Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
IN IT TOGETHER
Regardless of where you are in South Florida, it’s going to be a long haul. Forecast track continues to shift even as monster storm nears the coast. Regardless of hurricane’s path, size of storm will cover entire peninsula.
Me and my (new) friends — we’re in this together
Let’s take a walk through my neighborhood on the edge of a hurricane.
Here’s Ugo and Nellie. They’re AS Roma soccer fans and, for decades, have stored the hurricane shutters they’re putting up. Across the street are Christina and Jim. They moved from Gainesville a while back and have extra food from the store, if you need some.
A few houses down are Brian and Caroline, who are evacuating to Orlando. Their two, young sons are crying because they can’t catch their outside cat. My wife says we’ll feed it. They left a bottle of wine at our door as thanks.
Yes, we’re all in this together in my tight, friendly neighborhood.
Except I didn’t know any of these neighbors beyond a passing hand wave until a couple of
days ago. My excuse: I’ve only lived in this home for two decades.
When I tell this story to others, it’s met with a nod of odd familiarity. They had similar stories. They felt the two-dimensional neighbors they’d only seen walking from car to door suddenly grow a third dimension the past few days, too.
They felt this bond forming as Irma approached, the one that says: We’re in this together, we’ll get through it together — and do you need some extra water?
Does it really take a hurricane to make a village?
Because you see it already. People helping each other. Strangers help carry plywood to someone’s truck. Neighbors who have lived side by side for years without talking find something in common like the radar blob of Irma, how to cut down coconuts — or who has an extra hurricane panel, as happened in my case.
I posted on our community’s internet message board — another modern invention — about being short one 15-by-44-inch metal panel for my front door. Within a half-hour, five people responded they could help. South Floridians are so nice, aren’t they?
One of the respondents, a Brian Garcia, said he had several extra panels. I wrote back about getting a look at them.
“Help yourself,” he wrote back. “They are by right side gate by AC units. U can reach over and unlatch gate. We are leaving. Take what u need and just latch the gate.”
No address. No phone number. I wondered if it was the neighbor three houses down I only heard identified on occasion as, “Brian — you know, Caroline’s husband.” Which would make me think which neighbor was Caroline.
Somewhere in all this my front door got its final panel. That’s the important part of this as the radar blob of Irma arrives. Or maybe the more important part is I feel like Columbus discovering America in my new neighborhood. Except Columbus sailed the ocean blue to make his discovery.
I just walked the neighborhood. Ugo and Nellie got their panels up. We made gallows humor of the hurricane. Christina and Jim did give us some food just before they also evacuated up north. I even met a new neighbor, Don, a few blocks away, after reading on the message board he needed some Tap-Con screws to put up his hurricane panels.
This is what sitting on the edge of calamity can do. It also makes you wonder: Is it our neighborhoods that are so different today? Or are just us who are so different?
It’s not all warm and fuzzy: Another neighbor had a boat that he’d pulled from the water stolen on its trailer from his driveway. That’s the other part of any hurricane to prepare for, the South Florida story everyone knows.
But from what’s happening in recent days, any three-step plan for hurricane preparedness needs a millennial updating to read: 1.Buy whatever is left on the store shelf — any store, any shelf.
2. Check where The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore is broadcasting, because he sets up on the doorstep of doom. (Uh, he’s in Miami).
3. Introduce yourself to the neighbors you’ve been treating like a zoning violation for years. It’s fun. It’s easy. You can help each other. You might need each other. And who knows? You might even like them.