Editor’s Note: So, like most of us, I have been preoccupied with weather porn (family and friends in the path and maybe us here in Virginia), NORK Nukes and all the usual political nonsense here In DC. Montana is afire and most have not noticed the tragedy in one of the almost square states.

Add or that, Mr. Putin’s “5th Generation Warfare” is apparently burning down villages in Ukraine. Every time I think this situation can’t get more nuts, I am proved wrong. Shoot, I thought I was a professional worst-case analyst. And it turns out Robert Frost was right:

Fire and Ice

“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”

As to the immediate threat of horrific weather, Marlow and I are on the same sheet of music in his story this morning. We shared the Cat 3 in Honolulu…it was pretty spectacular as the eye-wall came directly over the house in McGrew Point in Pearl Harbor. A few years before, our ship had to sortie into Super Typhoon KIP from Japan after flying off the Air Wing, and with the insouciance of youth, I just stood on the ship’s island and marveled at waves that shot green water high over the bow of the aircraft carrier Midway (CV-41). The power of the sea moved coffee cups around tables below the flight deck that were normally as immobile and still as the grave.

Marlow’s colorful accounts of life in the islands down through the years compelled me to visit the delightful, quirky world of Key West a few years ago, with a vague idea of becoming a local. We were out one night and ran into a local, totally un-named random rain storm that brought water to the top of the wheel wells of the car. It was, to a Mid-West kid, quite remarkable, and to Marlow quite as commonplace as an evening at the Green Parrot bar.

My thoughts and prayers go out to those in the path of the monster storm, both of which are worth exactly that. Or precisely a platitude. In a real sense it means that I have to pony up again to support the recovery from whatever is going to happen. I hope you do, too.

I wish I could volunteer for the Cajun Navy, who personify why America is a special place with amazing people. But for me, those days of deployment are long past. I donated to Red Cross for Houston relief in the last storm, but I will wait to see who gets hit and see if I can get my contribution more directly to State and local people who will have to deal with the disaster on the ground. I wish I could provide gasoline so people could get out of vulnerable areas. God bless the people of the Sunshine State and the Keys and pray for their safety.

Much as I dislike the Cuban government, put them in there, too.

As this unfurls, I will keep you posted.

– Vic

September 8 2017
What Happens During a Hurricane?

Author’s note: It is difficult to answer the question what happens during a hurricane unless you have been caught in one’s grasp. I have had the good fortune to live on beautiful but storm-tossed barrier islands and coral reefs. I guess I was toying with Nature then, since those are borrowed lands. They are on loan from the sea. Inevitably, the sea will return to claim them.

Over the years more than a few in my acquaintance, who have never experienced such a storm, have asked me in casual conversation. I never was able to adequately respond. After living through many of them and considering Harvey’s deadly flooding and Irma’s path ever rightward swerving towards the Coastal Empire, here is what I think.

– Marlow

The wind blows so hard
that the ocean rises up on its rear legs . . .
and Godzilla stomps right across dry land
While stayers huddle indoors singing

Rain, rain, go away

Little Irma wants to play . . .

I have heard hurricanes tearing off neighboring roofs
and seen them snatch onto people
The lucky ones flew around
in the wind until they were lucky to get a grip back on the earth

Once it starts to rain
it’s too late to go outside to close your car windows
You’ll likely get caught by monster winds
Not me, brother

I don’t want to be one
of the hundreds of souls washed out to sea
like the Labor Day storm did
in the Florida Keys in 35

Damage in the upper Florida Keys from the Category 5
Labor Day hurricane strike in 1935 (Courtesy National Archives)

No one thought anyone would live there
after that
Time moved on
People forgot

A relief train was
dispatched from Miami
The barometer was down
to less than 26 and half inches — a world record to this day

Then that train
pulled into Homestead
The engineer backed his engine into a string of empty
coaches and pushed them down into the danger zone . . .

. . . and great hurricane winds and surge hit right when he arrived
Knocked those hardly filled coaches with WW I vets right off the tracks
Close to two hundred miles an hour
those storm winds blew

Florida East Coast Railway Overseas Railroad relief train derailed near Islamorada, Florida, during the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. The train arrived at the Islamorada station on Upper Matecumbe Key at 820 PM. The hurricane eye arrived at the same time. Because the train was backing in, the engineer couldn’t see the station; the coaches and boxcars started blowing over.

Waves coming in from the ocean “went over the cab floor and shut off the draft to the oil burner. There we were.” said the engineer. “There were times we were unable to breathe due to the water breaking over the locomotive.”

A great wall of water nearly twenty feet high
swept across the Keys
Entire villages wiped out
Miles and miles of track were ripped up and washed away
Nothing was left

Five Labor Day hurricane victims towed on improvised sled, September 5, 1935. (Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida)

More than 400 bodies as far north as Cape Sable and Flamingo on the mainland were recovered after the storm
And for months afterwards . . .
corpses were found in Keys mangroves
Survivors dreamt for years they had been blown out to sea

An unanswered question 82 years later: How many more were washed into sea?
(Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida)

That was some hurricane
Many who couldn’t find suitable shelter . . . tied themselves to gumbo limbo trees
The storm howled so strong
clothes stripped off their bodies, their skin ripped raw

Stranger clung to stranger whenever they found one another
Sobs and breath obliterated by the winds
Tears washed away by the storm
There was no time for feelings

When the sun rose the following day
the air smelled of salt and sand
Then came a fresh wood smell from cracked-open trees
A day later came the stench of rot and death

There was no shelter
nothing to eat or drink for days in some spots
until relief trains and fresh crews arrived, and temporary tracks were laid
They were divine sights for salt-crusted eyes

Staying was like hanging out with a killer
No one should have remained behind
The storm waited till it got these innocents in its grasp
then killed them

Don’t get on that stayer boat
Don’t tell its captain that you’ll remain onboard or it’ll hurt you
When you get the warning, go
Get away — it might be your only chance, fellas

This is what a world-shaking hurricane is like.

Copyright © 2017 From My Isle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com