Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Panhandle family among many scattered by Hurricane Michael
Thirteen days after Hurricane Michael upended their lives, the Wallaces are grateful for South Florida relatives who took them in. But the family can’t stop wondering when — or even if — they’ll return to the place that’s been their home for six generations.
They are among the tens of thousands displaced in the Category 4 storm, which slammed Florida’s Panhandle on Oct. 10.
On Monday, the death toll from the storm climbed to 39, including 29 Floridians, according to the Associated Press. And on Tuesday, the state counted 1,381 people still living in shelters.
“Honestly, right now, we don’t know what the future holds,” said Damien Wallace, 21.
The Wallaces — mother, son, fiancée and granddaughter — last saw Oak Grove, their Panhandle neighborhood of a half-dozen homes, on the national news after Michael made landfall about seven miles north of their house.
Sitting in an Alabama hotel room watching the coverage, the realization swept in: They didn’t have much left other than the clothes on their backs and what they had packed in a hurry. And their community with just two stoplights was taking a beating.
“It was surreal,” Lori Wallace, 45, said. “We were seeing landmarks we were familiar with damaged and landmarks we knew were not there.”
The stoop her greatgrandfather installed with his name on it in the 1950s survived, along with the family’s two dogs, she was told by her husband, David Wallace, who stayed behind for his job. But the house was flooded by a storm surge — high enough that it left mud in the clothes dryer. Bedroom paneling has buckled from the wall. And the car left behind because they weren’t sure they would make it to Alabama is a total, swamped loss.
“It could’ve been worse,” Lori Wallace said. “So many of our friends are sleeping in tents in their yards.”
Still-spotty cell service from the area delivered the news: The power came
back on at their house three days ago. But when they can return to be reunited with the rest of the family is not certain.
They don’t want to expose Paisley Wallace, 2, to any mold from the house drying out. And the Indian Pass Raw Bar where Damien Wallace works as an oyster shucker is gone — and not expected to be rebuilt until March at the earliest,
he said.
“Unless you’re in construction, there’s not many jobs around there,” Damien Wallace said of the Panhandle. The place he worked, “is just an empty lot.”
So he’s started interviewing at Coral Springs restaurants.
His aunt, Melanie Toomey, 45, of Coral Springs has made room for
her four relatives now bunking in with her husband and two children in The Oaks subdivision. The playroom is a temporary bedroom and the front living room now sleeps two.
“Family is family,” Toomey said. “Whatever you can do for family, you do it.”
Word of the family’s plight has spread through Riverside Elementary in Coral Springs, where Toomey is an officer with the Parent-Teacher Association. And it’s drawn donations, bags of donated clothes, gift cards and other surprises.
Going to the Coral Bay Beach Bar and Grill, the manager, who knows the Toomeys through their school involvement, told Lori Wallace that dinner was on the restaurant. She teared up and said, “Thank you.”
Manager Sebastian Rodriguez, recalling how how Hurricane Irma threatened last year, said he has an idea what the Wallaces are going through: “I know how scary this is and this is one of those worst-case scenarios.”
Lori Wallace is giving thanks that at least her granddaughter’s Doc McStuffins comforter left at their ruined house has been replaced with an exact match. But there’s no equal to what she saw outside her house, every day.
“The sunset — it’s one of those things that you see every day, but you don’t always have the time to notice,” she said. “We do come from a beautiful place.”