Archives: Living through weather history

For the next few Sundays I'll be posting previously written material - stories and comments sent in e-mails. Since we have just started hurricane season here and already had one named tropical storm, I start with something written August 24, 2004 - 11 days after the beginning of what was Orlando's worst hurricane season in 40 years.

. . . And for those of you who saw the devastation that Hurricane Charley caused, I can cross off "survive a hurricane" on my life experience list. I live in the Conway area of Orlando, which was in the direct path of Hurricane Charley - at that point I believe it was a category 2. First time Orlando has had a hurricane direct hit in over 40 years. My luck. Winds here were at times 100 miles an hour - Orlando Internat'l Airport recorded wind speeds of 105 mph, and I live about 6 miles due north. By the time we realized it was headed this way, it was too late to try to drive to Lakeland to my sister's - and the traffic on I-4 would have made it impossible. That Friday I went to work (yes, many people worked that Friday); the managing partner of the law firm I work at made us leave by 1:30. Not much to do after that except drive home, make sure my hurricane kit was all ready, prepare my safe room - the guest bathroom - and monitor progress on TV. It rained furiously for hours at a time and there were tornado watches and warnings left and right (though none hit us). [UPDATE: The National Weather Service later confirmed that a tornado touched down at Orlando International Airport.]

At 8:45 pm the winds started in earnest. At 9:30 pm I lost power. For the next hour I was hunkered down in my guest bathroom listening to the radio, feeling the building shake, and praying the wind would stop. When the eye of the storm came through, things were very calm. People came outside with flashlights to survey the damage, and a few minutes later the wind started up again. Fortunately the backside of the storm was not as intense as the front. And by around midnight things were starting to quiet down for good.

It was a very frightening experience, but fortunately there was no major structural damage to the apartment buildings or cars. A LOT of trees uprooted all over this area, two crushed cars in the complex, and while some places got power back the next day, I went for four days without electricity. Needless to say, the first two nights I stayed in a hotel near the airport that still had power (again, the people who came here from Tampa to ride out the storm were headed back west on I-4, which is the direction I needed to take to Lakeland). The third night I stayed at my sister's, and by the end of the fourth day we got power back and I got to sleep in my own bed.

It was surreal to see so much damage everywhere all over the city and try to drive around without traffic lights and maneuver around fallen trees and building debris. And finding gas was a chore since you need electricity to make the pumps work, and food in grocery stores was scarce. Like a bad nightmare. Several of my co-workers had bad structural damage to their houses. But to think there was so much worse damage further south. My sister, who's assistant director for public health for Polk County (the 4th worst-hit county in the state) had to put in 12-14 hour days at the emergency ops center for the county for over a week. At her house in North Lakeland, they got a moderate thunderstorm, and that was it. A few fallen tree branches, but no real damage.

So, that's my exciting tale, something I don't want to go through again.

[UPDATE: In the next six weeks Orlando went on to experience two more hurricanes - Frances and Jeanne. I feel like a seasoned veteran. There's already been one named tropical storm this year, and I have added to my hurricane kit a crank-operated radio (doesn't need batteries) and an I-mean-business rain poncho. Bring it on. Or actually I'd rather think of it as the hurricane equivalent of bringing an umbrella with you to ward off rain.] :-)