I remember Hurricane Irma like it was yesterday as it hit pretty close to where Charlie made landfall just a little south and it always reminded me of a bowling ball with a little too much spin dissecting the . We were doing a siding roof and windows restoration project construction project in Tampa when I got the phone call from the FCMP Florida Coastal Monitoring Program to fill my gas tanks buy some supplies grab my radios and head south. The first thought was that we may have another Andrew but fortunately for the financial stability of the state the storm got pulled thru the Florida Straits and then wrapped right back into the keys pretty near Cudjoe Key. Cudjoe is about a wide as I can hit a driver twice and the word from my friends in state emergency response was that the keys had been cut in half. That was not the way it worked out, but it was some time before anyone heard anything from anyone south of about MM 24. We ended up putting in an office at MM 97.5 which was adjacent to one of two Dennys in the country with a liquor bar, fitting for the keys.
I hooked in with the disaster response team from UF before landfall somewhere on old 41 that parallels alligator alley and we made the decision that the keys were too dangerous to set up in based on sea level and the potential for storm surge topping the island and washing us all out to sea like bait freezers relegated to the ground level on piling houses. Anyone who has worked post hurricane has seen these poor refrigerators that were banished from someone’s kitchen years ago are all rusted up but have a second life keeping both beer cold and bait frozen. The changing nature of the storm had us leap frogging across the state and relying on the gas buddy app to keep our vehicles full of fuel. This was the last time I worked a storm in a gasoline powered vehicle because there was none, diesel for miles but every person in Fl had filled up at the WaWa and headed to Atlanta or other points north draining the state of unleaded.
We finally got comfortable with the likely landfall location and set up our stations in Punta Gorda and at the dog track between Fort Myers and Naples. This is where my old white truck earned her nickname El Blanco by her heroic and careful work pulling up the 15 m weather tower that had a mechanical failure. The winch had gone out on the tower and while the weather channel watched we tried alternative ways to raise this last and best located tower settling on the use of brute force and a soft hand. In other words, we needed to snatch the boom up, hold the trailer in place, while not smashing the boom into the box. Heavy throttle for El Blanco followed by light touch. We made it happen as the storm made landfall no more than 20 miles away as the crow flies. A cheer went up but could not be heard by anyone in the 100 mph winds and blinding rain as my old girl did her job and helped set our last piece of equipment. These guys and gals that I get the privilege of working alongside are fearless and dedicated and I am always honored to be allowed to serve my community in this regard. We got great wind data, and no one was hurt leading to good stories and a successful trip.
National Weather Service official report
Florida Coastal Monitoring Program- Project Sentinel
Gallery of the storm
John G. Minor, Certified General Contractor, Certified Floodplain Manager, is a large loss insurance appraiser and expert witness as the President of Complete. His goal is to leverage his 25 years of experience, training, relationships and specialized knowledge to provide answers to support his clients through the difficult challenges of property claims.
John’s experience in hurricanes reach back to growing up as a coastal resident on Soundside Dr in Gulf Breeze Florida. This has grown into a passion for understanding these events and triggered his work with the FCMP Florida Coastal Monitoring Program at the University of Florida Powell Lab. The FCMP is a FEMA supported program that sends weather recording equipment out into the field to place weather equipment in front of landfalling hurricanes. John is a member of the set up team and has provided volunteer support of the program for more than a decade dropping equipment ahead of many hurricanes hitting throughout Florida and the southeast. There is no experience that John can compare with that is similar to the week before, and the week after a landfalling Major hurricane.
