In Harm's Way

(image from the Weather Channel)

It is always distressing to heart news of natural disasters such as Hurricane Irma, but they become much more terrifying when you personally know someone who is in harm's way.

I have a high school friend who is in south Florida at this moment.  He and his husband live in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but they also own a condo in Miami Beach.  While I was in Mexico, when it seemed that Irma was heading toward Puerto Rico, I sent him an email telling them to be safe.  He replied the next day that they had gone to their Florida home for Labor Day weekend.  They had planned to return to San Juan, but had decided to stay put in Miami Beach when they saw the predicted course of the hurricane just to the north of Puerto Rico.  But, by that time Irma was possibly going to hit Florida also, and they didn't know what to do.  I told them to get out of there... possibly head up to Ohio where his mom still lives.

As it turned out Puerto Rico did not receive a direct hit from the hurricane.  However, it became more likely that Florida was going to bear the brunt of the storm.  They did go to the airport to try to go to Ohio, but all flights were completely booked.  The interstates heading north are gridlocked with bumper-to bumper traffic (and good luck if you need to fill up the gas tank).  As it became more probable that Miami would take a direct hit, and as a mandatory evacuation of Miami Beach was announced, I became more worried.  Their condo is just two blocks away from the ocean, and they are talking about a 12 foot storm surge.  Another high school friend and I have been sending them emails and leaving phone messages urging them to get to a shelter away from the ocean.  

I finally received an email today.  In spite of the evacuation order, they have planned to ride out the storm in their condo.  He said they have a week's supply of food and water, that they are on the fifth floor of the concrete building, and that the windows are all shuttered.  There are others in their building that have made the same decision.  For their sake I was relieved to hear today that the hurricane will probably veer a bit to the west.  (Good news for Miami, but terrible news for cities like Naples, Fort Myers and on up to the Tampa area.)  But hurricanes can be unpredictable, and it will not be until tomorrow morning that we know exactly where Irma makes landfall.  I still think that they should head to a shelter, but time is running out for that.  I will anxiously await news from them.

UPDATE:  Fortunately Irma was not as disastrous as it might have been.  I received an email from my friend in Miami Beach, and they weathered the storm with no problems. 

Nature's Wrath

Yesterday Hurricane Patricia slammed into Mexico's Pacific coast between the cities of Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta.  Patricia, which had rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to a Category 5 Hurricane, at one point had winds of up to 200 miles per hour, making it the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.  Fortunately landfall was along a less populated stretch of coastline, and the winds had diminished somewhat.  However, with winds of 165 miles per hour, it was still a potentially deadly Category 5 storm.  At this point there are no reports of casualties, but I have to wonder how long it will be before we have the full report of deaths and damage from more remote areas of the country.  The storm weakened as it hit the mountains, but there was still the danger of flash floods and mudslides.  As Patricia crosses the border into Texas there is the threat of serious flooding there.  One can only hope that when the full extent of the storm's effects are known, the reports of casualties will remain very low.  This could have been a natural disaster rivaling Mexico City's 1985 earthquake, but for now it seems that Mexico might have dodged a bullet.

(image taken from the web)

In 1965, when I was in junior high school, we were living near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and experienced Hurricane Betsy.  The storm was the most costly that the state had experienced up to that point.  It seemed that Betsy's northward track was going to miss Florida all together.  But then it took an extreme change of course and headed southwest toward Florida.  For me, a thirteen year old who had never experienced anything like that, it was an exciting adventure.  And classes, of course, had been cancelled.  I remember the next-door neighbor coming over to help us with the hurricane shutters.  All of the windows had metal awnings which could be lowered and screwed into the wall, covering the windows.  We never lost electricity.  We sat in the house, unable to see outside, watching old movies that were broadcast continually on the TV station.  (This was long before the Weather Channel and its constant coverage.)  When it was over, there was a lot of standing water and debris all over, but our neighborhood suffered no major damage.  However, five people in Florida died, and there was $139 million worth of damage.

Of course, here in Ohio, we don't have to worry about hurricanes.  We did, however, experience the remnants of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.  Gusts of 68 miles per hour were reported in the Cleveland area.  I remember lying awake in bed that night, listening to the wind howling, and hoping that the trees around my house would not topple.  The next morning, other than a lot of small branches strewn all over, there was no damage in the neighborhood.  When I went out to run some errands, though, I saw numerous trees that had been uprooted, and at least one which had fallen on a house.  I was lucky.

I am hoping against hope that the people in Mexico have also "lucked out".