Florida Has Fay-tigue

Florida has Fay fatigue, Fay-tigue. Jacksonville, once again, dodged a bullet in that Fay did not develop into a hurricane. She was predicted to strengthen into a category 1 hurricane Tuesday evening, August 19th. She was on a path similar to Dora, the last hurricane to make a direct hit on Northeast Florida’s First Coast. Anyone who lived here back in 1964 remembers Dora and talks about how bad it was.

Fay was bad enough, even if she was “only” a tropical storm. Here on the Southside of Jacksonville, the winds really picked up around 1 p.m. Wednesday, August 20th. Up to that time, we had passing squalls, sometimes with driving rain. For the rest of Wednesday and all day and night Thursday, the wind and rain were nearly continuous.

My cat Tuxedo signaled when Fay was upon us. She became very nervous, hiding under the bed or the dresser. On the few occasions when she came out to eat or use her litter box, she slinked instead of walked to her destination. Her eyes were as big as saucers as she nervously looked at the windows. I was glad to see that she instinctively knew to take cover.

Fortunately, I live in an area not prone to flooding. There are no tall trees close enough to fall on the apartment building where I reside. Half the people in our building loss all or most of their power. I was in the blessed half who had power throughout the storm, except for two or three very brief outages.

The old saying, “God helps those who help themselves,” may not be in the Bible, but it is a wise principle. I prayed over my freezer, which was full of meat and vegetables, before and throughout the storm. I was also prepared with two bags of ice on standby in case the power went out for a long period of time.

Still, Fay was not a fun experience, even for us with power. The building’s plumbing stopped working on Wednesday, so we were unable to flush toilets until late Friday afternoon. The air conditioning did not start working until late Friday night. We could not put trash out until Saturday. Because of the rain and wind, we could not open windows. By Friday, the trash and toilets were rank and our apartments uncomfortably hot, even with fans. I shudder to think what it would have been like if Fay had been a hurricane.

The one phrase I heard from so many residents before Fay came ashore was, “Oh, Jacksonville is safe” or “It can’t hit here.” I even heard one man say he was sick of the media hype about the storm. He said, “They’re just scaring old folks.”

Many Jacksonville residents refuse to prepare for storms because they refuse to believe Jacksonville has had and can have hurricanes. Yes, we are a little bit more protected by the fact that our shoreline curves in and does not stick out into the Atlantic like areas to our south and north. Fay, however, proved that relying on this is foolishness. It puts an unfair burden on those of us who do prepare. Because hurricanes give plenty of advance warning, there is no excuse not to have the minimal supplies and equipment needed to survive until after the storm passes.