Roger’s Reality: Lord of Storms

By Roger Owens

Tuesday, September 3, 2019. We see the reports that a storm is coming. We saw them as far back as last Wednesday. This is not unusual in Florida. It is so not unusual that it is hardly, no pun intended, a blip on our radar. It follows one of the most common tracks, coming off the West African coast somewhere northwest of the Bight of Benin, the name of which I, personally, have always found romantic, dangerous, adventurous; a name from novels of wooden ships, pirates, and slave traders. It crosses the Atlantic, glacially gathering strength like a boxer lifting weights, determined to bulk up for a fight far in the future. It creeps into the southwestern Caribbean, and our consciousness, like news reports of a string of grisly ax murders in a nearby town, disturbing but not personally threatening. Yet. It makes our stomachs tighten up a little, but we are not currently ready to allow it to affect our monotonous daily existences.
    It then follows the line of the Windward Islands, skirting to the south of lonely Barbados, passing right over Martinique and Dominica, where our friend Kirk has lived for fifteen years and where we have visited many times. We have several friends there, and a deep affinity for this lovely jungle island paradise; we watched in horror two years ago as Maria battered her tiny, helpless shores and scraped away the jungle from the lush mountains in the way Army ants sometimes come ravaging from the rain forests, or the swarming locusts of Biblical times stripped away the livelihoods of the ancient Egyptians. This time, Dominica gets heavy rains, but this is a small hardship; to the inhabitants of this island, where it rains as much as an inch a day, a downpour to us is just a humid afternoon.
    Still a tropical storm, Dorian rides over Guadeloupe and Montserrat, doing little damage and providing some of these drier locales some much-needed moisture. Then, on August 28, it becomes a Category 1 hurricane; the boxer has succeeded in moving up into the next weight class. It hits the U.S. Virgin Islands and shaves by terrified Puerto Rico, which holds its breath in collective fright, memories of Maria still fresh and her devastation still plain in the demolished houses and blue-tarpaulined roofs. We begin to take notice; as if the latest ghastly murder is in a nearby suburb.
    The usual anxiety ramps up in Florida. We have a long and frightening history with hurricanes; Andrew, Charlie, Francis, Jeanne, Ivan, Wilma, Matthew, Irma. These are only the highlights. It is a given that there have been so many that we can’t begin to remember them all. Warnings are now coming from the politicians and first responders, the Governor, the sheriffs, and the news channels joining in a well-worn litany of fear and dread anticipation. It’s pointed right at us, like a laser-guided weather-missile with our name written on its nose cone. Here we go again.

Now Dorian is a Category 3 storm, its unusually low forward speed an excruciating prediction of the devastation such a slow-moving storm can wreck upon its hapless victims, especially those islanders in its path with literally nowhere to which they can evacuate and no money to do so if there was. Forecasts of increases in the strength and ferocity of this travelling disaster motivate us to break out the shutters, crank up the generator and get serious about supplies. There are two schools of thought. One is the skeptics, often long-time residents who think they have seen it all, disgusted with the scurrying of the newbies and snowbirds, ridiculing the prophets of doom, now on every channel, seemingly twenty-four hours a day. The other are the pragmatic ones, also many old-timers, who prepare for the worst and hope for the best. And, of course, those who have not been blooded in these battles with the sky, whom we describe as not yet being “hurricanized.” Until you have seen giant oaks laid flat, buildings that might have been used for shelters demolished, eighteen-wheelers piled atop each other like mating behemoths, massive boats a mile from the shore on dry land, you haven’t been hurricanized. When you have seen the polite young men and women at the powerless stoplights in their camouflaged outfits with their M-4 automatic rifles directing traffic, the concrete bed of a road bridge over the intercoastal waterway thrown off the pilings into the water, the metal roof of a school piled up over the gaping, shambolic interior like huge steel waves looming over the shattered wastes of Hell, you have been initiated into the ranks of the inner circle.
    At the local grocery, the shelf where the bottled water normally sits, an entire aisle long, is a palpable absence, like the gums of an ancient crone with not a single tooth left in her poor head. Gas stations have bags over the pump handles, then they don’t, then they do. The lines at Home Depot are jammed with full shopping baskets and those wheeled lumber-carts, loaded with plywood, trundled by nervous citizens whose impatience is tempered by exchanges of the dark humor favored by initiates of the Awful and Malevolent Temple of the Lord of Storms. Oh yes, we native Floridians, along with those who have been here long enough to have “sand in their shoes,” we have a certain humor associated with these storms, and it is uniquely our own. You’re a “real Floridian” when you’re only pissed that the hurricane will ruin the holiday weekend, when it is just another excuse for a party, when you have been through so many that you forget which storm you’re telling a story about. For me, one such story is listening to Bahamas Island Radio, 810 AM, and the station, a very religiously oriented one, is getting regular reports by telephone from a retired preacher living in a small wooden house – just say it, it’s a shack, probably with a roof of corrugated tin – on some Godforsaken spit of rock on the northern tip of Grand Bahama Island. The announcer, a woman with the quintessential black Bahamian accent, asks at one point if he isn’t afraid, and why didn’t he leave? In return, he asks, where would he go? Besides, he says, God is watching over him; if it is his time to go, then His will be done; the preacher will go. During one of these calls, as the wild wind screams over the old phone lines and crackles over the airwaves, the call is broken off short. Days later, they report that when they go to his property, there is nothing left but the rock. It was, quite obviously, his time indeed.
    This reminds me of joke, skewering the faithful: A preacher prays for God to save him as the water rises and the wind howls. A huge truck filled with refugees stops, the water up to the axles; the preacher says no, God will provide. The water is higher now and a boat comes by. The preacher says no, God will save him. Finally, he is on the roof, the water now to the rafters, and a rescue helicopter lowers a basket. The preacher refuses, saying God is faithful unto His children who believe in Him. The water carries him away and he is killed. He stands before the Throne, wringing his hands, asking in anguish why did God not save him? God replies “Dude, I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter!” Social media is rife with memes of this nature, most to do with “hurricane supplies,” i.e., snacks and booze, and in some circles, weed. Some favorites are: “If you eat all the hurricane snacks you won’t fit in the little rescue basket from the helicopter!” and “This hurricane better hit soon, or half of Florida is going to die of alcohol poisoning!” I add my own on Facebook: “Day 2 pre-hurricane. Pistachios half gone. Into wasabi peas.” “Day 1 pre-hurricane. Wasabi peas gone. Potato chips depleted. Beer seriously low.” “Night one pre-hurricane. Potato chips gone. Beer almost out. Forced to drink rum straight.” “Day 1 actual hurricane. Eating our dead. Dogs in serious danger. Burning vodka in the lamps.” Of course, this is all totally frivolous; I would NEVER run out of beer.  Hell no. I’m hurricanized.

Dorian is now a Category 5 monster, reportedly the most powerful hurricane in modern Florida history. The Saffir-Simpson Scale seems insufficient for the categorization of a catastrophe of this magnitude. Such storms are object lessons in physics; the increase in velocity from one category to the next (called “delta-V”) increases the force applied by that wind by the square of the difference in that velocity. Flowing, knee-deep water can wash you away; it can wash your car away. We warn our friends by social media that the major causes of death in hurricanes are, in decreasing order: water, carbon monoxide, and electricity. Don’t try to cross moving water, even in a vehicle. Don’t be careless with generators, and don’t go wading in the filthy floodwaters, where downed power lines can kill you deader than hammered dogshit. There are always a few knuckleheads who do something stupid and wind up statistics. One such dimwit in Singer Island, one of the most exclusive addresses in Florida, is filmed with his equally mentally challenged girlfriend, out on a pier, where a wave washes him off onto the beach. She barely escapes being washed down with him. Having miraculously escaped death or serious injury, does the fool run? No! His apparently waterproof phone in hand, he stands on the sand, filming the incoming waves! Absolute proof that having money does not prevent abject stupidity. After Francis, a storm which obliterated much of our town and many other areas, an award-winning news photo showed some idiot with his Golden retriever, out on the pier at Fort Pierce Inlet, as a giant wave towers over his head. I meant to find out what happened to them, but as the area was utterly destroyed and we had all we could do to survive, I never did. I remember thinking at the time, if you insist on being a complete moron, at least leave the poor dog at home.  
    We watch in horror and dismay as Abaco and then the main Bahama islands are gored by this rampaging beast, stomped and chewed and flattened and washed away. The only thing I can remember even remotely similar is the tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2013, the power of that water blasting all in its path to bloody broken bits. I know, being a longtime penitent of the Awful and Malevolent Temple, that many of the thousands missing will never be found. They are food for the sharks and crabs. The terrified woman cries on YouTube, “Pray for us in Abaco, oh Lord, pray for us!.” as the water flows around the houses and the tops of the palm trees – all that is visible of them – thrash in the wind like demented dancers in a nightclub of the damned. It chills the blood. The latest horrific ax murder was someone right in our town. He kills every night, the only question is, which home will be next? It is as if we walk through the forest and know there is a predator out there, and we know it is hunting us. Now, it seems, it is our turn.
    We have put up the shutters on the doors, and we have the accordion shutters on the windows which are not only a snap to close and lock, but will, we are assured by the manufacturer, withstand an end-on hit by a two-by-four at 160 miles per hour. Just two years ago, Irma skinned the top off our roof, and we had enough insurance money to buy a metal roof this time. We refused the peak vents that, while allowing better cooling in the Florida heat, also allow wind and water in when it is going sideways, which only happens in a hurricane. We had a new roof in the ’04 and ’05 seasons, thanks to a little tempest in a teapot named Irene that came from the Gulf. In that horror-show of two years, wherein our first two grandchildren were born almost a year apart, both in the middle of hurricanes –Jeanne and Wilma respectively – we didn’t lose a single shingle in either year. New is good – old, not so much. Irma proved what fifteen years of Florida sun will do to your skin, and your roof.
    It has been predicted for two days that a radical turn to the north may yet save us from devastation. As of this writing, it looks as though that may be the case. We certainly hope so. There are those who lack good sense, who express irritation at having prepared for the worst and fared the best. We are not among them. We have seen trees and debris piled higher than the ranch-style roofs of our neighborhood, right along our house between us and the canal, while trucks lined up to be loaded day and night. We saw Punta Gorda after Charlie, where entire mobile-home parks were reduced to square miles of wreckage, nothing more than waist-high, veritable wastelands of aluminum and structural Styrofoam. We have seen marinas with millions of dollars worth of boats sunk, destroyed, or just missing. It is estimated that after Francis and Jeanne in ’04, $50 million worth of pleasure and fishing craft were simply gone without a trace, from just the Fort Pierce Marina alone. The catwalk under South Bridge, which was precast concrete more substantial than many actual bridges, was thrown down and pushed half a mile across the river, and parts of it can still be seen in the water, serving as artificial reefs where the fishing is now enhanced by that incalculable loss of property and value. We have seen death, destruction, heartache and misery, and we pray not only for those upon whom it has once again been visited by the Lord of Storms, but we pray as well that it will not, at least this time, be visited once more upon ourselves. We have been hurricanized.

Copyright © 2019 by Roger Owens