Hurricane Michael creates hardship

LYNN HAVEN, Fla. (AP) — Mary Frances Parrish is expecting to be without electricity for several weeks, or roughly the same time the terminally ill son she’s caring for is expected to live.

In the days after Hurricane Michael smashed through her neighbourhood, leaving many of her neighbours’ homes destroyed, she and her son Derrell, 47, were planning to stay, with or without running water and electricity. The reason is the same she waited out the storm in the tiny house: She doesn’t have a running car and she doesn’t know where she would go.

“I didn’t have a way of getting away from here. My car’s under repair and there’s nowhere to go or the money to pay for a place,” the 72-year-old Parrish said. “People are sending stuff in. I’ve got plenty of water, I’ve got cold drinks, I’ve got plenty to eat.

It may be right out of the can, but it’s plenty to eat. As long as you can have plenty to eat and drink and stay in good spirits, you’ll make it.” Parrish, whose son has cancer, is in a position many in the Panama City region are facing. They have damaged homes, no power, and don’t have the resources to relocate, either to a new home or a temporary home.

While others with more means have gobbled up hotel rooms in Destin 45 miles to the west, there are many who now no longer have a job and are forced to stay in damaged homes.

Around the corner from Parrish, Nanya Thompson, 68, was hanging clothes to dry from the power lines that were now dangling a couple of feet off the ground directly in front of her apartment door. All but two of the windows of the small home were blown out during the storm, and part of the roof came off, blowing water and insulation into it. She was a hotel worker, but the hotel she worked at was damaged during the storm and now her job is gone. The owner allowed her to stay at the hotel until authorities said it wasn’t safe for people to be there. So for now, she’s staying put.

“I’m planning on staying until someone comes to go to the door and tells me to go,” she said, adding she’s waiting for her social security check at the end of the month to help keep her going. “At my age it will be hard for me to get another job. I may not hold out here. I may just have to leave.”

Further south in Panama City, Clinton Moseley, 55, was cleaning limbs and debris from the house he shares with his 81-year-old mother, Rebecca. An enormous tree crashed through the roof above one of the bedrooms of the house that’s been in his family for a century. Water gushed in, but he said they’re staying.