Hurricane Wilma rubbed salt in our wounds, so it stings a year later
The Palm Beach Post
Sunday, October 22, 2006

By ANDREW MARRA

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – If Hurricane Wilma had not come so late in the year, if it had not arrived with such surprising ferocity, maybe it would not have been the tipping point it was.

Maybe brides would not have stopped booking weddings in September and October. Maybe high schools would not have moved their homecoming celebrations to mid-season, and homeowners would not have stopped fixing their patio screens.

Maybe Raymonde Roberts, a West Palm Beach retiree, would not have packed her bags and bought a house in Charlotte, N.C.

A year ago, Wilma changed many things. And not because it was stronger or more deadly than its predecessors.

As it spread damage with unexpected strength, Wilma made devastation feel routine. It made safe rooms and shelters an annual event.

For residents of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, veterans already of Frances and Jeanne, Wilma cemented the feeling that these things were now a way of life: darkness and fear, a gasoline-parched world of curfews and ice lines.

The storm came Oct. 24, when many thought hurricane season was over and done. The results were sweeping and well-documented.

Homeowners insurance prices, already rising, skyrocketed to extraordinary levels. The once-hot real estate market shuddered. Municipal governments began hoarding more cash.

As sun-brittle tarps hugged roofs for another year, others sprung up like mold. Fed up with rising prices and the threat of more storms, people began to leave.

“That was one too many,” said Roberta Stobin, a real estate agent in suburban Lake Worth. “People said, ‘That’s it. I’ve had it.’ Most of them are moving to Tennessee, to Georgia, to the Carolinas.”

Wilma arrived toward the end of the busiest season on record, its strength echoing the snarl of 2004’s Frances and Jeanne.

It hit Florida’s west coast as a Category 3 hurricane, stronger than expected, and roared across the state in 4 1/2 hours. By the time it left it had caused $10.3 billion in damage, more than any storm in United States history besides Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew.

The winds had weakened slightly when they reached Palm Beach County, but gusts higher than 100 mph were enough to rip up roofs, fling down power lines and crush to death an 82-year-old Boynton Beach-area woman under a sliding glass door.

As Wilma slogged on, Roberts, a 78-year-old homeowner in a West Palm Beach development, took shelter at her house. When she came out afterward, she learned the storm had damaged the roof she mended after Frances a year earlier. Furniture on her patio had been pulverized, a glass table destroyed.

Then came the days of heat and darkness, the endless consumption of cold foods.

It was difficult and depressing, a struggle she shared with hundreds of thousands across South Florida. For Roberts, a retiree who lives alone, the third storm in little more than a year was one too many.

She wanted out.

“That tipped the scale,” she said. “We had 20 years of good luck and then all of a sudden here they come one year after another. It was just too much for my psyche.”

Two months ago, she moved into a house in Charlotte, N.C., closer to her daughter and far from the well-tread paths of recent storms. She still owns her West Palm Beach home, but plans to visit only during the winter.

“Nobody knows what the seasons will bring from now on, but I don’t want to take any chances down there,” she said.

Untold others share the story. Yet, for those who never left, life is still plenty changed, sometimes in subtle ways.

Across Palm Beach County, high schools are playing their homecoming football games early this year. The annual parades are winding through neighborhood streets, sometimes, in mid-October rather than mid-November. The dances get going on nights when the air is still thick with the mugginess of autumn.

Last year, most schools had no homecoming at all. The yearly ritual was lost during the public school system’s two-week hiatus from class in the cleanup after the storm.

When classes resumed, it was time for district playoffs. The homecoming celebrations were axed.

“All we played were the district games that had to be played, and the others were forgotten,” said Yetta Greene, administrator of the Palm Beach County Athletic Conference.

This year, to ensure enough time for a makeup date, many schools are pushing their homecoming games to the middle of the season rather than the end.

Change has not left the sacraments untouched.

When engaged couples select a wedding date, they are spurning the fall months, the peak of hurricane sea. Wedding planners and popular wedding locations say South Florida bookings this year are down considerably during hurricane-prone months.

At the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, couples booked just two September weddings this year. In past years, five or six had been the norm.

“It’s certainly on their minds more,” said Erin Molloy, marketing director at the Morikami. “They’re more tentative to go into the hurricane months.”

Even now, pool enclosures still stand without screens across the area, or don’t stand at all. They fell after Frances or Jeanne, were fixed, and then fell again when Wilma swept through.

Jim Riley of Wellington lost his pool enclosure in Wilma. A year earlier, he might have considered replacing it. But the price, upwards of $15,000, gave him pause.

So did the third storm.

“I know too many people who’ve had them knocked down twice,” he said. “We weren’t going to build anything.”

Now, his family braves the bugs when they sit on the porch or splash in their pool in the thick of summer.

More than any other storm, Wilma prodded local governments to consider long-term preparations, officials say.

The county government and many local cities responded by stashing away more cash. Millions of dollars are being set aside this year to pay for police overtime, emergency supplies and building repairs when the next storm comes through. Palm Beach County has increased its reserve of spare cash from $15 million to $20 million, in part to be ready for future storms. Wellington has set aside $3 million for disaster preparedness.

“After Wilma, it was like, One more storm? Gee, it wasn’t just one year?” County Administrator Bob Weisman said.

In many places, new gas stations now are required to have generators, including in Stuart, Royal Palm Beach and unincorporated Palm Beach County. The hope is to minimize the long, snaking gas lines that have come to symbolize hurricane aftermath. Publix grocery stores are following suit.

For all the changes, there are those for whom Wilma changed very little, those who had been living already in damaged homes, under tarps and surrounded by mold, and still do.

Sandy Carl, a 52-year-old Port St. Lucie resident, saw her roof demolished during Frances in 2004. She replaced a few patches but, while battling with her insurance company, she could not afford a complete fix.

When Wilma came through, it undid all her efforts. Today, a tarp still adorns her roof, and mold grows freely inside her walls.

For Carl, if anything, there has been too little change. Disabled and unemployed, she has refinanced her house just to pay the bills. For her, Wilma has been an unremarkable event, indistinguishable from the other storms that first ravaged her life. It was an insufficient catalyst for change.

“There’s no way I’m going to be able to hold on like this,” she said. “All I’ve been doing is buying time.”