Good morning, this is The Smoke Eater for Friday, Sept. 30, 2022, and I'm still alive.
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ABOVE THE FOLD
Shortly after 5:00am is when the most recent updates from NOAA hit the web and wires.
The storm had strengthened over night. Hurricane hunters were recording sustained wind speeds at 153 miles per hour, just two mph below the threshold for a Category 5 storm.
"Well, it got worse," I texted a colleague near Tampa Bay.
New forecasts showed the storm wobbling off projected path. Now it might make landfall around Fort Myers, or it could keep on heading north and slam into St. Petersburg, Tampa and Bradenton.
That difference of 100 miles means everything, from the people living along the shore, to the crazy bastards trying to document the damn storm.
Residents don't know where the hell the storm is heading so it becomes a coin toss deciding whether or not to evacuate. And because total coverage means everything to big media outlets desperate for a ratings and clickbait, small crews get dispatched every all along the Gulf coast and in Orlando.
As a freelancer, that kind of operation is a luxury. Every minute, resource and dollar from one story has to be invested into the next story because there's no guaranteed income: editors are flaky; most audiences don't tip or subscribe; and getting a grant these days requires wasting as much time filling out applications and bullshiting on social media (or glad handing at galas) as actual field work.
You literally can't afford to be in the wrong place at the wrong time so you learn to ration everything. You learn how sleep where you can, how to sniff out free WiFi, count calories for sustainment, figure the maximum travel distance on half a tank of gasoline, and appreciate that a packet of dehydrated NesCafé and a 12 oz. of tap water is a tolerable $.35 coffee.
With storm surges pulling out six to seven feet in the hours before Ian made landfall, the prospect of getting stuck or washed out on the coast were real. And so were the chances to net a desperately needed payday.
It was 5:30am. A choice had to be made.
Better to ride out the storm inland with the reptiles than along the coast with the fish.
BELOW THE FOLD
The Circle K along 540 W. seemed to be the only gas station with power for miles. At just after 9am, pick-up trucks were rolling in, one after the other, in a chaotic stream.
Husbands and wives and neighbors were hoping out of beds and cabs, piling up Jerry cans next to the pumps. Whomever had the cash stared blankly at the disconnected pumps, then wandered over to the store front.
A crude sign on the chained-up door read, "CLOSED." The place had power, but network and cellular lines were still down.
I was trying to get photos of this mess when a Florida man rolled up.
"Hey," came a voice from a large grey truck. "You want to see some shit?"
In most situations, this leads can lead to any number of outcomes, all of as interesting as they are ominous.
"Sure," I replied, shouldering my camera. I hoped up on the side-step of the cab poked my head through the window. A the man and a woman inside pulled out a cellphone and showed me a video of them wading through about a foot of water while entering a small home.
"We just came from my parents house," the woman said. "They live over in the Orange Manor trailer park. It's completely flooded in the back side."
"You gotta see it," the man said.
I thanked them for the tip and punched the address into my navigation system. Luckily, the offline maps I'd downloaded a few days before were detailed enough to get me to the general area.
Sure enough, the entrance to the trailer park had several inches of water. I parked my truck at the front office and began walking around the little community as the last bands of Ian whipped beads of stinging rain with each burst of wind.
A palm tree had that had been blown down the night before sat in the middle of the road. According to NOAA's estimated, they topped 70 miles per hour in this area, about half of what they were on the coast.
"Are you the media," a man shouted from behind a screen door.
"I'm with an international photo wire, yes," I said.
"This is terrible," he said. "I've seen some stuff, but this..."
He shook his head and surveyed the the other homes. Some fared better than others. Some had their aluminum sides stripped clean, scattering the insulation and leaving plywood bones exposed. Some had car ports turned into piles of twisted metal. Some had water creeping up to their doors. Some only had a few pieces of upturned lawn furniture. Each tiny home was different.
Abdool Aziz, 74, said he retired to Florida a few years ago. He'd spent most of his life in New York.
"A few years back I lived through [Hurricane] Irene," he said. "The flooding there? That was bad. Real bad."
"What about this," I asked standing in a few inches in water. "Which do you think is worse?"
"Oh, this is much worse. So much worse!"
Irene, that's the one that flooded the subway, right?"
"Yep. That was bad. This? All night I worried the the roof would come off, or if something would come through the wall. Now I'm worried about the water coming up."
On one end of the community, Lake Eloise was spilling over its banks and swallowing piers and small fishing boats. On the other end, runoff water had pooled and was beginning to flood a few of the homes and streets near the storage lot.
The tired eyes of residents glared at me from front doors and car ports as I wandered with a cigarette in my mouth. A man fiddling with a generator stopped and stared, I simply nodded and waved.
One resident had placed a large sign on the rear window of a car that read, "JESUS IS COMING! ARE YOU READY?"
Experience had taught me that, under these circumstances, it's safer to pick my photo decisions sparingly.
"Aww, man, what'cha lookin' for," a man in a gold sedan chuckled.
Photo wire, storm, I ran through my explanation. "Someone up the road told me about the flooding," I said.
"Oh, man, it's pretty bad way back there. You might need a big truck to get in there. The powers all out, and I think the waters about a foot high. I don't know, I'm heading to my buddy's house. I'm done with this."
Doug Thagard, 68, tried to smile.
"Your friend's..."
"Well, he has power. And fresh coffee."
I laughed.
Thagard said that one of his few remaining joys in life was sticking his nose over the coffee pot first thing in the morning. He said he didn't have much else to look forward to in life, and with the power out, he wasn't sure what to do.
"Everything's connected now," he said before driving off.
I kept winding my way through the neighborhood, talking to exhausted residents who, like Thagard, were struggling with the upset to their morning routine.
I caught up with Thagard about an hour later. He was exiting his sedan at another house and carried a 30 rack of cheap beer under each arm.
"Best idea we could think of," he laughed while posing for a photo.
ONE MORE THING...
Obviously today's issue is a bit different. It had to be stitched together through two days of half-conscious notes amid random internet and power outages. My cat and I are both alive.
It's a little early to point fingers.
It's possible that a rare once in a lifetime event occurred. After all, Category 5 don't hit Florida every year. But the increasing frequency of Category 5 hurricanes, like Andrew (1992); Mitch (1998) Isabel (2003); Ivan (2004); Emily (2005); Katrina (2005); Rita (2005); Wilma (2005); Dean (2007); Felix (2007); Matthew (2016); Irma (2017); Maria (2017); Dorian (2019); and Lorenzo (2019) would seem to throw a wrench in the argument that there this is a rare event as they've become increasingly common over the last two decades. Then again, Hurricane Ian wasn't technically a Category 5.
It's possible that decades of over-consumption of fossil fuels led to the large-scale natural disasters long predicted by environmental scientists. We could call it global warming, or use a term coined and rejected by bullshit artist, Frank Luntz. Then again, there’s a lot of people who don’t want to give up driving cars, eating meat, or living in large suburban homes.
It's possible that the exponential privatization of weather data and a lack of funding for the National Weather Service and NOAA led to inaccurate predictions and warnings for residents, rescue workers, government officials and emergency response crews. Then again, Ronald Reagan did say,"The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.”
It's possible that Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, cared more about poll numbers a month before an election. In the hours before the storm hit, DeSantis attacked reporters asking about his coordination (or lacktherof) with federal agencies, and gave rather rambling statements about first responders and the National Guard deployment when facing his first actual crisis as an executive. Long a vocal opponent of federal intervention in natural disasters, DeSantis eventually asked the White House for help just before Ian made landfall. And as central Florida was plunged into darkness and getting ravaged Wednesday night, the governor was chatting up a sympathetic cable news talking head. Then again, it was prime-time.
All of these things are possible, but then again, it's wrong to politicize them.
One thing is certain: before the day is out, a gaggle of politicos will gather for a three-martini lunch to talk about how best to spin this disaster into a campaign ad before the next election.
OK, here's your cute critter video!
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