Hurricane season is here. You may have noticed. Starts officially June 1 and runs through November 30th. Every year. And every year, there are the warnings and the preparations and the evacuation notices. Even tax-free supplies. You store water & canned goods and cut back the big trees overhead. Eat all the ice cream. And pray.
The storms have comforting names like Irma or Hazel or Irene. Had aunts who loved me named Irene and Hazel. Last year, Michael crushed a beach town to the north. My little brother’s name was Michael. My life was changed by Hurricane Charley, same name as my grandpa. I loved my grandpa, a coal miner from Punxsutawney.
I remember the day after Charley hit southwest Florida. Wasn’t supposed to hit us but nobody told Charley. Supposed to hit Sarasota. Hurricane came up the coast, took a ninety-degree turn, destroyed Punta Gorda, proceeded west up the Peace River, then decided what the hell, to take another ninety-degree turn, this time due north. To Wachula, where it destroyed the high school which served as the emergency shelter for evacuees from, yup, Sarasota.
Perhaps on television you have seen the photographs after 175 mph winds have blown through a community of middle-class homes. Doesn’t prepare you to drive around a Coldspot refrigerator in the middle of the street to find your clients, both recent cancer survivors, sitting in their pool – no power, no refrigeration, no air conditioning – on a pile of red barrel tiles from the next-door neighbors’ roof.
Forget going to a shelter. Those pristine middle schools shortly begin to resemble a heroin shooting gallery where you can barely get your nod on. And big dogs are never welcome.
What’s the point of leaving if there is no place to go.
Which way should you head?
The Cone Of Anxiety always seems to be headed directly to wherever you are. Dorian – never had a loved one named Dorian, what does that tell you? – came straight at us like the Hulk, only bigger, same size as the entire peninsula, pulled its fist back and never threw a punch. Just stopped there. Like your doom jogging in place, trying to remember your face.
Based on my one semester of law school, I’d say that constitutes ASSAULT. And no joking matter.
Agency reverses course on Trump’s Alabama hurricane claim
SETH BORENSTEIN and KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press September 6, 2019
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal agency reversed course Friday on the question of whether President Donald Trump tweeted stale information about Hurricane Dorian potentially hitting Alabama, upsetting meteorologists around the country.
On Sunday, Trump had warned that Alabama, along with the Carolinas and Georgia, was “most likely to be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”
The National Weather Service in Birmingham, Alabama, tweeted in response: “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane #Dorian will be felt across Alabama. The system will remain too far east.”
But the president has been adamant throughout the week that he was correct, and the White House has deployed government resources and staff to back him.
The latest defense came out Friday evening, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement from an unidentified spokesman stating that information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to the president had demonstrated that “tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama.” The advisories were dated from last Wednesday, Aug. 28, through Monday, the statement read.
Friday’s statement also said the Birmingham NWS tweet Sunday morning “spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”
The statement from NOAA contrasts with comments the agency’s spokesman, Chris Vaccaro, made Sunday. “The current forecast path of Dorian does not include Alabama,” Vaccaro said at the time.
Friday’s NOAA statement, attributed to an unnamed spokesman and released just before 5 p.m. Friday, points to a few graphics issued by the National Hurricane Center to support Trump’s claims. The maps show percentage possibility of tropical storm force winds in the United States. Parts of Alabama were covered, usually with 5% to 10% chances, between Aug. 27 and Sept. 3. Maps on Aug. 30 grew to cover far more of Alabama, but for only 12 hours, and the highest percentage hit 20% to 30% before quickly shrinking back down.
Alabama was not mentioned in any of the 75 forecast advisories the hurricane center sent out between Aug. 27 and Sept. 2. Nor was any Alabama city mentioned in the charts that listed percentage chances of tropical storm force winds or hurricane force winds. Every state along the U.S. East Coast — as well as Canada and inland places like Washington, D.C. — was mentioned in those charts, but not Alabama.
[That bears repetition, I am sure you agree. many, many people have told me that. I am gonna give you some Shep-Smith-level truth right here.]
Alabama was not mentioned in any of the 75 forecast advisories the hurricane center sent out between Aug. 27 and Sept. 2. Nor was any Alabama city mentioned in the charts that listed percentage chances of tropical storm force winds or hurricane force winds. Every state along the U.S. East Coast — as well as Canada and inland places like Washington, D.C. — was mentioned in those charts, but not Alabama.
Dan Sobien, president of the union representing weather service employees, tweeted Friday, “Let me assure you the hard working employees of the NWS had nothing to do with the utterly disgusting and disingenuous tweet sent out by NOAA management tonight.”
Other meteorologists also voiced concerns about NOAA’s actions Friday.
“I am very disappointed to see this statement come out from NOAA,” Oklahoma University meteorology professor Jason Furtado told The Associated Press. “I am thankful for the folks at NWS Birmingham for their work in keeping the citizens of Alabama informed and up to date on weather hazards.”
Furtado said NOAA’s statement and the president’s Twitter “war on weather” are undermining confidence in meteorologists, adding, “The job just got harder because of this issue.”
University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, former president of the American Meteorology Society, simply responded, “OMG.”
Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, cited the focus that NOAA placed on “tropical force winds” in its Friday evening statement. He said the first assertion about such winds from Dorian affecting Alabama is fine, but the second assertion “seems to be excessive.”
McNoldy said the National Weather Service “had the right tone and message for the time. Alabama, for some time, was on the fringe of probabilities of experiencing tropical storm winds. That is not very threatening.”
“The Birmingham office was correct,” said a NOAA staffer familiar with the situation but speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired in reprisal.
MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel said Trump’s “broadcast of false information is inexcusable.”
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment. It is part of the Commerce Department, overseen by Secretary Wilbur Ross. The White House did not immediately respond to a question of whether someone at the White House had asked NOAA to issue its statement.
___
Associated Press writer Hope Yen contributed to this report.
People always stay during storms. Residents of Bay County hope their stories serve as a warning.
911 calls from Hurricane Michael paint horrifying picture of what it’s like to not evacuate.
By Zachary T. Sampson Tampa Bay Times (2018)
Hurricane Michael was already toppling trees when the man saw his neighbor collapse in a driveway.
He dialed 911.
“Emergency services. What’s your location?”
“Yes, ma’am, I have a man down. He’s passed out.”
Behind the dispatcher, the call center hummed, a swarm of ringing phones and harried voices.
“Is he breathing?”
“Barely.”
The eye of the storm was just off the coast of the Florida Panhandle.
“Okay,” the dispatcher said. Then she delivered the line that so many would hear that day.
“At this time, EMS, fire and law enforcement cannot roll. We are all bunkered down, same as you guys.”
The caller was adamant. “Okay, well he needs help. He’s turning purple right now.”
“Okay, so do you want me to tell you CPR and you do it as long as you can? Or do we want to…”
“Yes, yes. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.”
The man didn’t even know his neighbor’s name.
READ MORE:
HURRICANE SEASON IS HERE: Get ready and stay informed at tampabay.com/hurricane
NOAA’s 2019 hurricane season prediction
Complete reporting from Mexico Beach after Hurricane Michael
Hurricane Michael: What if it had hit Tampa Bay?
• • •
When a major hurricane swirls near, the message is leave. Many stay. They have elderly relatives in hospice, five pets that don’t fit in a car, memories of a storm that didn’t do damage, too little money to get a hotel room.
Staying is logical, stubborn or easy. Right up until it twists into reckoning.
The worst-case-scenario, confronted by hundreds of people who called 911 in Bay County around the time of Hurricane Michael’s landfall, is learning that first responders cannot get to you. You’re on your own as everything collapses.
“Just because you’re not in a flood zone doesn’t mean you are not in trouble,” said Brian Hardin, communications supervisor for Bay County’s emergency services.
The chaos is preserved in recordings of emergency calls during the Oct. 10 storm, previously reviewed by the Panama City News Herald. Officials redacted names and addresses from the files.
The calls came nonstop for about nine hours, Hardin said, and 16 dispatchers prioritized problems, focusing on injuries and the most dire needs.
“There’s 10 of us in here, and the roof’s gone,” one woman said. The dispatcher directed her to move to an interior space near a load-bearing wall. “The eye of the storm is going to pass right over exactly where you are.”
A man stuck in a collapsing trailer begged for help. “Please come get me, ma’am.” The dispatcher broke down, sobbing. A colleague took over for her. “Sweetie, I would come and get you right now if I could, I swear. I need you to just stay with me.”
A woman reported a tree fell into her home and pinned an 81-year-old man. “His arm’s tore real bad.” The dispatcher walked her through emergency care. “If you have to, you need to put a tourniquet on his arm. Do whatever you can to stop the bleeding, okay?”
People were stuck in mobile homes rocking in the wind. They cowered under torn roofs and backed away from shattered windows. Dispatchers told them to lie in bathtubs and pull mattresses over their heads.
“A baby got hit by flying glass.”
“Our windows are blown out in our house. We’re really scared. My mom’s having blood pressure problems.”
“I have a newborn baby. I really need help.”
Everyone was told help would come as soon as the roads were clear.
• • •
The man was standing in the driveway with his passed-out neighbor, unprotected, in the frenzy of the storm.
“I need you to kneel down next to him on the ground,” the dispatcher said.
“I am right now.”
“One hand over the other, center of the chest between the nipples. … I need you to lock your elbows, and I need you to press down an inch to two inches as fast as you can, as hard as you can and let it recoil.”
“I am right now.”
“All I can tell you is … if you can do that until you can’t anymore, and then if you want to leave him out there in the yard or put him back in the house, that will be your choice.”
More compressions. Over the phone, there was a sound like a cough, and a gasp.
“He’s coming to, he’s coming to,” the man said.
“He’s coming to?”
“Well no, he’s just gasping for air. Do I need to give him mouth-to-mouth?”
“Okay, is he breathing on his own or is it because of the CPR?”
“He’s not doing nothing.”
The man talked to someone beside him, instructing: “You may have to give him mouth-to-mouth.”
The dispatcher asked a different way. “But does he have a pulse?”
The man paused, checking.
“Not much of one, no.”
• • •
Many residents emerged after the storm to find they were still on their own.
Stepping out from the steel-enforced safe room at her parents’ home in Lynn Haven, Stephanie Wood looked over the fallen trees blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood.
Other residents walked through the wreckage in a daze.
That’s when the panic set in, said Wood, 33.
She heard Panama City Beach was gone. (It wasn’t.) She heard they would go weeks without water. (No one could know then.) Cell phone service was out.
Her husband, she said, walked three miles to check on their home, which had a tree through it.
Wood worried about food and water. With her parents and 8-year-old daughter, she learned to ration protein bars and crackers. They gathered buckets from a neighbor’s pool to flush their toilets without running water.
Residents all over took up chainsaws. If they wanted to clear the trees quickly, they would need to do it themselves.
Kathleen Graminski, 59, said Panama City after the storm reminded her of the scene in The Wizard of Oz when the munchkins emerge after the wicked witch dies.
“People were coming out at the same time all over the place,” she recalled. “Just checking with one another. Are you okay? Are you okay?”
Residents had to be careful working in the rubble, Graminski said, because there were no open emergency rooms nearby. Her brother drove in with generators. She had ice blocks that kept her food cold and offered her grill to neighbors who had spoiling meat.
With no power for weeks, Graminski grew familiar with pitch-black nights. “Like a void,” she said.
Graminski traded shifts staying awake with her sons. They worried about thieves. “I slept in the recliner in my living room with my blinds open,” she said, “with my gun next to me.”
• • •
The dispatcher had not made promises to the man trying to help his neighbor.
“I can tell you I do not know when EMS will be able to respond,” she said. “It may be hours from now. If you guys could put him on his porch or in his house, I will note it and, we will come take care of it when the storm passes.”
The man directed whomever he was with to start breathing into the neighbor’s mouth. “I’m trying, I’m trying. … Close his nose, tilt his head back, pinch his nose and breathe into his mouth.”
The dispatcher returned to her CPR instructions. “Hard, fast, let it come all the way up, recoil.”
The man murmured something. “We’re trying, we’re trying.”
• • •
Even after the floodwaters receded, Hal Summers was always wet.
He was initially soaked from the surge, which sent him climbing a deck railing at his parents’ house, clutching a gutter.
He dripped sweat the next day, walking through a broken Mexico Beach with his cat, Mr. Red, loose in a laundry basket.
“Every house alarm was going off,” recalled Summers, 55. He stepped on two nails that punctured his foot through flip-flops.
He washed the salt and muck from his body with bottled water and liquid hand soap. He grabbed tins of chewing tobacco from the blown-open grocery store.
Summers saw houses smoldering off U.S. 98, but there was nothing he could do.
His cell phone had been damaged, his radio and flashlights washed out. He had no way to let the rest of his family know he was alive, or to get reports of damage. He knew just what he saw and heard.
Summers wished he had thick gloves, a machete, better shoes, bug spray and a wrap to keep the sun off his neck.
He wished he had left.
He met up with other residents, and they agreed to gather in a parking lot each day to share information and tasks. One man with a working internet connection was able to get reports — and requests — from people who had evacuated. They carried around donated water, batteries, clothes and other supplies. They shared meals and misery.
Residents of the Panhandle hope their experience is evidence that others should evacuate when a hurricane is threatening.
READ MORE: Hurricane Michael retroactively upgraded to a Category 5 storm at landfall
“I don’t want people putting themselves through what our people had to go through,” said Joby Smith, the Bay County emergency management division chief.
It’s inevitable that more Floridians will. When the next storm strikes, a hurricane kit will only go so far. Knowing who in the neighborhood can cut wood, drive a tractor, or has medical training can mean the difference between overcoming and losing everything.
According to the National Hurricane Center, 50 people died in Florida, directly or indirectly because of Hurricane Michael.
In Mexico Beach, as out-of-town search crews scanned the rubble for bodies, Summers and the other residents focused on making days easier for people who were hurting, but still there.
“We (were) just trying to keep people alive,” he said.
• • •
The dispatcher made a note of the man who passed out in his driveway, a priority for emergency crews to follow up when they could.
“I have to catch these other calls, hon,” she said to the caller. “I’ve instructed you (on) the CPR the best you can. When you can’t do it anymore, will you guys please put him on his porch or in his house and we will come take care of him?”
The man shouted to the person he was with. “We’ve got to get him inside.”
“I’m going to be as non-callous as I can be,” the dispatcher continued, “but somewhere we can find his body for his family.”
More than seven months later, Hardin, the communications supervisor, remembered the call. When first responders finally arrived, he said, the man was dead.
Times staff writer Douglas R. Clifford contributed to this report.