Anniversary is annual observation or ritual of a past event,
happy or sad.
Today was the ninth anniversary of the devastating event of Hurricane Charley
Friday the thirteenth 2004, our ninth.
Below is the experience of that day remembered on the fifth anniversary in
2009.
Friday August 13. 2004
Today is an infamous anniversary; the fifth one of Hurricane Charley, and yes
it was a Friday the 13th.
I was trying hard to write for you a time line of what actually occurred here
that day, but I must have put quite a bit of it out of my mind since it did
create most of us to go into mild shock due to what we experienced that
particular day.
Not at all that different from post traumatic stress syndrome I suspect.
What I do remember is watching closely the news and
weather reports out of Fort Myers where all of
our local information comes from; my Hubby was at work as a deputy, a fairly
normal day. We had made somewhat preliminary strapping’s down of things that
could fly away, little did we know how stupid that would be, but it was
supposed to not come here!
We were told initially that this milder storm not that much over hurricane
strength was heading towards Tampa,
about one hundred miles north of us, and I suppose this was on the news and
weather at noon. I did worry anyway since our eldest son works in Tampa and lives not far
from there, to the north about 20 miles.
The storm at this point I do believe was staying the course.
Coming from the Caribbean south of Cuba and was expected to veer towards the
Gulf of Mexico where it might pick
up speed, and develop into a stronger
hurricane in the warmer waters there.
I think it might have been around 2 or 3 O’clock in the afternoon that things
began changing for the worse for us. The weather reporters noticed that the
storm was shifting direction, and it was heading towards Captiva and Pine Islands,
and Fort Myers Beach,
which are due west of Fort Myers,
but south of us by about forty plus miles. Still in my mind too
close for
comfort that was enough for me to start to think ahead, and I began listening
intensively to the safety procedures that were coming over the TV to get into a
space without
windows if you had no room that met that criteria get into your
hallway and close all the doors, contain pets so they won’t scare and take off.
And so I started making our small hallway into a sanctuary for me and the pets.
I moved our 25 year old Cockatiel, oddly enough also named Charlie, but a
different spelling in his cage in the back of the space, then I took a
kitchen
chair and got out the cat crate for our seven years old long haired orange
Tabby Casey, the hardest part was putting him in it, and then listening to him
complain about it, our Skipper was only a five month old puppy at the time and
so he was at my mercy and I was able to corral him and attach his lead so I
could maintain him in our safety room.
Hubby was a whole other worry, but by now we had been in phone communication
and he was busy making sure the county was hunkered down for the possible
arrival of the storm by securing the Marine Patrol boats and equipment as well
as notifying the public in what to do, and chasing them from harms way.
By the time the storm decided to take a sharp turn towards us, via the harbor,
which we are 5 minutes from by boat, I had shut our main power source off and
had the
battery TV hunkered down with us in our control room, the hallway. I
kept hearing from our wonderful son north of Tampa; he was also monitoring the storm and
wanted to know how we were doing.
You see we were not that new to hurricanes we had all helped in the aftermath
of Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5, back on August the 17.1992, and we were well
aware of the devastation a hurricane could commit on a community, we had seen
it first hand as well as both of our sons seeing it too.
But this was going to be different since we only went to assist after Andrew, and
we actually lived over five and half hours away at that time in Ormond Beach. This time
we lived here and it was coming right at us!
And we would be getting an up close and personal first hand knowledge of the
horrible devastation it was beginning to seem, but little did we know for sure
that this now category 4 hurricane was going for a direct hit on us, we were
still hopeful it would miss us, or in denial.
I put up the puppy gate at the opening of the hallway, which allowed me not to
have to hold Skipper on his lead the whole time, and it was just in time since
something or someone was at the front door…I thought it might be the storm, but
I looked out our very large picture window, and it was my hubby coming in! He
had to grab tight the door the wind was trying to take it!
He had parked the old army truck they were using to move around the marine
boats on our side pad from the driveway, the garage had been secured since the
news people told that it should be, and our personal car was in there anyway.
And he did arrive just in time, because within seconds we heard a very loud
noise that scared us both I had to grab Hubby for him not to go and check it
out; it was instinctive, but I feared for his life.
The wind was rip roaring all around us, and crashes could be heard too, but I
was too scared to look and I focused on keeping the animals put. Hubby noticed
the guestroom door making vibrations like in the Poltergeist Movie, and he took
Skipper's lead and tied it from that doorknob on the guestroom to the bathroom
one. At around five thirty, yes it was already that time, everything got
deathly quiet. And hubby wanted to go look, but I begged him not to, it must be
the eye of the hurricane, we both agreed, and he did take my concerns to heart
and waited; all this time we were getting information from the local news, by
seven P.M. they were saying we should be in the clear.
Nearly seven P.M. on the dot I stopped hearing most noises, and Hubby and I
both agreed that we could venture from the hallway.
What we were about to see was going to change our world in ways that we could
not ever believe.
The first thing was since we had drapes on the big picture window I thought
that loud noise was something coming through it but thankfully it was not,
since our thirty foot oak tree that stood majestically on our front lawn was
lying on the ground blocking our way from getting out our front door.
Apparently, the metal stucco encased columns that made up our Spanish style
veneer prevented the tree from crashing through that nine foot window!
But did block our exit from that entry way.
The other crash I inspected or maybe hubby was the guestroom; the side window
had been smashed to smithereens and glass was all over the bed and the carpet,
so I closed the door again so the animals could not go in. The hardest part was
to go outside, our screen porch had rain coming in where it met the dinette
ceiling, there was water coming from everywhere. Our fairly new wooden floors
and carpeting were saturated! But searching around the rest of the house we
only had the one broken window, it was a good thing we had installed new
windows the year before, but why did that one break? Hubby went outside, and
found out the answers to most of our concerns, our octagon Gazebo was gone, our
two sheds too, and our next-door neighbors roof was in our backyard, and had
hit the guestroom window and was only stopped by knocking our air-conditioner
off its pedestal. It was lucky that our neighbors were not home. Our roof was
still there but ripped to shreds in many places thus causing the rain indoors.
People from all over the neighborhood started to venture out, and hubby was
helped by our other next-door neighbors on the other side tarp our roof. I
questioned if I could use the toilet and did not get an answer so I did, and
that was a mistake since that giant oak tree pulled the sewer pipe from the
ground and all was shooting out into the air! Yuck is an understatement but
again neighbors helped to pushed it down and hubby reconnected it. The power was
off, our boat on the lift could not be seen or gotten too with all the debris,
and it was everywhere, we had, had a sixteen foot arbor down to the water that
was no where to be found it did have vegetation on it too. Our backyard oak
also keeled over onto the fish pond and surprisingly the fish were fine, as
well as the grapefruit tree, but lying on the ground, and the lemon and orange trees were both sheared.
I could go on and on as you can see I have remembered so much of it all after
all.
We still were alive, and when all was said and done we had, had over 80K
dollars worth of damage on our tiny little home!
Thankfully, we have been rebuilt since December of that year, 2004, our
insurance took care of our doing the work ourselves, fortunately I was well
enough then to help a little, but our son, his girlfriend, my cousins, and
another friend from the Arthritis Foundation are hugely responsible for being
there when we needed them! We were one of the lucky ones; some still have not
rebuilt.
On this long dissertation I will bid you all a good night, and I hope, I really
hope that I have given you somewhat of a glimpse into what did transpire on
that horrid day here in Charlotte County and in the surrounding communities.
That’s why when I say be safe, I mean it and when I say count those blessing I
mean that too! And I do count them all, all of them our blessings that is!
Here’s additional important information from that day, our home’s exterior
destruction:
At the time I belonged to a writing group called the Peace River Center for
Writers and we eventually all compiled many writings dealing with our
experiences of those two summers of multiple historic storms, in fact the book
to be birthed from our experiences is called, “ Summer of the Storms”, and I
have copied my contributory page from the compilation, which can still be
purchased I believe through the center or the historical society, here’s my
feelings after all was said and done..
"Formula for a Return to Normalcy
By me, on page #58 in the book entitled, ‘Summer of the
Storms’, published by the Peace
River Center
for Writers copyrighted 2005 all rights reserved
We are in flux, but soon we’ll be able to return to what we
remember as home.
Hurricanes have caused all to be in an uncontrollable
situation. We must take back that control!
As a state we must reconnoiter all options to regain our
strength as a whole entity, train ourselves to be valiant, reclaim what we lost
and make it better.
We can network our knowledge and resources.
We can show compassion for one another in this horrid
commonality of misfortune.
The old adage is true, misery does love company.
Understanding, first hand, what others have been through
gives us something we all can relate to.
A TV show psychologist stated that to cope with such
traumas, we must turn emotion into motion. Simply said; do something! Energy
should be well spent in a positive productive way. This way we disallow
negative thinking to take over.
And yes, we all have plenty to do to accomplish our tangible
tasking.
From simple, annoying, repetitive calling of insurance
agents and contractors to physically getting in there and doing the work to
repair or replace.
Life has never been simple, but with a recipe to regain
whatever we consider our normalcy, this unreality too will become familiar,
bringing us again to what our lives once were."
I believe all horrendous experience needs to have similar resolves for our
sanity to attack these problems with true ability by putting all of it into
perspective. We as human beings on this planet have more strength than we
sometimes realize, but never ever forget that we do have it!
All I can say is some things in life just stick with you forever the good stuff
as well as the bad and this was just another blip in the bigger picture of
things that we will never ever forget...
*"PS I see that the excerpt of my page 58 from the Summer of the Storms book did
not photograph well, and so I guess you will just have to find it and buy it!
LOL!"
(This was written last year when I
did photograph the book page, but after that I just wrote it in word and
copied and pasted it here this year for you to be able to read!)
