Sunshine State turns gloomy on fear of Irma
South Florida residents say they’re not taking chances on if this is the ‘Big One’
FORTLAUDERDALE, Fla. — They call it the Big One — a mythical, massive hurricane that would obliterate the densely populated southeast coast. And it has long been the stuff of Florida’s nightmares.
Irma, it appears, could be it. The storm has triggered near-panic in a region of more than 6 million people that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, clustered along a narrow ribbon of coastline that has seen nearly double-digit population growth over the past five years.
“I’m terrified,” said Isabella Janse Van Vuuren, who left her home in South Africa two weeks ago to move to the area. “I’m not used to this. I just want to go into a cave and hide, basically. This is not a nice feeling.”
But for veterans of life in the Sunshine State, hurricanes are as Floridian as oranges and alligators.
In 1928, a hurricane caused Lake Okeechobee to burst its banks and killed an estimated 2,500 people. The event was a key part of Zora Neale Hurston’s classic 1937 novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”
Another famed storm, the killer 1935 Labor Day hurricane that swept across the Florida Keys, is central to the plot of the 1948 movie “Key Largo,” which starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Irma could be the strongest hurricane to hit southern Florida since Andrew in 1992, which caused widespread damage south of Miami. It killed 15 people and indirectly caused the deaths of 25 more in MiamiDade County alone, according to the People in Miami line up for gasoline Thursday as Hurricane Irma roars in the Caribbean. National Hurricane Center.
“It was very scary. We just had no idea how bad it was going to be,” said Rosi Ramirez, who went through Andrew as a child in Homestead.
She’s leaving Florida for South Carolina with her three children. “I don’t want my kids to go through that traumatic experience. I hadn’t thought about Andrew in a while. But now I am seeing some flashes of what we went through. It is all coming back.”
Floridians have not been directly hit by a major hurricane since Wilma in 2005, but if they needed any reminder of what might await them, they saw the catastrophic flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in Houston. Jenna Wulf, a native Floridian who is six months pregnant, said seeing the damage caused by Harvey made her family more cautious; she stocked up on water Saturday, and the hurricane shutters are going up on her home in suburban Plantation.
“I’m trying not to watch (the news) because I think it’s causing more panic,” she said.
Andrew is often considered the worst storm in South Florida’s history. But in terms of fatalities, it didn’t come close to the “Great Miami Hurricane” of 1926, which killed 372 people when it came ashore directly over the city, carrying a 10-foot storm surge.
Many died after apparently thinking the worst was over when the storm’s relatively calm eye passed over Miami, only to be caught without shelter in the second part of the hurricane, according to a National Weather Service history.
“Residents of the city, unfamiliar with hurricanes, thought the storm was over and emerged from their places of refuge out into the city streets. People even began returning to the mainland from Miami Beach. The lull lasted only about 35 minutes,” the history says.
“The intensity of the storm and the wreckage it left cannot adequately be described,” it says.
The hurricane brought a halt, at least temporarily, to a growth boom that saw Miami’s population more than double to more than 100,000 in just six years. Today’s population of Miami-Dade County is about 2.7 million.
Craig Pittman, an environmental reporter at the Tampa Bay Times and the author of the book “Oh, Florida” said hurricanes are just a fact of life in a state that is hit by the big storms more often than any other state. And even if the Big One were to strike, he doubts that it would deter people from living in — or visiting — what many consider paradise.
“We’re the state that’s constantly trying to kill us,” he said. “We’re the state with sinkholes, shark bites, alligators and lightning. And we get hit by hurricanes. Yet people keep flooding here day after day.”
People like Austin Spitler, a former Miami Dolphins player who moved from Ohio nine years ago. He said he never considered a potential storm as a reason to leave.
“It never crossed my mind, to be honest with you,” Spitler said. “It was the lure of the sun and the sand. The beautiful weather far outweighs any of the hurricanes that come through.”
But he added: “I hope I’m not eating my words.”