I never meant to stay for a Category 4/5 hurricane. I’ve lived here in Panama City for almost 14 years and have always said if it is higher than a 2 I’m leaving. I didn’t. I’ve been here for other storms and as much as I love nature and love tracking storms I am not a great fan of wind or dying. I was here for Dennis but we didn’t get much more than Tropical Storm Force winds here with a few 75-80 mph gusts. I was nervous but not panicked. Everyone else slept through it. Michael was a whole ‘nother animal.
I went to work that Tuesday morning secure in knowing that we were prepared with all the hurricane essentials like gallons and gallons and gallons of water, batteries, canned goods, lanterns, battery chargers for phones etc. The storm at that time was forecast to be a 2 and I live about 8 miles inland. Surge wouldn’t be an issue for us and we aren’t in a flood plain or evacuation zone. I had checked in on the weather blog I frequent and was getting an uneasy feeling about Michael’s intensification as the day went on and even some of the locals at work that day were getting spooked. They NEVER get spooked about storms here. Ever. They make fun of the Weather Channel for their dramatic coverage of storms. That all stopped October 10th.
By the time I got off work at 6PM that night it was clear to me from the hurricane hunter data coming in on the blogs that Michael was not going to be a 2 and most likely not a 3 either. He was going to be THAT storm. The beast that doesn’t die when he makes landfall. The beast that was still a hurricane when he plowed into Georgia and whose eye straddled three states at one time. I told my customers “I’ll see you on the other side” when I left the bar that evening. Some joked and wanted to know if I’d be opening the bar the next morning. It wasn’t that funny, though and everyone just forced some nervous laughter.
That night my husband and my friend that had been staying with us went to bed but I couldn’t sleep. I watched the hurricane hunter data coming in and by midnight I knew we were in very deep trouble. A few of my friends managed to flee that night. They had family within driving distance out of the path of the storm. All hotels by that time were booked in every direction for 100 miles. I have five cats, an American Staffordshire and two rabbits so not many hotels were gonna take us even if we found one. I finally managed to fall asleep for a few hours knowing I was going to need to be rested for what was coming. I was up by 4AM and checking radar and blogs. At 7 I woke everyone else and explained how serious the situation had become. My friend was a Katrina transplant. She rode Katrina out in Biloxi. She also survived Camille as a child. She understood. My husband lived his whole life in St. Louis where we met. He understands tornados. I told him this was going to be like a very large tornado that lasts a few hours except we don’t have a basement. Sometimes gallows humor isn’t that funny.
We cooked a big breakfast and watched the Weather Channel and local Meteorologists. We took showers and charged phones and battery chargers up. At 11AM the power went out. The stronger bands from Michael were upon us. The news had said the worst would hit around 11:30 and pass by about 2:30. They were right. The winds began howling and heavy rain turned into a white out. You couldn’t see more than ten feet or so. By 11:45 the cats had all retreated under the beds and we huddled in the kitchen where there are concrete block interior walls for the water heater closet. The toilet started groaning and gurgling. We watched out windows as trees started to vibrate. The 80 foot tall, 10 feet around Sycamore in the front yard started to vacillate with the wind. Shit just got very real. Thankfully the wind was coming from the North East so if the tree did go down it was going down away from the house. About then I looked out the back door and saw the smaller Sycamore in the back was already down and covering my entire backyard and my huge Pecan tree had been stripped clean of all of its branches. It looked like a 70 ft. tall toothpick. I raced back to the kitchen as heavier gusts hit us and it was too unsafe now to leave it.
As Michael made landfall just to our East we experienced “mini swirls” where winds are estimated to have reached 180-200mph. They are essentially downbursts of extremely strong winds that flatten anything in their path. The sustained winds were 154mph at this point. The walls and windows started to “breathe” as the pressure dropped. Water was being forced under the window sills and running down the walls. The shingle paper on my addition blew off and there was a loud thud that came from the bedroom roof. Time stood still. I kept thinking it has to be almost over. It was only 12:41.
My phone was still working so I watched the radar on my weather app as he moved over us. We were in the Western eyewall for over 2 hours. The eye slid past to our East. We could see the light from it but we never got a reprieve from the lashing winds. A branch from the fallen Sycamore in the back smashed through a window in the already flooded back room where the roof has been stripped off. Now rain was being blown in at 150mph. Our safe haven in the kitchen was getting blasted by the rain coming from the back room. I remember leaning against the doorway between the kitchen and dining room and feeling it vibrate. The house shook and there was a loud thud from the front as the Sycamore gave up the fight, its roots snapped off.
The wind wasn’t howling but rather roaring. A steady never ending rumbling roar, yes, like a train. The dog had implanted himself into my husbands chest and was shaking and whining. My brave dog who was never afraid of storms was terrified. I realized I was shaking too. The fine line between being my stoic, pragmatic self and a panicking lunatic was being danced upon.
By this time ceilings were pouring water as were electric outlets and light fixtures. Then the ceilings began to cave in. First in the living room a large section crashed in front of the fireplace. We gave up on buckets as it became clear we were not going to save anything and surviving was the only goal at this point. The dining room ceiling gave way next. Thankfully the kitchen ceiling is wood. We were still safe in the kitchen if we avoided the doorway to the back room where the rain was still being blasted through the broken window. It was too dangerous to try and block the window. Another loud thud on the roof, this time one of my 50 ft Palms had snapped in half and landed on our bedroom roof the other two were leaning badly. We couldn’t take much more. The house or the people and animals in it. I peeked out the kitchen window to see the big beautiful pine in my backyard was now lying in my storage shed which it had cut in half.
Thankfully the winds finally began to let up. Slowly they released their grip on us as they moved on to wreak havoc across two states. For a brief moment we reveled in the fact we were ALIVE! All of us, even the fur kids. We still had no idea the devastation we were about to see as we finally ventured outside. We had water up to the driveway and trees down everywhere. I could see the neighbor had a tree on the back of their house. Our driveway was impassable with the Sycamore across it so I walked around it through the pond that was my front yard now and looked up our little dead end street to the main road. It was under water too. We decided to eat hurricane snacks. I called the insurance company. The lady asked when the loss occurred. I said: “Now” and let her listen to the still whistling wind. At least I still had my sense of humor if nothing else. Now came the hard part. Surviving those first two weeks. We were without electricity for 9 days and without water for 13. We got cable back two months to the day later. We bathed with pool water that I had thankfully had the foresight to shock heavily before the storm. We washed clothes with pool water. We lugged buckets of pool water to use for toilet flushing. It was hot. It was humid. It was an adventure. I will NEVER do it again. I will write more about that at a later date. Writing this has taken an emotional toll on me that I didn’t anticipate when I started typing 2 hours ago. Mental health issues here are rampant now. Nobody is immune from the depression and shell shock.
