HURRICANE WILMA

While I have gone on and on about all the great things I will miss about Miami, it's important to remember that there is a price for living in paradise.  One of the things I will not miss about Miami is hurricane season.  After going through the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California (a 6.7 on the Richter scale.  Side Note - after an extreme earthquake period in Indonesia in 2008, the western seaboard of the United States has been very geologically active lately), and Hurricane Wilma in October 2005, I have survived 2 huge natural disasters.  And believe me when I say, I hope that's the last one I have to go through.

My boyfriend at the time and I were on a pre-planned weekend trip to New York City.  We saw the hurricane was coming and decided to go anyway.  It was supposed to hit Miami over the weekend.  We figured we'd ride out the hurricane in NYC and go back down to Miami a day or 2 after it hit.  Over the weekend, the hurricane slowed down and we were scheduled to return to Miami from NYC that Sunday.  We literally just made it into MIA.  The airport was shut down a few hours later.  We had hurricane supplies and at the time Wilma was forecast to be a Category 1, maybe reaching Category 2, a minor hurricane (not that any hurricane is "minor" - even a Category 1 can kill you).  

We went to bed, and then right around midnight, the hurricane arrived.  And boy, did it arrive.  What woke me up was a series of loud BOOMs, followed by a burst of sparks.  It was the transformers exploding as the wires were ripped out during the hurricane.  You know, I am a junior architectural hobbiest.  And I think that the buildings and cities that man has made are incredibly impressive, but all of mankind's architectural achievements are seen in an entire different perspective compared to the fury of nature.  The hurricane continued throughout the night and into the morning.  We lost electricity that evening and the next day.  No electricity, no nothing:  no elevators - so we had to walk up and down 15 flights of stairs, no air conditioning, no cable, no internet, no lights.  It was like living in Lincoln's time, we were reading by candlelight.  There was literally nothing to do other than read, sleep, and eat.  It was like the Stone Age.  If terrorists really want to strike at the U.S., hit the electrical grid.  It will do far more damage.  This hurricane was as close as I have been to a state of anarchy.  There are no police, no street lights, no traffic, no rules, no law, no calling 911, no phones, no ATM's, no pumping gas.  It's pretty much you, out there, on your own.  Very scary.  And what was even scarier was that it only took 1 day to go from civilization to the 1800's.

Fortunately there is no sad ending to this story.  We only lost power for 22 hours and it was back on again.  We were able to shower, turn on the A/C (it was October, so it wasn't too humid), and we hosted a DVD night every night at my condo.  We had friends over who had no electricity to shower, make them a hot meal, and recharge their cell phones.  Every night my boyfriend and I would sit on my balcony and watch the City of Miami Beach slowly restore electricity to different parts of the city.  The hotels along the beach went up first, then Lincoln Road, etc.  The business were up and running first and then the residential parts of the city.  It took FPL 2 weeks to get the whole city back up.

Hurricane Wilma was a huge Category 3 hurricane that covered the entire lower part of the state as it passed over us.  It was incredibly powerful, awe inspiring and scary all at once.  Give me a hurricane over an earthquake any day.  At least with hurricanes, you have 3 days notice.  And earthquake just hits without any notice.

Here's why more people die after a hurricane than during.  This is from Hurricane Fay (also a Category 1) in August 2008:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72i0Z42ru-o