Surviving Idalia – The Aftermath

Idalia was a storm like I’ve never seen in my life. The roughly six hours I’d spent in the storm was only the beginning of the destruction left by Idalia.

About thirty minutes after the storm I walked outside to see the damage. I was thankful to see my house was relatively untouched beyond a few shingles on the ground. The landscape around the house looked like giants of legend had trampled through. Limbs were down everywhere, and I do mean quite literally everywhere. I couldn’t walk anywhere outside without stepping on a limb somewhere. Worse than that, massive trees dotted the land. I’m not talking about small suburban level trees, I mean I had massive oaks all over the place.

I walked around for about an hour surveying the property damaged which was considerable. Damaged fencing, massive oaks, limbs piled everywhere. I didn’t know where to even start with cleaning up. My troubles weren’t over yet however.

Power was still out. Nothing was working, which I had already anticipated. I had anticipated over coming back on by about midnight. Ordinarily I would have been correct. That was beforeI took a drive and checked out the roads.

I had never seen anything like it. It was like I was in a disaster zone in some humanitarian crisis. There were trees covering the roads and ditches. Several houses had trees sticking out. Entire power lines were totally decimated. Every single house was dark. People were sitting outside on their porches, or steps. Doors wide open. After seeing the devastation I realized that power wasn’t coming back on that night, not for anyone. I broke out the generator to keep the refrigerator from going bad, and to power some fans. My house was lit with some flashlights and candles. Outside was pitch black, the sounds of generators echoing every direction. I could see my neighbors had pitched a tent in their front lawn. I already wanted a shower.

The next day I awoke late afternoon, still no power. Generators were still running everywhere. Several tractors went down the road with crews and volunteers trying to clean up the devastation. Here in North Florida, it is still very much summer. I couldn’t do anything outside because not only was it miserably hot, but also there was no way to cool off. All the water in the house was hot. None of the faucets were working, All we had were some small fans powered by the generator. So passed very long day inside. Same went for the next day. By which time I was desperately in need of a shower. I had been wearing the same clothes for days. I was covered in several layer of sweat. Still no power. After a few days of absolute misery I went with my family and took a small vacation. In a place that had power and plenty of running water. The moment I walked in I took a very long shower and enjoyed simply sitting in the gloriously ice cold air conditioning. Even then I still felt like a refugee. I went to bed that first night wondering what it was like for people who had to flee oppressive regimes or who suffered from hurricane devastation.

Eventually we all had to return home, without being sure that power was restored. Upon returning home we were all relieved to find that miraculously power was indeed restored and everything was in working order. Things are not over yet. I still have those massive oaks without any way of removing them. There is still weeks worth of limb clearing to be done. All of which reminds me how even int he twenty-first century, we are still subject to nature. We have by no means conquered or tamed nature and its fury. I’ve also noted how strong Idalia truly was. Life for all Floridians is getting harder. We are getting hit with hurricanes that seem to intensify by the year. There are a lot of places that were still recovering from Hurricane Michael before Idalia. The future for all us down here is clouded.