Sunday morning I woke up early and walked out onto our third-floor balcony. Boats of various sizes were heading up the New River, one after the other. I stood for several minutes, the procession didn’t cease. No boat passed in the opposite direction. Even before I’d eaten my breakfast I’d been given the message that this could be bad.
In the three years that I had lived in Florida I had harbored a desire to see a hurricane. Hurricanes seemed as much a part of the place as palm trees and geckos, and I’d already seen my share of those. Storms so big they were ranked by category remained a mystery.
We had just moved into a new condo with floor-to-ceiling windows in every room. And no hurricane shutters. I prepared for the biggest hurricane in decades by taking my oldest, most cherished books down from their shelves, putting them in garbage bags, and then placing the bags atop the counter of the windowless bathroom. Then I closed the bathroom door. I took one long gaze at the living room – wondering what it would look like the next time I saw it – and headed off to the newsroom.
The editor would think he’d hired a macho travel editor, but the reality was I didn’t want to spend the night by myself. Hania was in Russia, on a business trip, and I knew that there would be people in the newsroom. And there were, most of them asking for assignments. I volunteered to go to the beach – the storm wasn’t due till early morning – and talk to disrupted tourists at hotels.
It was a strange assignment. As a travel writer, I occasionally visited less fortunate countries, talked to the locals, and then flew home. Now I was the guy stuck in an unfortunate place, and the people I talked to were the ones in a position to leave it all behind (if not today, eventually).
I went back to the newsroom and wrote my story, which helped keep my mind off the coming debacle. Around 10 o’clock I took a walk, with two reporters, down to the river. It occurred to me that the thing that makes Fort Lauderdale attractive – the wealth of water – also makes it vulnerable.
We returned to the newsroom and the wind picked up. I found a cardigan hanging on the back of the religion writer’s chair and put it on. (I figured he wouldn’t mind, and if he did he’d probably forgive me.) Then I curled up on the floor beneath my desk.
The wind howled around our 9th floor windows, but never came close to pushing them in. Shortly before landfall, Andrew had made a critical turn to the south.
I learned this the next morning, when the sun rose on our mildly scratched up city. I called my neighbor – the phones were working – and he said all the windows in our building were fine. (My books were safe.)
Over the next few days, half the newsroom traveled to Dade to report on the damage. By the weekend the reporters were so exhausted that people from features were asked to help out. I was told to attend a church service in Kendall. I was given the address, but it was still hard to find, as there were no street signs. Because electricity was out, there were no stop lights either. Cars moved slowly, unsurely, through a bright and desolate landscape. Gas stations appeared, vacant and useless. Buildings still stood, but with vital parts missing. Debris was strewn everywhere. The trees that had survived had been stripped of their leaves; Florida’s enduring greenness had been drained from August. Everything seemed washed in a film of dried mud.
Somehow I found the church. Its roof was missing, and its congregation was vowing to rebuild. The world, I knew, would return to normal, but minus my desire to see a hurricane.
