By Karen, Key West, FL
Posted Saturday, October 29, 2005

Weathering Wilma: Our Story (EVERYBODY who stayed has one!)
Yes, we were among the 95% of Key West residents who ignored the evacuation order and stayed to face Wilma.

The news reports say that only 5% of Key West residents obeyed the mandatory evacuation orders and left the Keys to avoid the wrath of Wilma. In hindsight that makes 95% of us look pretty stupid, but at the time Wilma was scheduled to brush by as a CAT 2, and everybody felt confident that our concrete block construction and metal storm shutters were up to the challenge.

It wasn’t until about 11 P.M. Sunday night, just hours before Wilma was due to arrive, that her status was upgraded to a CAT 3. Of course, it was way too late to evacuate, but it was not too late to get to higher ground. At least that was the conversation in our house. Michael came over to the house from his office where he was watching football and announced it was time for us to move to a friend’s house that was a full story higher. Our home sits at around 10 feet above sea level, right on the bay and he was fairly certain that it was the storm surge, not the hurricane winds that were going to pose a threat. Unwisely, I countered that I was tired… too tired to pack up and walk down the street. WRONG ANSWER.

So, we stayed in our house by the bay, and waited. The storm began to arrive in force right on cue around midnight. We lost power and quickly switched to the generator. The generator is only powerful enough to maintain one wing of the house, so we closed off the majority of the house, and moved into the guest wing which is a part of our “power safety zone” that includes the refrigerator, kitchen and family room. We found out that our guest room bed is very comfortable and since it is trucked away from the wind it is also very quiet. I slept most of the night waking only to the BIG BANGS of mysterious flying objects hitting the shutters or rattling off the tile roof.

So far so good… all shuttered in our cave like house, we couldn’t see anything outside, but our feeling was that we had met Wilma and had won. Our assessment was proven very wrong when our neighbor Sue Goss called to tell us that the water that had been pushed out of the bay by the southern winds was coming back and it didn’t look good. I was still asleep when the call came, but I registered it in the back of my brain as I snuggled in for more sleep. Thinking Wilma had moved on I was quite surprised when Michael came into the bedroom and announced that he had something I needed to see NOW.

He had raised one of the electronic storm shutters in the bedroom enough for us to see that the bay had filled to overflowing and there was now a small, but swift river of bay water running along the side of the house. The water was clearly rising and we knew we should get out immediately. We gathered up a small bag, our computers and Ralph and headed out the garage door planning to go down to be with John and Sue. The minute we opened the garage door we knew it was too late. The waters were several feet deep and the current was too much. We couldn’t drive.. we couldn’t walk.. we had to stay.

I think it was just about that time that we abruptly lost power. The generator just stopped… and we correctly deduced that the water had ripped the propane tanks away from the house leaving the generator with no fuel. It must have been only minutes after that that we realized that the water was also tearing at the big shutters that protect our wall of windows facing the bay. The shutters were pulling apart at the bottom and waves were beginning to bang against the foundation and the now unprotected glass of the windows.

Visions of New Orleans flashed through my brain… and we began to think about options. How high could we get.. the beds? The top of the kitchen island? At the time it seemed clear that the glass on the windows probably could not withstand the constant pounding of the waves and so we opened up the shutters to the courtyard, and the big glass doors along the courtyard entry way and hoped that IF.. WHEN… the glass broke that we could provide a path of least resistance for the water to flow through the living room and out into the courtyard. Of course, the courtyard was also beginning to fill with water from the street. The garage was flooding with rising water, too. So we sat down on our lawn chairs, stored on the porch to protect them from the hurricanes, and watched and waited…. And took pictures, of course!

I tried to call the kids.. I wanted to remind them that I loved them just in case. We talked to mom.. and knew she’d enlist an army of prayer warriors to fight the storm.. and we prayed too..that the storm would be calmed and that the glass in the windows would hold.

Michael kept checking water levels in the garage and it was an incredible relief when he came back and announced he thought the water was receding. Though the winds were still blowing fiercely, and the waves were still crashing against the glass windows, that news brought tremendous hope.

It wasn’t long before the 11 inches of water in our garage was gone and we could wander out through the garage to watch the “river” that was once Cannon Royal Drive. The sight was incredible really.. all kinds of debris floating by, a car floated and lodged in the bushes, palms bent and broken. Ralph spied a coconut floating by and before I could do anything about it he was off to “fetch”. I was terrified that the current would sweep him out to sea, and called him back fearful he wouldn’t even hear me over the wind and water. But he did.. and swam back in that leisurely way he swims looking at me as if to say.. ”What’s the problem mom?”

As soon as the waters were largely back in the bay the neighborhood began to connect and assess the damage. Almost everyone lost ALL of the cars in their garages. Many had water in the garage as high as the tops of their cars. It was clear that the landscaping was toast, and one neighbor had a gasoline fire in his garage at the height of the flooding. There was debris everywhere, no power or water or phone or GASP DSL…

Water was restored first, power on day four… we’re still waiting for phone and DSL. We survived our complete lack of power thanks to John and Sue who adopted us and fed us dinner each night. We all worked together to share what we had… Mike became the island chauffeur, Shawn and his crew began the cleanup.. and so on. Disasters seem to bring out the best in people in most cases.

Obviously it will take some time to recover. It’s hard to get work done down here in the Keys and many of the people who are qualified to do it are busy with their own homes. But we feel incredibly blessed to have survived with minimal damage and minimal loss of life all over the Keys.

All of our family is asking us to promise to never again stay to face the storm, but we really cannot do that. In general, we’re happy we were here to get the six buckets of water out of the sunroom, living room and office, wash the salt water off the cars, and pick up the debris. I WOULD get to higher ground, but then even the locals and long time residents say they’ve never seen anything like this storm surge flood. Of course, we have to admit that we still are not thinking clearly. An event like this creates a bit of mental confusion that lingers much longer than the flood waters, so we’ll see.

Life on this crazy island that is part small-town-anywhere and part wild and crazy mardi gras every night is easing back to normalcy. They did have to postpone Fantasy Fest, but the locals paraded anyway. The sun is shining, and the blue-green gradient so distinctive of the waters here is back blotting out the memory of the angry gray sea.. The birds are fishing in the shallows, the infamous bars on Duval are open and rowdy, the tourists are coming back and each night there is another spectacular Key West sunset.

I’ve posted about 30 photos of neighborhood flooding and post hurricane Key West shots on the homepage of www.ourislands.com.

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