A STORM RIDER’S TALE OF IVAN.   

September 15, 2004 was a surreal day of anticipation for the people living in Pensacola, Florida.

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It’s four in the morning and I’m half awake glimpsing pictures of a storm leaving devastation in its wake. The news on every channel is telling me to run because life as we know it is coming undone. Get out of this place and go somewhere safe, because Hell’s name is Ivan and he is coming our way.

So I walk out to the bay to look at the waves and feel the warm wind on my face. I look to the sky at dark clouds rolling by and somewhere inside I realize this is no ordinary storm.

The winds grow stronger with breaking light of day. The waves are getting longer all across the bay. As Ivan rolls in with the rain and the wind the storm riders dig in and we wait. Others flee away from the sea into the mayhem of traffic jams, no pleasant place to be, inching along in frustration trying to avoid annihilation, desperately seeking shelter far away. The wind is getting stronger and the lines of cars are getting longer still hundreds of miles away from any place safe.

I for one chose not to run for the thrill of adventure in what is to come. I feel safe in my place to ride out the storm even after being repeatedly warned to evacuate. I’m on the second floor a three-story building made of mortar and brick high on a bluff with walls twelve inches thick.

I am a storm rider and I’m not the only one, there are thousands just like me refusing to run because for some un-godly reason we think this is fun.

An eerie wind blows in the distance at Midnight. As I sit in the dark and relative quiet of the howling around me. In a candle lit room with paper and pen I anxiously wait as Ivan begins to come in to our town with a vengeance. I can hear the leaves rustling as the trees begin buckling and the occasional crack of breaking limbs. Around 1: A.M. I hear a fierce intensity rising in the wind and the building I’m in sounds like it’s coming unhinged with the relentless pounding of debris in the wind for hours on end into the night. The pounding gets louder with each passing hour with seemingly no end in sight.

On the rooftop I hear the heavy thumping of air conditioners tumbling over my head and off of the roof and on to parked cars in the lot. I hear the loud crashing of windshields bashing. My hands are now shaking with fierce anticipation and I can feel the rapid pounding of my heart but all I keep thinking, as I hear more things breaking, is I hope that’s not where I parked.

THREE O’CLOCK AND ALL’S HELL

Now what I hear is something I fear is the unmistakable rumbling roar of tornados. The horrific sound is actually drowning out the constant pounding of debris. Windows are shattering. Our building is scattering into the pitch black oblivion of wind. Everything is shaking, more windows are breaking Ivan Has Arrived And He Wants To Come In.

There is an explosion of sound from everywhere around; metal twisting the rooftops ripping with the thunderous pounding of debris. People are screaming in fear for their lives. I can hear from my neighbors heartrending cries “Oh my god save us we don’t want to die!”  I can only imagine the havoc that is happening all around me right now out side. This is no storm. It’s a hellacious ride. I have a bad feeling down deep inside and I am in fear for those who have less shelter than I. When will this storm Ivan ever subside?  I just want to get off of this ride!

The storm rages on until the first light of dawn and the winds are finally beginning to fade. It wont be long before Ivan moves on still on a rampage far away.

ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN HELL

The rising sun brings visions of the mayhem we have been hearing all night. Chunks of building and pieces of trees, road signs, power lines and other unidentified bits of debris are scattered around like lives of those who lived here.

As the wind subsided some storm riders decided to venture out into the mangled carnage of aftermath. What we saw looked like the path of a thousand tornados. Trees were twisted in half and pulled out of the ground. The smell of freshly cracked pine was all over town. Buildings were battered some of them shattered while others are no longer around.

We wandered aimlessly through the mangled maze of ruin with opposing emotions, torn between sorrow for all that was lost and the thankfulness of having survived. Material possessions are after all meaningless when compared to being alive.

Later that day I walked back to the bay and what I saw there had me completely amazed. The train tracks were twisted, uprooted and shifted half buried in gravel and debris.

But what really amazed me was that the very next night railroad workers were in our back yard with bright shining lights, working around the clock repairing the tracks and pulling them back to the place where they used to be. For the storm riders this was an astounding form of entertainment. After all we had no TV. 

So we watched while they worked late into the night and all the next day. They were the first to arrive in an amazing array of help that was swiftly coming our way. Thousands of hard working women and men with smiling faces extending a hand. 
They come from all over America and beyond our borders bringing us food, clothing, shelter and water. They are mending our wounds and righting the wrongs but mostly they are giving us the hope, courage and the will to go on.

In scattered gatherings we all share our tales of the nightmarish ride that took us through hell; like the lady who lived on the third floor who’s Pomeranian(a tiny little fur ball of a dog) was sucked out of the ceiling as the roof was ripped away from the building disappearing into the roaring black wrath of a tornado.

But somehow someway the dog showed up the very next day. He found his way home all alone and completely unscathed.

Not all of the stories had such an end. Some lost their lives, their families, their friends. The death toll rises as rumors begin of hundreds of untold casualties hidden within portable mortuaries.

We see them go by every now and again. Huge tractor-trailer trucks with police escorts solemnly following them to the end of their arduous journey to the morgue.

The local authorities deny the rumors and emphatically defend their official account of the lives that were ended by the storm. I find it hard to believe there could be any reason to conceive such an unthinkable plot as to secretly deceive the whole world.

Whatever the final toll may be, the loss of one soul is too much to concede. There is no way to measure the unbearable cost of the lives of our loved ones that were suddenly lost. There is no way to describe that feeling inside of deep seeded anguish we are unable to hide no matter how hard we try to deny when someone so close to us suddenly dies.
Those of us left can only at best honor those souls who were lost, by lending a hand in making a stand in spite of the terrible cost. We can rebuild our homes and our cities and our beautiful state. We can keep living our lives through whatever our fate. 

We can all pull together in an unyielding endeavor to again be joyful and strong.  We can get back to our beaches and our beautiful weather for we love where we live and it is here we belong. Yes we, the lucky storm riders, who survived Ivan’s wrath, will forever remember that night in September when we were caught in his hellacious path.

As reality sets in and the storm riders begin to face the dramatic change in our lives, a wanting within to feel normal again drives us from the rubble to rise above all the stress and this terrible mess and yes stronger from what we survived.

© 2004 By NeoPoe All Rights Reserved