(Blog)

Almost exactly thirteen years ago, I found myself barricaded in my home behind pounds of aluminum, family members rushing about, the weather radio blasting a garbled play-by-play. Behind the fortress of galvanized aluminum and concrete and above the chatter, you could still hear the rain and the wind outside as clearly as if you were being completely quiet. At the outset of the heavy winds, the power went out, with the timing of a suspense film, because as we all know the suspense in every sound you hear increases tenfold when you can’t see the source of the sounds you’re hearing. And thus, for all the brutal force Hurricane Andrew had, I could see none of it.

Hurricane Andrew changed the face of South Florida. Rather, it wiped it clean off. That was thirteen years ago, yesterday. Since then, we’ve been through countless tropical storms and numerous hurricane situations, culminating with last year’s four back-to-back near-misses. None have ever come close to Hurricane Andrew. Tonight, Hurricane Katrina becomes the latest in line to batter the Florida peninsula. Florida sticks out into the ocean like a sore thumb (or other appendage), fully exposed to every whim of the tropical weather system, and some have come to accept it; others embrace it.

Tonight, I’m sitting in the dark, as I did thirteen years before. And what darkness! I hear the sounds of various objects being thrown around outside and do a quick mental inventory of what objects might have been in the vicinity a few hours ago, and which objects may correlate with which sounds. What was that “klink”? Was it a gardening tool a neighbor forgot to bring in? That “thud”? Did a satellite dish fall? Are the powerlines coming down on your street? Are projectiles being lobbed at your home from a nearby construction site? I have no way of knowing until daylight. I want Eos to hurry up already.

Hurricane Andrew was like Florida’s 9/11, and this storm doesn’t seem to be as intense so far. Nevertheless, a hurricane is a hurricane, regardless of category, and even weaker ones can rip the landscape apart and bring life to a dead stop. No one is on the roads, businesses are closed, the electricity is out all over, and everyone is cooped up in their homes waiting out the inexorable movement of the storm. Tomorrow morning, we will know what mark Hurricane Katrina leaves upon the landscape.

The power of storms like these brings us back to a time when we venerated nature rather than exploit it. They aren’t storms. They are entities. They aren’t the 1992 hurricane, or the 2005 hurricane. They are Andrew. Katrina. We give them names, and we talk about them long after they’ve gone, like they have become a part of us, and when they are large enough, we do not reuse those names.

Right now, Katrina’s winds have fallen silent, and in their place the quieter “drip drip drip” of the raindrops, not unlike the sort you’d hear in a relaxation tape. It’s just the eye of the storm, a momentary lapse in Katrina’s furor, and the part of the storm where most deaths occur. Folks in real life are the same as in Lovecraft’s stories. They can’t resist going outside to witness these inhuman forces with human names. So, folks go outside, and get impaled by debris or electrocuted by a downed powerline or something like that. I don’t have a Lovecraftian desire to die before such a force. I know better.