by Falyn Dimas

Created on: March 28, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

They are unpredictable. You can never guess where, when, how hard, or how long a hurricane will hit. I learned that from the twenty years I grew up and lived in Ocala, Florida. My hometown is in Central Florida. It is about an hour inland on each side which makes a drastic difference when we're discussing wind forces. That does not mean Ocala is safe, a hurricane can destroy anywhere. Because of this, my time growing up was filled with countless visits to the grocery store, hours pulling things into the house and shed that would blow away, and taping up windows to catch glass that could break. Sometimes it was for good reason, and sometimes all the worrying was for nothing. Sometimes you had no hurricanes and sometimes you had 4. Sometimes they were going to hit one place, and took and unexpected turn. They are just that unpredictable.

The first hurricane I remember was Hurricane Andrew in 1992. It was my fifth grade year and my family had been monitoring the hurricane's activity for what seemed like weeks. The eye of the storm was going over Ocala, at least thats what the weathermen reported. Everyone in the entire county rushed to the store. There were riots breaking out over the last gallon of water, panics at the gas pumps, and the shelves went bare within hours at all of the stores. The other thing everyone was preparing for at that time was the first day of school, scheduled for the day after Andrew was due to hit. The hurricane did not come anywhere near Ocala, in fact all we got from it was a little rain and a beautiful summer breeze. Homestead was the unlucky area that felt the wrath of the category five hurricane that still holds records today. They did cancel our first day of school to make shelters for evacuees, but we paid for it at the end of the year. Homestead took years to rebuild, and many people were not willing to give its coastal location a second chance. In the years following the storm Ocala saw a huge rise in population as many of the evacuees moved inland to be safer from major hurricanes.

The hurricane threat went dormant for quite a few years. We had little ones here or there that in the wake of Andrew seemed like nothing. No serious damage was caused in a while. We all began to let our guard down about hurricane preparedness and set ourselves up very poorly for the hurricane season of 2004. Weather experts called it the biggest hurricane season of the century. With over 20 depressions, storms, and hurricanes named, and 4 major hurricanes.

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