Marley and Me
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Hurricane deja vu
Like just about everyone in this country, I've been watching the unfolding tragedy in New Orleans and surrounding areas with horror and awe. Lest anyone think modern man can dominate nature, Katrina is a yet another reminder of just how frail and helpless we are in the face of natural forces. Giant oil platorms surging loose across the Gulf of Mexico, huge earthen dams giving way, new buildings, constructed to the latest codes, shattered. Man, it's humbling stuff.
As this natural disaster unfolds I keep having flashbacks to Hurricane Andrew, which swept into South Florida in 1992. We lived in a small but solid bungalow a block and a half from the Intracoastal Waterway (read my description of it in Chapter 1 of Marley & Me at http://www.marleyandme.com/excerpt.html ). Our first child had just arrived three months earlier. We had a wild dog -- yes, good ole Marley -- who went totally postal at the first rumble of thunder. Even sprinkles on the windowpane threw him into a panic. Many of our friends and neighbors were evacuating. We decided to stay and stick it out. It was probably a rash decision, but we had our reasons. Our house was built like a bunker, solid concrete block with a raised floor three feet off the ground and heavy Dade County pine roof trusses tied into the concrete. The previous owner had custom made heavy lumber shutters for each window. We figured we were as safe there as just about anywhere, even though a storm surge likely would have engulfed the house. As dumb as it sounds, we knew we couldn't take Marley to a shelter with us, and we couldn't find any boarding kennels with openings. We couldn't just leave him alone in the house. "Hell yes, you could have," you're probably saying. Yeah, we could have, and probably should have, but we wouldn't.
Besides, this was one of the biggest news stories of the decade bearing down on South Florida, and I was a newspaper reporter. I had to work. We agreed Jenny, the baby, and Marley would sit tight, and I would get home to them before the hurricane made landfall. Before leaving for work, I hoisted the heavy shutters in place, an exhausting job that left me drenched in sweat, emptied the yard of all potential projectiles, filled the bathtub and every spare container with water, and loaded fresh batteries into the flashlights and radio. Then I drove to Fort Lauderdale to cover the evacuation. Talk about weird experiences: As I drove south on I-95, the oncoming northbound lanes across the median were bumper to bumper with traffic heading out of town. On my side, I was totally alone. Not another southbound car in sight. Uhhh, what's wrong with this picture?
I filed my copy and, taking side roads, made it back home by nightfall. For a while, Andrew's eye was predicted to make landfall just north of our home, and I was increasingly second-guessing our decision to stay put. What had we gotten ourselves into? But with each hour, the hurricane turned southward, and when it finally roared ashore in the middle of the night, it was south of Miami, 70 or so miles away from us. We got hammered pretty good nonetheless; many trees and tree branches came down, powerlines crossed the streets, roof tiles had blown off. And, I would soon learn, that was nothing compared to what lay to the south of us.
The next day I made my way into the hard-hit areas of Dade County and was flabbergasted at the destruction. For miles and miles, homes were reduced to piles of splinters. And then right next door, inexplicably, a house would sit barely damaged. I remember whistling to myself and saying, "It's going to be months and months before these people get their lives back.
Now, watching the coverage of Katrina, it's Andrew all over again -- times 10. For so many of the survivors, there is nothing to rebuild. Nothing at all. And they are the lucky ones. They have their lives. It won't be months. It will be years, if ever. Humbling, indeed.
posted by John Grogan at 2:45 PM
 
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