Hill columnist finds Florida hurricane scary enough

by MICHAEL CARUSO

For the past two decades, I’ve spent most of the time between the end of teaching the summer session at both Bryn Mawr Conservatory and Settlement Music School and the start of the regular teaching season by visiting a friend in South Florida. Despite these visits always taking place during the height of the hurricane season, my path never crossed with one of theirs. I had almost come to the point of wishing that our paths would cross — just for the sake of the experience.

Until this year.

I flew into Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport early Wednesday morning, Aug. 24, and was informed that the minor tropical depression that had unexpectedly become tropical storm Katrina was expected to make landfall late the following night as a category one hurricane. The initial forecast placed that landfall in the vicinity of Palm Beach, farther north along Florida’s Atlantic coast. As it turned out, hurricane Katrina hit land with 90 mph sustained winds smack along the border between Hallandale Beach in southern Broward County and Golden Beach in northern Miami/Dade County.

Until this past March, the friend with whom I’ve stayed during these summer trips lived in a condominium in Hallandale Beach, a literal stone’s throw from Golden Beach. His new home is only about four miles south of that dividing line, right on Route A1A, what is called Ocean Drive in Broward County and Collins Avenue in Miami/Dade.

In other words, just close enough to watch from his 16th floor north-facing balcony the very eye of the hurricane pass directly over the site of his previous home. The full breadth of the storm took every bit of 12 hours to make its progress, turning Thursday evening through Friday morning into a “live” performance of a program on the Weather Channel.

Because forecasters had continued to incorrectly assume that Katrina would not reach hurricane force, not even the suggestion of a voluntary evacuation was ever given by public safety officials in Palm Beach, Broward or Miami/Dade counties. The result was that hundreds of thousands of people went about their normal business throughout the day of Aug. 25. My friend and I, for instance, had made plans to visit friends for cocktails late on Thursday afternoon. By that time, of course, the weather had already begun turning something other than pleasant.

The drive north through Hallandale into Hollywood was stormy, but not yet threatening to the point of dangerous. However, by the time our visit ended, the weather outside was terrible. Branches of palm trees were already strewn about the streets and the projectory of the rain was already nearly approaching a horizontal angle. Many restaurants had already closed, and people were obviously anxious to get home to batten down the hatches.

We were very lucky, indeed. Our building never lost power (although the lights flickered on and off a good three dozen times) or telephone service. All that was lost was the cable television, and that for only 12 hours at the most. Nonetheless, watching and hearing the fury of a storm that was only a category one hurricane, not a category four as Katrina was when it made landfall just east of New Orleans, was both riveting and unnerving.

Far more terrifying than the look of salt-laced blasts of watery wind was the sound of it all. It was like the manifestation of every nightmare of howling, shrieking demons gleefully dragging the condemned soul down into the depths of the Inferno. No movie has ever exaggerated that sound — or even approached its reality.

My friend’s former building was less fortunate than his new one. Power and phone service were lost early Thursday evening and weren’t restored for two full days. Because it’s an older building, its emergency generator is relatively weak and could only power one elevator and a minimum of hallway lighting. Everything else was lost, including the phones. That translated into two sundowns and their subsequent darkness, no air conditioning in Florida’s sweltering heat of late Aug., and the spoiling of every perishable piece of food and drop of liquid in refrigerators and freezers throughout the condominium.

The sense of good neighborliness among the former building’s residents fortunately held firm. Those who are younger looked after those who are older, and Friday and most of Saturday were spent cooking everyone’s food on gas-powered grills out by the pool. And it all ended well. The power was restored without anyone suffering serious loss let alone injury.

But not everyone in South Florida fared so luckily. Nine people lost their lives, perhaps as a direct result of not having been adequately warned of the impending arrival of a powerful storm in a timely fashion. Whole portions of the city of Miami were flooded. And remember, Katrina was only a category one hurricane when it first hit land, yet it still packed a sufficiently powerful punch to inflict noticeable damage on a region relatively capable of making a quick recovery. Surveying the neighborhood on Friday afternoon, I found trees and power lines down everywhere, but by Saturday afternoon almost everything everywhere was cleaned up and nearly back to normal.

That’s not going to be the case in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Recovery will be long, difficult, costly and probably incomplete. Having finally got my wish to see a hurricane, I’ll never again take one lightly — and be more careful with my wishes.

Michael Caruso is the Local’s classical music columnist.