Here’s the thing about hurricanes. Every season is a crapshoot.
A monster like Hurricane Irma in September 2017 is either gonna hit dead on or it’s not. When Key West folks went to bed on Sept. 9, Irma was supposed to slam Old Town as a vicious Category 5 storm. Away from the island by chance, I wondered during during a restless night whether Ranger Ed and the Cat 5s had a prayer of surviving the next few hours. I mean, Irma was pegged to be a killer, and Key West won’t survive one of those.
When Irma made landfall around 9 a.m., Sunday, Sept. 10, near Cudjoe Key, 30 miles east of Key West, the storm had “weakened” to a Cat 4. Key West got away with limited flooding and winds that barely got above a nasty tropical storm. Cudjoe and the Lower and Middle Keys took the brunt of Irma, which brought 15 feet of flooding, destroyed 1,100 homes and damaged another 3,000. Monroe County estimated that Irma caused at least $100 million in damage — and almost a decade later locals still point out places that haven’t recovered or been rebuilt.
We dodged Hurricane Wilma on Oct. 25, 2005. Or we thought we had. Rated as a Cat 3 storm, Wilma passed over Key West as a Cat 1, and we all know we are wont to ignore such a trifling blow. But hours later, two massive, sequential storm surges inundated the island from all sides with floodwaters reaching 5 feet in many places. Wilma was a lesson about getting too cocky.
The only recorded Cat 5 to take on Key West was Oct. 10-11, 1846. There were about 1,500 people living on the island. Though estimates vary, it’s likely that at least 250 died and most of the 500 to 600 homes were destroyed.
Lt. William C. Pease, of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Morris, wrote an eyewitness account. “At Key West the tide was five feet high and running six miles an hour through the center of the town. The citizens fled to the back part of the town, which is rather higher than the rest, into the bushes — laid down and held on, expecting every moment the waves would reach them.
“Parents were separated from their children, husbands from their wives, and all was confusion, terror and dismay. The island trembled to its very center. A few hours more and a white sand beach would have covered the now desolate remains of Key West.”
Hurricane season 2026: It only takes one
So, no, you can’t get all smug about how our homes and infrastructure are built to take on big storms. We aren’t and never have been. If a Cat 5 hits Key West at high tide, you can kiss pretty much everything goodbye except the storm-hardened structures built in the last decade or so. You know the ones, those unlovely concrete behemoths whose architecture isn’t exactly Key Westy.
Six weeks before the start of hurricane season 2026, reliable forecasters predict a slightly quieter season (yay!) but not in Monroe County and Miami-Dade (yikes!). Colorado State University predicts Monroe County has the highest probability in Florida of a named storm (39%), hurricane (22%), and major hurricane passing within 50 miles (12%).
Maybe we’ll get lucky as we did last year. Since I’m not inclined to roll the dice, I’ll prep for the worst. The worst, we all know, is afterwards when recovery begins. And Florida ain’t in any position to help.
With a governor and legislature gleefully leading the get-rid-of-the-feds-we’ll-do-it-ourselves charge, and with both state and feds clawing back and dismantling programs that finance storm hardening, enforce building codes, regulate growth and development in high-risk areas, provide emergency services and pay billions for reconstruction, we’re going to find out just what happens when the support network we’ve relied on for decades — particularly the Federal Emergency Management Agency — doesn’t show up.
Indeed, we might have to send a search party for FEMA Associate Director Gregg Phillips, who’s in charge of fire and flood disaster recovery. Last I heard he was telling folks he’d teleported to a Waffle House in Rome, GA. Said he was moved there “by the hand of God.” No one at Waffle Houses there (and Phillips couldn’t remember which one) recalls such an event. Rollin’ my eyes and smackin’ my head. He ain’t got the good sense God gave a goose, so best we get our waders on.
0 Comments