Hurricane Floyd
rev 9-17-99
ORMOND BEACH - Just a little narrative on our hurricane experience this week. First, though, we are all home and safe. None of us have had any serious property damage. Just a lot of debris down and some spoiled food. But, back to the beginning.
We knew of Floyd’s existence more than two weeks ago. But, until it got much closer, no one knew where he was headed. I left on a business trip last week on Wednesday, out to California. By Sunday morning, forecasters were beginning to think that Floyd was becoming a real threat to the US East Coast. By the time I was settled in a hotel in Sacramento on Sunday night and called home, Jan said that the predicted track was for the Daytona – Cape Canaveral area. By this time, Floyd was up to a category 4 storm with sustained winds of 155 mph and a storm surge under the eye of 18-feet. But, the track wasn’t definite yet. Projected time to landfall was for Thursday afternoon.
I decided to make a decision on going home early on Monday night. Seemed like plenty of time. Jan and Nicole started to organize home for a storm – picking things up outside and getting storm supplies. By mid-morning Monday, things were looking a lot grimmer. Forecasters thought the odds high that either Floyd would hit along the Florida coast or graze the coast close in causing hurricane force storms all along Florida, Georgia and the Carolina’s. The storm was so big, that they had to issue evacuation orders Monday evening because the first effects of the storm would reach the shore by Tuesday afternoon. By this time, Floyd was nearly 600 miles across and had hurricane force winds out nearly 200 miles from the eye.
Meanwhile, I was driving south across California, headed for Corcoran (near Fresno) where our factory is (a 4 hour drive). I arrived in Corcoran about 4:00pm PDT Monday. When I called Jan for an update, her and Nicole were loading valuables into the cars and packing the house for a storm. I decided to fly home ASAP! It looked like the earliest available flight would be Tuesday morning out of Los Angeles (another 3 hour drive). So, I headed down there. When I got to the airport, I decided to see if there might be a red-eye to Orlando or something. Turned out, I could leave at midnight and arrive in Daytona at 10:30am on Tuesday. This was cutting it close since everyone in the Daytona area had been told to begin leaving by noon, Tuesday. Jan, Nicole, Jessy and Joy were loading up. Bennie was getting ready to leave too, since Jacksonville was also being told to evacuate. So, I turned in my rental car after driving most of the day and got on an airplane. When I got to Atlanta, they said that the airport in Daytona was already closed. I was re-routed to Jacksonville which was still open. Once there, I rented a car and drove home. I called the rental agency in Daytona to drop the car, but they had already closed to evacuate.
Jessy was at the office (across the street from the ocean) helping to secure everything, pull the computers, etc. Mark was at home with the boys and packed. I95 northbound was already a parking lot from Jacksonville to Daytona 90 miles). The mall Bennie’s store is in at Jacksonville had also closed to evacuate. Even April and Dwight, at their home near Orlando were making storm preparations. The forecast was for hurricane force winds more than 50 miles inland. Jan and Nicole had everything packed when I got home just before noon. In final preparation, I took all of the bed mattresses and propped them into the bigger windows. We closed all of the doors inside and turned the power off to the house. Mark had towed the Bayliner out to his house to get it out from under the big trees here. By this time, I had already been up for 27 hours except for a nap on the plane from LA. Jan and Nicole had pretty much been up all night too watching the storm warnings and putting things away.
Floyd, meanwhile, had continued west. The forecast was for a turn to the northwest, but every hour he went west brought his eye 15 miles closer to us. At 2:00pm Tuesday, we decided to leave. Joy joined us and we drove out to Jessy’s house to get them. Bennie was packed up and heading for Atlanta. All westbound highways from the coast were choked up with cars. We decided to go west on FL 100 towards Palatka, then cut over to Gainesville on FL 20 where we would pick up I75. On I75, we were going towards Tampa. Mark’s sister and brother-in-law have a home over there that is vacant and they said we could camp out in it until it was safe to go home. I thought that since FL 100 was a rural highway that it may not be plugged up. WRONG!!! It took us nearly 4 hours to cover 35 miles. Altogether, the normally 2-1/2 hour drive to Tampa took 10 hours! By the time we got to Palatka, we were experiencing strong gusty winds, heavy rain and thunderstorms from the rain bands of Floyd. We got to our destination at midnight with our 6 car convoy. Jan was driving the van, Nicole had the Lincoln, Joy was in her pickup and Mark in his, Jessy had her car and I was driving the rental that I couldn’t return. All of them were loaded with personal effects, kyds and pets. We had 4 cats and a german shepherd with us. By then, I had been mostly up for 39 hours. Everyone else was in about the same shape.
We slept! It was really great that we had a place to go. Mark’s sister was a godsend in giving us a destination! Meanwhile, Bennie had started out but had car trouble and had turned back. He and his family had battened down the hatches at home to stick it out. By midnight, the storm had turned northwest finally and looked like Florida would be spared. We could still feel the winds from it clear over in Tampa though. Winds at Daytona did reach 75 mph – just hurricane strength – for a few hours overnight on Tuesday as Floyd went by. A buoy 100 miles offshore from Daytona measure 55-foot high waves. Winds out there were still at 145 mph. Wednesday morning, the storm started to move out to the north but the surf was still really rough at Daytona. They had about a 3 foot storm surge above high tide. You may have seen the pier wash away here at noon on Wednesday. That was at high tide with the waves coming in from the retreating storm. When we woke up Wednesday, it looked safe to start home so we did. Traffic wasn’t too bad and we got back in about 3 hours. It was still very windy and raining when we got home.
My fear from the storm was that some of the 75-foot high oak trees around our house might fall on the house and destroy it. Our house is 25 feet above sea level and about 4 miles from the ocean. There is only a river and a swamp between us the coast. If Floyd had come here, the storm surge would have raised the sea level enough to bring the shore within 2 blocks of the house. Waves from 35 to 55 feet high would have probably made it in here. Winds of 140 mph have four times as much force as a 70 mph wind. Drive down the road at 70 mph and put your hand out the window. Now imagine four times that force pushing on everything for hours. Going through a storm like Floyd would be like going through a thunderstorm that is ten times as violent as the worst you have been in and having it last continuously for about 14 hours! Not a pretty picture! There were several of the large oak trees down in our neighborhood anyway from the storm we did have. One had taken down a power pole. None hit any houses, but one in my neighbor’s yard is down over the fence and half in my yard out back. We finally got power back yesterday afternoon after being home 2 days without lights or water (I have a well).
Thank God we were all spared and also spared major damage! I should have the debris picked up by tomorrow evening and Jan should have the house back together by the middle of next week.
Now for a few final statistics. Floyd was way up in the top ten for hurricanes threatening the US. It was bigger and stronger than Andrew and nearly as bad as Camille. Because of its predicted path, Floyd caused the largest single evacuation in US peacetime history. About 2,000,000 people in coastal states were told to leave. Wednesday night, the nearest available hotel rooms were in Tennessee or Louisiana. The Bahamas had a nearly direct hit with winds of 110 mph. Florida had 290,000 people out of power on Wednesday. Even though it didn’t hit anybody down here, damage will still be may still be in the millions. As far as I know, there were no fatalities caused by the evacuation.
Emergency planners should study and learn from the evacuation. Too many people became discouraged by the massive traffic tie-ups and turned back to their homes. I4 and I10 should have been made one-way westbound. Alternate two-lane east-west highways should have been made one-way. ALL obstacles to smooth flow west should be removed. On highway 100, the jam we were in was caused by a traffic light in East Palatka that was still operating! All highways should be set up for a controled merge as was 100 and 17 in San Mataeo.
Several local radio and TV stations broadcast continuous storm and traffic information around the clock. These really helped during our trek to keep the big picture in perspective. I'm sure that these broadcasts helped a lot to calm people caught in the massive traffic jams. This is the way news media should work during emergencies!
Anyway, WHAT A WEEK!!! The weather this weekend is going to be clear, sunny and calm with highs in the 80’s – just the way Florida is supposed to be!!!! (Actually, it has been overcast and raining most of the weekend. And these are the same people we trust to tell us where a hurricane is going!)
Some links with more:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/weather/9909/hurricane.floyd/frameset.exclude.html
http://www.newsjournalonline.com
http://207.203.64.34/Emergency_Management/emerg.htm
http://www.FlaglerEmergency.com
http://volusia.org/storm/default.htm
http://www.ocoem.com/Reports/default.asp
http://www.seminolepublicsafety.org
http://www.dca.state.fl.us/bpr/EMTOOLS/hurrwtch.htm
BE SAFE!!!