Paradise Lost and Two Hurricanes, Two Weeks Apart

We flew to Sarasota a week after hurricane Helene flooded Siesta Key to check on our family’s vacation home. We landed on a sunny day and, as we exited the airport, as always, the stifling humidity hit us like a tropical jungle. The beauty around us was undisturbed and we were hoping against all odds that our home somehow survived the 3-4 feet of water that flooded from the nearby canal. 

The windows were thrown open by friends and neighbors but the smell and the mold growing on the walls to the flood line caused our hearts to sink. Everything was soaked and damaged except things set high above that had not molded yet, including the TV sets. The electrical wiring was shot. We were told that it would cost upwards of $100,000 to rebuild this very modest beach house to its original state. There was no flood insurance; it is expensive in Florida and most people cannot afford it. They took their chances as this part of the island has not flooded in 80 years.

Patriot Pier in Siesta Key one week after Hurricane Helene

The island’s streets were lined on both sides by mountains of debris, furniture, mattresses, lamps, refrigerators, washers, dryers, splintered wood, doors, lamps, anything a person had in their household that was not completely waterlogged and smelly.

Stores in the village were boarded up and empty, others, built much higher, had survived and re-opened, waiting for the tourists that were not coming. We were just two of the few who dared to fly here.

The beach was flat as a pancake, as far as the eye could see and quite smelly from the sewer that rose up and mixed in with the ocean water. The lifeguard towers were placed back in their original locations, standing guard, lonely and shuttered.

We managed to get two hours of beach time with some of the workers taking a reprieve from the unpleasant task of ripping apart someone’s flooded home. The ocean water was a sickly greenish yellow, no doubt not fit to swim. Few dared to enter it.

We drove to St. Armand Key - the devastation there was just as bad. The Circle that used to house fashionable businesses and restaurants looked like a war zone. Longboat Key was flooded as well.

The Marina in Sarasota was flooded, and debris was piled high. Very few of the piles of debris had been removed anywhere – the county, the city government, and the local help were organized but overwhelmed by the massive amount, tons and tons of discarded stuff that had to be hauled away.

We spent three nights in a hotel at the foot of one of the bridges entering Siesta Key. By Monday morning, the order came to evacuate the area, so we decided to drive to Miami as advised by the hotel clerk.

When hurricane Milton finally made landfall, it was in the exact area where our Spark hotel was. Siesta Key was again flooded. The mountains of debris on each street were disturbed and items destroyed by hurricane Helene floated away; new ripped roofs, shanties, and other dangerous materials were added to the already gutted flotsam and jetsam suffocating streets and canals. If the first hurricane did not do a good enough job to destroy, Milton made sure that few things remained untouched. The beach was again washed flat and clean but infused with the perfume of overflowing sewers.

Elderly people who had saved their entire lives to retire in a modest old dwelling were suddenly homeless, having to fend for themselves, sometimes without families. Some had to make heartbreaking decisions to sell the property because they could not afford to rebuild with the new codes of safety. Real estate brokers from Miami were suddenly hit with a bonanza of new and cheap properties on the market which they had salivated for years to acquire.

We took the scenic tour to Miami, through modest neighborhoods and small towns, not the interstate where we knew, we would be overwhelmed by traffic of other absconders from the incoming hurricane Milton which promised to be, according to the media, a category 5 unlike any other hurricane.

We stopped on U.S. Hwy. 27 in Palmdale, Florida at Gatorama, which was closed for a few days. They had been in business since 1957. As we started to leave, a truck pulled up with a jovial driver named Allen. He turned out to be the owner and we had a fun and interesting thirty-minute conversation with him.

Allen closed the attraction for a few days because Hurricane Helene flooded everything and the resident crocs in the creek had escaped, and he was trying to wrangle them safely back in and secure his gators’ enclosures before he could reopen.

I watched his right hand as he was gesturing and noticed his missing middle finger and deep scars on the remaining ones. I asked him if a croc took his finger off and he answered yes. As he was spending time in the hospital healing from surgery, his son produced the motto of the attraction, “Fast hands, or no hands.” My favorite motto would have been, "too slow, lose a toe." Gators and crocodiles are fast runners for their shape and size and can easily outrun a human. They can also jump up seven feet out of the water. Scary scenarios! Thanks to prior hurricanes that released crocodiles and pythons from a zoo into the wild, we now have a sizable population of crocs and pythons in the Everglades.

We made it to Miami and took refuge in a hotel in Miami Beach filled with other people like us and the lucky ones who were going on cruises. By Tuesday, all the cruise ships docked in the Miami harbor disappeared at sea, away from the oncoming hurricane.

The Atlantic Ocean was serene and placid, the color of emerald green, a balmy temperature perfect for swimming and bathing. By Tuesday, the ocean became furious with large waves. But we managed to get two days of beach time before we left.

We did enter the water which dropped precipitously with every other step, two to three feet at a time while our legs were sinking to our ankles in the shifting sand. Within a few mere feet from the edge of the water, we were in 10 feet of water, unable to touch the bottom. To say that I was uneasy about it, it is an understatement – the water was opaque, and I could not see my fingers below three inches from the water’s surface. My mind was conjuring up sharks, jelly fish, and sting rays circling to bite. Fighting to stay afloat, swim, or tread water, the current was trying to pull us out to sea. I was glad that the lifeguard was watching us intently. The waves were more suited for surfing than ocean frolicking.

We enjoyed the Cuban cuisine, and, thanks to our friend Craig, we took an airboat ride on the Everglades, watched gators in their habitat, and even saw the captain of the boat feed one large gator who kept following the boat. A thirty-minute show of gators raised in the park completed our tour. They did not seem to mind their captivity as they were well fed and slept peacefully.

We were going to visit next the Big Cypress National Reserve which was established in 1974 to protect the fresh water’s natural flow from the Big Cypress Swamp into the Everglades and Ten Thousand Islands, but access was flooded by the two back-to-back hurricanes and the accompanying huge rainfall.

Next, we decided to visit Coral Castle, an unusual oolite limestone park located between Homestead and Leisure City, Florida. It was built by a Latvian American, Edward Leedskalnin (1887-1951). He had moved to America from Latvia at the age of 26 after having been rejected by his sixteen-year-old fiancé, Agnes Skuvst, one day before their wedding. The “castle” is built from large stones in difference shapes, each weighing several tons, stones with a specific significance to Ed - slab walls, tables, chairs, a crescent moon, a water fountain, a grill, and a sundial.

The claim is that the structures were built over 28 years by Ed alone, using reverse magnetism and move and carve the stones; another theory was that he used hydrogen balloons and Ed’s advanced tool called a ‘perpetual motion holder.’

It is alleged that Ed had tuberculosis when he arrived in the U.S. but was healed by magnets. How he passed the Ellis Island quarantine with active tuberculosis, is a mystery to me.

The Coral Castle remained in Florida City until 1936, but Ed decided to move it to 28655 South Dixie Highway, an unincorporated area of Miami-Dade County, where he would have more privacy on South Dixie Highway. He left when “discussion about developing land in the original area of the castle started.” It took him three years to move everything 10 miles north of Florida City to its current location outside Homestead, Florida.

The next drive was on the Star Island where a few rich Cuban Americans lived in their gated mansions, away from the masses. A guard house protected the entrance into the Star Island but allowed drivers to make the circle if they did not stop.

Photo by Craig Brand on a sunnier day

Ft. Lauderdale Beach and A1A Highway

Craig B. drove us another day to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida and to Ft. Lauderdale to admire the famous spring break beach which was now deserted. The blue beach chairs were stacked along the narrow strip. I wondered how much room there is during spring break when all the chairs and towels are deployed on the narrow sand patch between the ocean and the A1A highway. A few die-hard beach goers were fleeing from the imminent rain blowing from the ocean.

We took refuge from the rain at the infamous Elbow Room bar where we were entertained with live music to the delight of the sing-along regulars who were drinking margaritas and beer.

We dined with Craig and Alba on Cuban food at Havana 1957 on Lincoln Road and the next day at Versailles in Little Havana and drove through the neighborhood of old homes, all windows covered in metal bars, allegedly to protect the windows from hurricane projectiles, a cheaper alternative than boarding the windows each time, I was told.

The day before our flight back home, we were crossing the pedestrian crosswalk, we had the right of way, and an SUV turned and clipped my husband’s left side, arm, and leg. Luckily, it did not run over his foot but it caused a lot of bruising and pain. The car sped away, and although there were many witnesses, none of them stayed until the police came, they all disappeared.

I asked one of the two police officers to look at CCTV footage to identify the vehicle and he said, since there were not two cars involved with a crash, and my husband was not dead, there was nothing they could do. In addition to taking them half hour to get there, I was appalled at how little they cared about my husband’s injuries.

We will never return to Miami or Miami Beach that’s for sure. One of my irritating take-aways, and there were many, was that few locals spoke English, why would they, they do not need to because they have little meaningful or no contact with English-speaking Americans. “No English” were the two words I heard many times when we visited places. Ethnicity, diverse culture, good Cuban food and sandwiches set aside, it made us feel like we were in a foreign country.