully predicted where it will hit and what it will affect. Two days before the impact, weather models predicted an impact in Tampa, in central West Florida. People even evacuated from Tampa to Fort Myers!
When it does, in less than 24 hours the projections change, and just 12 hours before the hurricane hits, Fort Myers and Naples, along with Port Charlotte, are mentioned as the places where the impact will be felt first!
Someone will say that you cannot escape from fate. Someone else will start accusing meteorologists and the entire scientific discipline! Perhaps we should still listen and follow the birds and their behavior, singing or lack of singing, their migrations!
Hurricane Funnel and Tree Graveyard
In every day and in every opportunity, a person can learn something new. My dad used to say, “I profited today because I learned something new!”
I listen to different meteorologists and their explanations of why there are deviations in projections. There are several models that are used, the most famous are American and European, and when the projections are given and when the funnel image of the hurricane path is formed, both models are taken into account. And halfway between the differences between one and the other, a central line is added. People being people, they look at the center line, not the full width of the funnel, and reason “this one won’t hit us”. Some meteorologists suggest that the center line be deleted and we all know that a hurricane can come right at us wherever it is. found inside the projection of the funnel!
But even then, nature is nature, and in good and in destruction it shows us its strength, elusiveness and freedom from our models!
During a hurricane, trees fall everywhere where I live. I hear gusts of wind hitting the windows, when in fact I see that they are tree branches. Two trees in front of my patio are falling to the ground before the hurricane has reached its full strength. On the other side of the street the next day I see halves of trees, halves of branches, tree roots, endless tree tombs!
During the hurricane, my wonderful friends from Belgrade, America, Canada, the Czech Republic, England and Uzbekistan, and my students who graduated more than 20 years ago, send me messages of hope, love, concern, prayers that I read and that are read to me . They track the movement of the hurricane with me, and when my internet goes out, I get radar images and how much damage is left until the damage is mitigated. I ask them to go to sleep and have sweet dreams, because the time difference is from 9 to 6 o’clock! They stay with me in shifts, depending on time zones.
It’s hard to know your neighbors
On the radio, I follow a station that combined all the stations from Southwest Florida to Tampa. People come forward and share their fates. As the host of the show explains, when we share the burden it becomes easier for us and for others because they realize that they are not alone!
That evening, that night and their conversations were the most powerful and beautiful thing I’ve heard in the last few years from the media. Everyone has so much humanity, respect and desire to help others. From lowering protective shutters on houses where the elderly live to their evacuation, from helping a neighbor whose house is flooded, from sharing advice on how to protect yourself, to wonderful words addressed to the hosts of the show and gratitude for being with all of us and allowing us to be one with others.
And as the hurricane moves from the southwest to the northwest, we hear about new devastation, which, however, is much less than that suffered by our neighbors further south. Full of empathy and desire to help others because they are worse off than us.
One of the interlocutors reminds us that this is a wonderful day to be good neighbors and help each other. It was an incredible, one would think, a forgotten feeling when we felt like members of the community, when we were not divided into opposition and position, into Democrats and Republicans, but we were simply people, neighbors!
I remember the analysis of why and when the antagonism, of unprecedented proportions, started in the US society. One of them points to a turning point that occurred when local newspapers ceased to exist. Local newspapers that wrote about problems that were “ours” and where it didn’t matter if someone was from one party or another. Listening to the radio because the TV stopped working, I also think about the beauty and value of the radio that gives us the time to listen and time for thought.
In the morning of the next day, I wake up in disbelief at the absence of the wind, which has not really disappeared, but has stopped loudly announcing its presence. I’m leaving the apartment. Stunned by the extent of the destruction and the felled trees. I talk to the neighbors. We greet each other with smiles and expressions of happiness on our faces, because we are alive! Around 11 o’clock you can hear the first singing of birds!
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