2004:
Hurricane report, from Cathy Bupp The letter below
is from Cathy Bupp, who
survived the Florida hurricanes of 2004. Cathy is
a licensed clinical social worker, working as a
medical social worker at a medical center in
Florida. Because of that, she has a wide-view
perspective of what has happened to her part of
the world.
Here is Cathy's
letter:
I've only
been down here in Florida for a little over a
year and a half. I love the weather down
here most of the time, as we almost always have
sunshine and a blue sky.
Of the
four hurricanes, Central Florida got hit with
three of them. After a while, it gets confusing
trying to figure out which one caused what
damage. Many areas were hit twice, and the
destruction is devastating. We are among
the 19 counties down here that have been declared
a disaster area. It is truly unbelievable.
There are
still over 1 ½ million people without any kind
of power in this heat in the high 80's and low
90's. Water has been contaminated in many
areas, with sewage backing up into homes from all
the flooding. The elderly have no place to
go except to shelters. The welfare food
lines and water lines are constantly full.
Building and roofing supplies are scarce due to
the damage, and the cost of supplies and labor
has skyrocketed.
People are
playing the waiting game of when they can even
get someone out to their home to do the
repairs. Because of all the insurance
claims, insurance companies are requiring all the
work to be done by licensed contractors, which is
making everything down here even more
messy. In other words, a friend or brother
can't come down here to help you put on a new
roof because the friend or brother isn't
licensed in Florida and you have to get a
building permit with your Florida license.
So....... Construction is months out there.
Also, insurance companies are really socking it
to everything with outrageous deductibles or lack
of coverage due to damage being an act of God, or
most of us don't carry hurricane coverage because
we are not a hurricane prone area. It cost
my neighbor $4,000 just to take down the tree
that fell on his shed. As for the shed, the
tree falling was an act of God. As for the
tree falling on anything, it was caused by the
hurricane and falls under another act of God
because he, like most of us, doesn't carry
coverage for something that our area is not
subjected to. We don't live in a flood
zone, so we don't carry extra for flooding, etc.
The
beaches are gone, literally gone! Some of
the beaches from Coca Beach up to Daytona have
been totally destroyed with water now coming up
to and into the nice luxury homes and the sand
literally drug out to sea. The flooding is
horrible with water that has no where to
go. The towns have been frantically pumping
out the water from low areas where people cannot
even get to their homes. Water damage is
everywhere. They say the damage so far has
reached 20 billion $ in government aid -- the
most destruction ever seen in this area or
anywhere in the history of the U.S. from natural
forces.
As for
where I live, I am very fortunate. The
people on the lake had water crashing up over the
sea wall, and all of our yards looked like ponds.
Our pool flooded over during this last hurricane
(we didn't lower it enough), and we were out
there in the wild winds and horizontal rain using
everything we could find to divert it from coming
into the house. One-half inch more and we
would have had some nasty water damage.
Our yards
looked like a war zone. Several neighbors
had their 75-foot oaks literally uprooted; power
lines and poles were down everywhere, making for
a deadly combination with the sitting
water. My neighbor's 75-foot oak came
crashing down on his new shed, missing our
enclosed pool by about 10 feet. It would
have landed directly into the lanai and the pool
had it fallen a little in the other
direction. We had multiple palms down in
the streets, making it virtually impossible to
get in or out of our yard. Trees were down
on several homes in my area; trees were down on
cars, and huge branches were everywhere.
And of course, we all sat in the dark with the
power out, while the winds were a good 85 to 105
miles an hour.
During
this last hurricane, we even had the neighbor's
pool screens, bird houses, and awnings in our
yard from way down the block. We lost some
shingles off the roof again, and one window
cracked. We almost put the boat under the
neighbor's tree, but decided just to leave
it in the driveway at the last minute where it
had sustained the last two hurricanes. That
was the neighbor who lost his tree and his shed
next door.
This last
hurricane, Jeanne, was a repeat of hurricanes
Ivan and Charlie. We just got cleaned up
from the last one, and then got dumped on
again. A lot of people never got their area
cleaned up from the first one and had to be
concerned about more water, flooding, and flying
branches and debris. Branches and debris
become big torpedoes with those winds.
People have sand, mud, fish, and insects swimming
around in their living rooms, etc. There is
a big mosquito concern from all the standing
water, along with the West Nile Virus. We
have been told not to swim in the ocean for
at least a month due to nails, boards, and debris
in the sand and the water.
That has
just been in our area. On farther down the
East Coast and up to Daytona, they also got some
bad tornadoes with nasty damage. Entire
mobile home parks have been completely destroyed
both on the East Coast down by Miami and the
Keys, and on the Gulf side down in Punta Gorda up
to Tampa.
Our daily
newspaper and TV news is constantly reporting on
the damage, where to go for food and shelter, and
most recently, a couple of surrounding countries
have set up places for people to come and take a
shower.
I work in
a hospital rehab. center, and we opened up a
36-bed shelter on the first floor for the
medically needy -- patients needing oxygen, with
feeding tubes, etc. -- for the past three
hurricanes. People stayed for 3 to 5 days
because they couldn't get back to their
homes. That was another problem:
If you left your home because you were told to
evacuate from either your mobile home or a
manufactured home, many people couldn't get back
to their homes due to trees and electrical lines
down, flooding, damage, etc. I feel very
fortunate that our home weathered these events,
and we had no major damage.
Just
driving to work is a constant reminder of what
other people are dealing with in our own
neighborhoods, and our area escaped the most
damaging destruction. People are constantly
driving around looking at what happened, like
when we have tornadoes up north and people are
out sight-seeing. It's too devastating down
here to sight-see as we get bombed with it on TV
every waking hour that the news is on.
Idiots were out driving and walking down by the
lake where we live right after the hurricanes hit
to sight-see. Lines were down in the water
across the street, fallen trees blocked the
streets, and still these idiots drove up into
your lawn to drive around the trees in the road.
We
were outside several times yelling at people
who wanted to drive through our horse-shoe drive
out front to avoid the oak and palm trees laying
in the street to sight-see on down the block
which was blocked with more fallen trees in the
street and lines from poles. We even had to
threaten to call the police due to people wanting
to drive around to see the damage down by the
lake, as we got hit pretty hard. People
would actually get mad when we made them back up
down the street and turn around rather then use
our driveway. We eventually had to hammer
pipes into the end of the yard around the entire
corner and put all of our own debris at each end
of our horseshoe drive so people would not tear
up our already disastrous yard and drive over our
in-ground sprinklers or use our front driveway as
a drive through or a turn around. I think
all the wackos must have come out following each
hurricane.
Lots of
other things were affected by these hurricanes:
Mental health centers were going crazy --
sorry for the pun. Working in the field, I
saw psychotic patients who couldn't handle the
stressors; there has been a traumatic increase in
domestic violence, abuse, stealing, drinking and
drugging. We saw a traumatic
increase of elderly people going into hospitals
and skilled care facilities; there wasn't a bed
to be found. They had patients lined up in
the ER hallways due to not having any available
beds. Infections have gone off the
wall with people walking around in their flooded
homes with scrapes or sores. Diabetic
patients get more difficult infections when
exposed to walking in sewage or filthy water or
soaked carpets in their home or around their yard
trying to clean up some of the mess.
People have fallen off their roofs and out of
trees trying to do the work themselves; some have
died and others are now paralyzed in spinal units
of hospitals. We've seen an increase in heart
attacks from overdoing, especially amongst the
elderly who have no one down here to help them
clean up.
FEMA, the
government agency handling all the funding, isn't
working fast enough to get people into new homes,
forcing a multiple of people to live in their
damaged homes with caved in roofs, etc.
Many people have not heard anything from FEMA for
over a month and have no money, no clothes, or
shelter. Churches are jumping in as are
other city community centers, but we are talking
about thousands of people, not a couple of church
members that need help. Many people have lost
their jobs because the place where they once
worked was destroyed. Tourism is really
down, hurting many places of employment in the
tourism industry.
The damage
goes on and on in multiple areas of people's
lives. They say it will take about 10 years
to recover from all this devastation; to restore
our beaches and our communities to how they once
were.
On a more
positive note, now that the hurricanes are gone,
we are back to beautiful weather in
Florida. It is also a wonderful experience
to see people helping each other; the giving of
time, money, foods, clothes, supplies, and
assistance in cleaning up yards, etc. has been
overwhelming and forthcoming in all communities.
I know
there are other classmates who live in Florida; I
hope they are doing well also.
Cathy
(Bupp) Lambert
Cathy Lambert, L.C.S.W., B.C.H.
Medical Social Worker
Ohme Rehab. Center
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