SIDE SALAD - Everything crunchy is good.

AFTERMATH

We're still not trusting the fact that Hurricane Ivan is going to stage dive into the northern Gulf coast within the next day. There's something unnerving about knowing a Category 4 hurricane is churning just to the west of your home. You listen to the weather reports and try to believe them, but you know how freaky these storms can be.
I'm not the only one. Gas stations are still boarded up - just in case. Ride through Ybor City and you'll see sandbags nonchalantly piled next to a doorway. This was the scene the other night:

I'm still getting reports from friends about how Hurricane Frances wrecked their towns. This is from a friend who is a city official in Port St. Lucie on Florida's east coast:

We really did fine except for five days with NO communication, no outside lines and Nextel is a dismal failure. Lots of roofs, etc., but everyone came through it without physical harm. Lost one women in the Special Needs Shelter but she was a Hospice patient - didn't know handling dead bodies was in the fine print on my job description - but the sister was wonderful and said she felt her sister died in a circle of love. We are all beat - 10 straight days of work at a flat-out pace. Believe me everyone's prayers helped.

Eliot Kleinberg, author of "Black Cloud: The Great Hurricane of 1928," sent me some photos yesterday that show him on the job, reporting about the damage cause by Frances:

Washed out State Road A1A just north of the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant near Fort Pierce.
About three feet of sand washed into this person's first-floor condo. He turned out to be an employee of the Palm Beach Post.
This condo had just spent $250,000 to renovate their entire building, including a new wood floor for their social room, which is now under 2 inches of sand.
Posted by Jeff at September 15, 2004 07:19 AM | TrackBack