Days of fear in a Miami doomscape

MIAMI — The fear set in around the middle of the week when it looked like Hurricane Irma and its Category 5 fury would make a near pass over downtown Miami.

As the weekend neared, friends and family began calling and asking my wife and me to leave the city. We live on the 23rd floor of a 38-story high-rise that is in a mandatory evacuation zone — about 75% of the tenants in the 500-unit building had already fled.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott insisted that no first responders would come to help us if there’s an emergency during the storm. The only other options were to take shelter at a school, or with family inside a single-story house in an area expected to bear the brunt of the storm.

We decided to stay and hope the place of last refuge — an interior stairwell — wouldn’t become a poured-concrete coffin.

On Thursday, my building’s management posted signs saying the elevators would be turned off at 6 p.m. on Saturday — and we would be stranded.

By Friday, it was clear this wasn’t going to be a typical summer squall. The sky was a drab gray, and low-hanging clouds passed over my neighborhood disconcertingly fast.

On Saturday afternoon, the bad weather began to move in. At first it was sporadic, with sheeting wind and rain every hour or so. By Sunday morning, the wind speeds were high enough that there was a constant hissing outside my sliding glass doors.

Every so often the rain became so heavy I couldn’t see the big condo building two blocks away. The most intense gusts sent a low, throaty rumble through my ceilings and walls, followed by a high-pitched buzzing that sounded like blenders running in every direction.

They sent us scrambling into the back room and the wind made the building slowly rock, and the glass doors vibrate.

At noon our power was shut off, meaning I would no longer have access to the news.

With the worst weather to come, there was little more to do other than eat and wonder when it would end.