Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Choices: Evacuating, staying and drinking
On a normal Labor Day weekend, beaches would be packed with people grilling, swimming and relaxing. Not this year as Hurricane Dorian looms.
On Sunday, after one day of misleading relief, it was crunch time in South Florida, with parts of the coast back in the cone of uncertainty. Several beaches were deserted on Sunday as officials ordered evacuations for coastal areas and opened shelters.
Businesses shuttered their
windows and closed early to prepare for the storm. Evacuating residents packed up their cars with the last of their things and headed west.
But it wasn’t easy, especially for those living in mandatory evacuation zones in Palm Beach County.
Sue Revie packed her belongings into a blue Corvette parked outside her trailer in Briny Breezes, a small coastal community of less than 500 mobile homes along State Road A1A.
“I’ll be leaving as soon as I pack up and do my last-minute stuff,” she said. “I’m headed inland a little bit.”
Revie said she has a neighbor who stayed during a storm once and said they’d never do it again.
“I think anyone who would want to stay would be silly, because it’s so scary with the rain and the mobile homes,” she said. “It’s just really scary.”
At least one of her neighbors said he might stay.
“I gotta see the news and everything before I decide if I’m leaving,” Kevin Dwyer said as he screwed down clamshell shutters on his trailer.
Barbara Molina and her 85-year-old mother, Ann Kimlicka, live next door to each other in Briny Breezes. On Sunday, Molina loaded sentimental items from the past 17 years of their life there into her SUV, headed for Leisureville in Boynton Beach.
“This is hard,” she said, clutching a charm in both hands. “You always wonder if it’s the last time you’ll see this place.”
Molina’s 10-year-old poodle, Chico, sat close by and watched as she packed. Chico was scheduled to have a tumor removed Wednesday, but now she wasn’t sure that would happen, she said.
“We’re just hoping for the best,” she said, her voice heavy.
The bar at beachside restaurant Sandbar in Manalapan was packed with people sucking cocktails as they watched the calm ocean. The ferocious storm loomed about 170 miles offshore.
“It’s the literal calm before the storm,” said Caroline Araujo, 22. The Florida Atlantic University graduate went to the beach with her family because they had already done everything they could do to stock up on food and to protect their Wellington home, she said.
“We have water, batteries, shutters up,” she said. “What else are we going to do except come to the beach?”
Araujo and the rest of her family sipped specialty drinks the bar had created to resemble the murky post-storm waters at the beach.
“This drink is as strong as the current system right now,” said Caesar Ciucci as he sipped the green concoction called “The Dorian.”
“185 mph winds and 185 proof,” he joked.
The Dorian was created when bartenders created a spinoff of their traditional rum drink, called “The Hurricane,” according to Ashley Agha, 30, who has worked at Sandbar for seven years.
“They’ve been selling like crazy,” she said of the drink, a mixture of light rum, coconut rum, blue curacao, juice and a float of dark rum. “It was created to look like sand and water from the storm. We figured, there’s a hurricane, so why not drink a Dorian for the occasion?”
The bar was still packed an hour before the 4:30 p.m. closing time. Agha said customers have been relatively calm about the storm.
“Everybody’s laid-back and prepared,” she said. “At this point, there’s nothing left to do but drink.”