Hurricane madness in Daydreaming on the Porch

Hurricanes are elemental, monstrous forces of Nature. We rode out Hurricane Betsy in 1965 when it attacked and flooded New Orleans with 100 mph winds. I’ll never forget that long night of seemingly endless pummeling by that terrible wind. I know about hurricanes. Thus, each summer we who live on the coast dread hurricane season, starting in earnest in August. For many years now we’ve been lucky in Charleston. Minor brushes with tropical storms but no real scare since the awful evacuation for Hurricane Floyd in 1999. Seventeen years ago. But a week ago I got a bad feeling about a hurricane named Matthew as it lumbered in the lower Caribbean and then turned north, as predicted. All bets were off by then.

Your foremost thought is “It couldn’t happen, it could, but… maybe another tropical storm or remnants from Matthew might make it’s way near us.” But this storm was different. It was always big and strong and it was aiming for maximum damage on Cuba and Haiti. We’d been lulled into a state of indifference by Tropical Storm Hermine which brought us some strong wind and rain, but which was mostly quite painless.

So I couldn’t believe it when I saw Matthew getting bigger and badder by the day. By that time about ten days ago, the computer models showed it going straight north toward the Outer Banks of North Carolina and then veering abruptly east out to sea. Whew! What a relief. Instead it defied those early models and computer ensemble forecasts by turning overtly northwest toward Florida and up the coast toward us. Wake me up, this must be some sort of nightmare! It was still forecast to veer east out to sea off Florida. But I was keeping calm, not too worried. On Saturday, Oct. 1, I took a day trip on a perfectly delightful early Autumn afternoon to Beidler Forest in Four Holes Swamp. As I walked the boardwalk through the still woods, I felt a sense of peace despite my apprehension. The country was too pretty, the day almost too perfect. Sunday afternoon I went to the beach and took pictures of butterflies and a beautiful sunset.

On Monday things were definitely not looking so good for the Southeast coast. I tried to put aside my fears while at work and, as is my unfortunate habit, began assiduously studying the National Hurricane Center and Weather Underground Hurricane information pages online. Again and again. Surely it’s going to turn east out to sea.

By Tuesday, I was still in denial until I walked through the bank lobby and saw our governor and other emergency management officials, grimly announcing that an evacuation for the coastal counties of South Carolina was being ordered. The governor was staying to get at least 100 miles inland. My heart sank. My mind immediately went into overdrive. I had been preparing for this possibility as far as what to take when a terrible storm could come and wipe out everything. So I had my boxes of important papers, memorabilia, photos and special books ready to go. I gave up trying to figure out which of my most cherished books to take. I just threw a dozen or so in a box. I had very little storage room in my small car. The big, huge awful question was where do I evacuate with a 92-year old mother with dementia and diabetes?

It began to be too horrible to contemplate. There are shelters in the area but no place that I knew of that would have nursing and medical care for people who might need it like my mother. I may have been mistaken on this, but so it seemed. So I dug in and procrastinated. My brother and sister in law and their three dogs and two cats would in all likelyhood be fleeing the beach house where they lived and setting up in our house in downtown Charleston. Ok, I guess we can survive that onslaught. At least we’ll have each other, and besides the storm was looking definitely (wishful thinking) like it was going to stay off the coast and have minimal Category 1 winds. But then the forecast for Thursday night was not looking good. I took something for my anxiety and tried to calm down enough to sleep.

On Friday morning it was off the coast of Florida and a Category 3 storm and aiming right for Charleston. I couldn’t believe it. I had made a phone call a couple of days earlier to a cousin in a town about an hour away and she graciously offered my mother and I a place to stay. We had not seen her in years. It’s not that we were very close but we were family and that means a lot. So despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, I got Mom and her walker and transport chair plus all her medications, insulin, etc, into the car and we headed off by 11 am that day in ominous, cloudy, breezy, rainy skies.

Arriving at my cousin’s place was such an immense sense of relief. She had four spare bedrooms and could get us a portable commode. That afternoon things were going as well as could be expected. We had cousins and grandchildren come in to visit, looked at old photos and then had barbecue sandwiches, cole slaw and banana pudding for supper. Mom actually seemed to be enjoying the attention.

But by Saturday morning things were going downhill. It rained all night and was windy, and by 8:30 the power was out. I spent a gloomy Saturday in a dimly lit house with Mom going through a number of repetitive question cycles. I tried to keep calm and hold it all together. The scariest part was trying to give her her meds, insulin, take her blood sugar, etc by the light of a weak lantern and flashlight. At one point I could’t find half of the device used to stick her finger to get blood and finally found it on the floor beneath where I was standing. A flood of relief after near panic.

Mom was so ready to head back home and so was I. By late Saturday it was clear there was going be only minimal damage to Charleston. Top wind gusts were 70 mph. However, based on the dire warning to evacuate from the governor and others you would have thought another Hurricane Hugo was coming. Besides, that we didn’t lose power at home in Charleston while we were in the dark where we evacuated.

We made it through the night. Mom slept pretty well but it was very hard getting her from the bed to a portable commode. But all our normal routines were totally upended.

Sunday morning dawned cool, sunny and beautiful. I’d never been so glad to see the sun. My cousin managed to heat water somehow and we had instant oatmeal and juice and banana for breakfast. Immediately afterward I loaded up the car. We had to be out quickly because my cousin and her husband, who has a number of health issues, were going to Mount Pleasant near Charleston to stay in a hotel until their power came back on, perhaps four or more days hence.

The traffic flowed nicely back into Charleston and Mom and I got home. Big sighs of relief!
We were home safe and sound. We survived the ordeal of evacuation and Mom was none the worse for the experience.

I was off work today (Monday) and got a lot done. For a week I’ve been in a state of heightened emotion and energy and I feel drained now. If you’ve never had to evacuate your home with your most precious possessions and leave not knowing what you will find when you return, consider yourself very fortunate. It’s frightening, it’s shocking, it’s mind-altering. That about sums it up.

Sunset on Tuesday, Oct. 4, the week of Hurricane Matthew and the day the evacuation order was issued:

I went back in my journal archive from 1999 and found this piece I had written on our evacuation during Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

(Posted on September 16, 1999)

5 p.m. – The neighbors across the street from the house in Charleston are repairing their picket fence, which was damaged by some of the strong winds that buffeted Charleston last night as Hurricane Floyd raced along the coast 90 miles east out in the Atlantic. It’s very peaceful on the porch under the ceiling fan now as I write this. There’s a good feeling of normalcy returning slowly to this nearly empty city. Most people still haven’t returned after evacuating Tuesday and Wednesday.

It was a harrowing three days prior to and in the aftermath of the hurricane. Nearly 800,000 people were ordered to leave the coastal areas of South Carolina in anticipation of a monster Category 4 maelstrom of a storm churning up the ocean and our lives.

Just this past Sunday we were settled and comfortable. It was a rather pleasant weekend. But Monday night I knew with terrible apprehension what the morning would bring. I went to bed around 1:30 and tossed and turned, telling myself to be calm. Morning finally came, and I dreaded getting up and looking at the Weather Channel and local news broadcasts telling me the storm was coming our way.

Visions of hurricanes Hugo and Andrew in years past leaving in their wake miles of littered rubble that were once houses, struck deep fear of the wrath of Nature in everyone. You could sense it everywhere. We decided to get out of town before the 12 noon mandatory evacuation order from the governor, and it’s a good thing we did. We had a 2-hour drive turn into a 4-hour one. Others spent 12-18 hours stuck in crawling traffic on I-26 trying to get to anywhere that wasn’t Charleston or the Lowcountry.

Imagine what it was like Tuesday morning to begin pulling together things you value and treasure and want to save. Books. Pictures. Memorabilia. I couldn’t comprehend it all, so I just started stuffing travel bags and gathering together clothes, food and water for the trip. I had this very awful foreboding that I might return to a place in ruins.

Having to abandon your home and possessions and head inland is a terrible experience. It had to be done, I know, but the chaotic traffic jams caused many to turn back and sit out the storm in town. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been caught in the worst of that traffic madness.

The possible impending loss of all your possessions in a hurricane that was being called one of the three most powerful storms of the century, has a rather chilling and sobering effect. It makes one take stock of priorities in life. Am I so attached to my computer, books and CDs that I can hardly bear to leave them behind? The books I have carefully acquired for my library over the past four years? Then, to make things worse, after I had left and was on the road, I remembered I didn’t bring in the screen covering that came loose from the sliding glass doors on my balcony, and which lay flat on the deck. I had all kinds of imaginings about its fate in those fierce winds – possibly hurtling through the glass and leaving my living room and every book in it vulnerable to the wind and rain that would blow through in horizontal sheets. I tossed and turned last night worrying about that. When I returned and saw the apartment, the screen covering had indeed blown off the balcony and was on the ground below. No damage done. My glass doors were intact. Why did I get so concerned about something I couldn’t do anything about? It’s just the self-reproach one feels, having done something so stupid as to leave it there to blow away.

It really does seem like half of Charleston is still gone. King Street this afternoon was almost deserted. Estimates are that 70 percent or more of the population heeded the evacuation order. The street where I live in Charleston is also nearly deserted – still. And, it’s almost 6 pm and the evacuation order for south of Georgetown was lifted at 7 am this morning. I guess people who spent 12 hours trying to get out of town and heard the worst of the hurricane had passed us by were in no great hurry to return.

A little while ago I was sitting in the back garden by the fish pond, listening to the small fountain and watching the goldfish. A few leaves were scattered around on the surface, but it seemed as it nothing had happened in this small, quiet enclave. Earlier, a butterfly had floated over a flower bed. Some of the zinnias had refused to bow down completely to the wind. The garden is so still now. It’s like being out early in the morning.

I don’t know. An experience like this does something to you. You cherish people more. I saw my neighbors packing up their cars at the same time I was, about 7 a.m. Tuesday. One of them, whom I’m very fond of but don’t know too well, told me she was just glad knowing I was there upstairs, even though we don’t see each other too often. She’s a special ed teacher. I was struck at the time how unfortunate it was that I didn’t know my neighbors any better.

This type of near disaster, this terrible, elemental force of Nature, came marching relentlessly toward us. You can lose everything in a storm like that, but you can’t lose the things that matter most in life: family and friends and the wonderful people I’ve come to know through this journal. I treasure them all more than ever, and I am thankful.

Last updated October 12, 2016