Hurricane Idalia left behind a trail of debris and floodwaters across Florida, but – as power cut out in its wake – it also left behind true darkness as night fell and electric lights remained out.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it this dark,” said Lashawn Poitier of Perry, Florida, which was right in the path of the storm. “This is what night really looks like.”
Poitier moved to Perry from Miami four months ago because she felt the small town was better suited to her 82-year-old mother, who has dementia. She thought about evacuating because of her mother, but eventually decided to stay put. After all, she said: “I’ve lived through hurricanes in Miami and south Florida, including Hurricane Andrew, which left my house and a handful of others standing in my neighborhood, so I felt we would be all right.”
And they were until a huge oak tree fell through the roof and ceiling of her mother’s bedroom while her mother was in bed.
“It nearly scared me to death when I heard this horrible crashing sound,” Poitier recounted, retracing her path from the living room to her mother’s bedroom. “I opened my mother’s bedroom door and saw my mother lying in bed with a fallen tree hanging over her.”
Idalia has passed now, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and lives and homes that now need to be rebuilt.
Poitier’s mother was shaken but physically unhurt, even though the tree limbs were hanging low enough to touch. “I think the whole thing scared me more than it scared her,” Poitier said.
The category 3 storm made landfall on the coast of Taylor county near the community of Keaton Beach then cut an inland path through towns like Perry before heading back out into the Atlantic and up the eastern coast of Georgia and the Carolinas.
Ahead of the hurricane, the Taylor county sheriff, Wayne Padgett, and the county’s emergency management department had issued mandatory evacuations of coastal county communities, including Steinhatchee, Keaton Beach and Dekle Beach.
People living in mobile homes, campers and substandard housing were also ordered to evacuate. However, when the county decided to close its hurricane shelter at a local elementary school in Perry and transport people to shelters in Tallahassee, residents, like Sylvester Bellamy, knew the storm was going to be catastrophic.
Bellamy, a Perry native, heeded the hurricane warnings and decided to evacuate with his family to Valdosta, Georgia.
“Unfortunately, the hurricane’s path shifted, and we ended up evacuating into the hurricane’s path after it left Taylor county,” Bellamy said. “So, we had to wait for the hurricane to pass before we could come home and check on things.”
Sitting in Valdosta through the hurricane, by then downgraded slightly to category 2, was extremely difficult for Bellamy because he had received word from home that his small vegetable stand on US Highway 19, where he often hangs out with family and friends, was severely damaged in the hurricane.
“I’m just getting back to Perry,” Bellamy said. When asked if there was any damage to his home, he responded, “I haven’t been there yet. This was my first stop. I knew it was damaged, but I didn’t expect this,” he said.
The entire front and part of the roof were torn off the building.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said as he choked back tears. “I can even remember buying cookies and candy here when I was a boy, way before my daddy bought it. But I guess all I can do now is clean it up.”
He walked back and forth, occasionally finding a memory in the rubble and a reason to smile.
“I better go check on the house,” he said. “Without any power, it’s going to be really dark around here.”
The darkness brought a glimmer of hope when the red lights began to flash at one of the town’s busiest intersections.
“Thank God,” Poitier shouted when she saw the red lights turn green. “They’re working on the electricity.”
Her excitement was short-lived after her companion asked: “You don’t hear those generators?”
“The traffic light is on,” Poitier responded. “How doesn’t matter right now.”
Before the night ended, several traffic lights in the town were back in operation – though all were powered by generators.
