by Elizabeth Wordsmith

Created on: April 08, 2008

The summers of 2004 and 2005 almost made me believe that Armageddon was imminent. In 2004 Hurricanes Charley, Francis, Jeanne, and Ivan made landfall in the U.S. If that wasn't bad enough, the next Hurricane season brought us Dennis, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

Floridians are educated through the media throughout the year on hurricane preparedness.
Hurricane season starts on June 1 and goes to November 31 every year. In 2005, because we had been hit by so much devastation the year before, people were on high alert and anxious. Many people who had sustained damage from the previous summer still had not been able to make repairs. So the summer of 2005 gave new meaning to the expressions "adding insult to injury".

On October 24, 2005, Wilma came roaring across the Everglades from Naples with maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour and higher gusts. Boarded up and prepared with the supplies we'd been advised to sustain us through the aftermath, my daughter and I waited for Wilma to inflict her wrath on us.

While we hunkered down, the winds howled. The rains pummeled us. For hours we sat inside waiting for Wilma to subside. A hurricane sounds something like a freight train passing very close. People describe the sounds of a tornado being similar. But a hurricane can pass slowly as the winds are rotating counter clockwise to inflict their damage. First you get hit by one side of the hurricane. Then there is an eerie interlude while the eye passes by. Finally the other side of the hurricane passes. The amount of damage a storm can inflict depends on several factors: the speed of the rotation, the horizontal speed, and wind gusts. Throw in massive amounts of water, storm surge, and tornadoes that can spin off hurricanes and the end result is massive damage.

When the winds started, it was still dark outside. Almost immediately we lost our electric power. We waited in near darkness with just the light of our flashlights and some candles. We didn't want to waste our batteries. So we only used the flashlights when necessary. When would this end? The doors and windows rattled. Then I heard a crashing upstairs. Tentatively, I climbed the stairs to investigate. I discovered the crash had been caused by a large tree in my front yard falling into an upper story window. There literally were large branches protruding into the bedroom, leaves and all.

There was nothing to do about that then. So I went back downstairs to wait. Finally towards noon, if my recollection is right,

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