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The season of “ouch” in the Sunshine State

By David Bulla
David Bulla is an assistant professor of journalism in the Greenlee School. He finished his doctoral degree at the University of Florida in August.

This oak tree was uprooted -- a common phenomenon in Hurricane Jeanne caused by a saturated ground from the previous two hurricanes, Charley and Frances, as wll as the usual heavy summertime rain in central Florida. Photo by David Bulla.

LAKELAND, Fla. – “Ouch” reads the sign at Southside Cleaners-Launderers on South Florida Avenue in this city located between Tampa and Orlando in the heart of phosphate and citrus country.

Ouch means three weeks without power. It means having to boil your water before consuming it. It means a drive across town will take an hour because the traffic lights are out in many places and navigating side streets is like trying to exit a maze.

That everyone in this community – and hundreds of others like it in the Sunshine State – is in this condition is the result of the most brutal hurricane season for this peninsula in recorded history. Lakeland took a direct hit from the latest storm, Jeanne, and had more than moderate blows from both Charley and Frances. Two towns to the east, Lakes Wales and Winter Haven, have suffered direct hits from all three. Ouch indeed.

"I lay rigid as a stick . . . A continuous roar was interrupted by occasional gusts that screamed like banshees. "

Hurricane Hits

Jeanne came in Sunday, Sept. 26, at approximately 3:30 a.m. Sustained winds in downtown Lakeland were 65 mph for more than six hours. The county’s most powerful gust reached 103 mph.

Having returned to Lakeland for a weekend to be with my journalist wife, Kalpana Ramgopal, I experienced Jeanne firsthand. I awoke as soon as the air conditioner stopped just after 2:30 a.m. The winds began to build, and an hour later the full fury of Jeanne was a few feet away. For three hours, I lay rigid as a stick while Kalpana continued her deep slumber after another night of designing the metro section of The Lakeland Ledger. A continuous roar was interrupted by occasional gusts that screamed like banshees.

During the interminable storm, one sound continued to baffle me. It sounded like a piece of plastic fluttering right outside our bedroom window. I had never heard it before, not even during a thunderstorm. Later, when I found the courage to look out, I discovered it was the rain blasting the windowpane. Some of the drops were adhering to the window as if they were glue.

An oak tree was broken in half by hurricane-force gusts on Sept. 26 in the Lake Hollingsworth neighborhood in Lakeland, Fla. Photo by David Bulla.

At 6:30 a.m., a scratching sound began on the roof that finally woke my wife. She arose and started leading me to the hallway. “It’s a tornado,” she said, remembering all the warnings during Frances. Then there was a thump, and the sound disappeared. We heard voices and decided to go out front. The men in two other apartments in our complex were standing in their doorways, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. “Was that a tornado?” I asked. In unison, they answered: “No, just a limb that rolled down the roof.”

My wife headed back to bed, and I monitored the storm online on my laptop. The eye was in the southeastern part of Polk County, meaning it was farther south than the National Weather Service had forecasted Saturday night. It clearly looked like the storm would go right over us – and it did.

The Lakeland Ledger

I also clicked onto The Lakeland Ledger Web site. Barry Friedman, the electronic editor, had been maintaining a blog, answering questions from citizens – when would the power come back on, was church cancelled, were any restaurants opened, would school be cancelled all week? Friedman, however, had lost power and didn’t have a battery-powered laptop, so he was closing until power returned at The Ledger.

The eye came through downtown Lakeland about 2 p.m. and lasted several hours. By 6 that evening, the wind returned but was considerably less intense. Sustained winds were about 35 mph. Electricity had been restored at the newspaper, so we went to The Ledger so she could work. The third-floor newsroom was crowded for a Sunday night. Lenore Devore, the managing editor, had made sure her troops were well fed and had cold-cut sandwiches, chips and cookies in a conference room. Skip Perez, the executive editor of The New York Times-owned paper, was there too. Most of the nine or 10 reporters working that day were out in the field, but Amy Edwards was manning the phones and staying in constant contact with key sources – the Lakeland Police, Lakeland Electric, Progress Energy, the mayor’s office, Polk County Sheriff’s Office, U.S. Weather Service, etc. … By the end of the night, Edwards would have composed four stories for print.

". . . my wife decided to call Lakeland Electric and ask when the power would be back on. The word was: up to three weeks."

Edwards went back and forth with Assistant Metro Editor Kurth Gustafsen about leads and holes that needed to be filled as she worked on her stories. The greatest damage was to a shopping center on the south side of town where a retention pond had sucked the back of four businesses into the muck. Photos from Ledger photographer Scott Wheeler showed destruction that looked more like a massive earthquake than a hurricane.

Meanwhile, blogger Friedman was back in business, trying to answer questions from those fortunate enough to have laptops or from interested parties in places as far away as Oregon, Michigan and even Norway. Folks from all over Polk County reported on the severity of the damage and the availability of electricity. The Ledger Web site was taking the place of the city’s largest AM radio station, which was off the air.

Hardwood branches littered the streets of Lakeland the day after Hurricane Jeanne came through Polk County, Florida. Photo by David Bulla.

Aftermath
We finally bugged out at 1 a.m. Monday and went home for a summer’s slumber in our warm and musty apartment. The next day, I awoke to the sound of chainsaws. I took a walk around the neighborhood. I could not believe what I saw: almost every street in the area had at least one major oak tree down on top of a house or in the middle of the street. On Lake Hollingsworth Drive, a church steeple had been damaged by the strong winds.

I now realize that Gov. Jeb Bush had been right in saying that the Florida-Kentucky college football game held Saturday had been a major mistake. People traveling to the game from the central and southern coastal counties of the state would have been in harm’s way on their way back home that night.

Sensing how devastated Lakeland was, my wife decided to call Lakeland Electric and ask when the power would be back on. The word was: up to three weeks. The woman from Lakeland Electric told Kalpana to “make alternate arrangements” for living for the next few weeks.

Return to Iowa

I worried that my flight back to Des Moines from the Tampa airport might be delayed or cancelled. I left Lakeland a half early to account for delays. The trip back to the airport on Interstate 4 was eerie. Billboards were shredded and trees were down everywhere. When I stopped to top off the gas in the rental car near the Tampa International Airport, I discovered there was no electricity and the pumps did not work. Just when I thought I would miss my flight, I found a BP station that had electricity, and much to my relief my flight back to Iowa was a few minutes late, allowing me to board the plane on time. The flight back to Des Moines was uneventful.

* * *

A week has passed since Jeanne traveled over Lakeland. My wife still does not have power, and her hot apartment has become a haven for insects. She’s been told nine more days without electricity. She’s been staying with a newspaper colleague who has power and making trips to her apartment each day to get the mail.

Such is life this hurricane season in Florida, which according to Colorado State University atmospherics expert William Gray has seen its last major ouch.

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