Regular readers know that we are based in Tampa Bay and over the years I have written about a couple of close calls we’ve had with hurricanes. We just dodged another direct hit last week as Hurricane Helene missed us by about 100 miles as it headed straight for Florida’s big bend area in the panhandle.
I’ve been a little hesitant to write about this, as this event literally shook me to my core. Also, what I went through was nothing like those in the Big Bend of Florida and Western North Carolina are now dealing with. But once again, if we can learn from my mistakes, then it’s a story worth sharing.
When I saw early Thursday morning that were indeed outside of the cone, I felt much more confident that we were going to be okay once again. The ’66 is once again having carburetor issues, and the car hasn’t run since earlier this year. So when I saw the storm was going to pass us by, I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to try moving it. That complacency almost led to me losing my 1966 Corvette to the storm surge which caught us completely by surprise.
And here’s the thing, it shouldn’t have. We know all about storm surges in Florida and their destructive power. But over the years of us being able to dodge all these storms with little to no flooding, we had never witnessed anything like this after Helene had passed.
Our street is two blocks from the Bay and sits about 7-feet above sea level. The water came in fast on Thursday evening, and it took about two hours to creep up the driveway and under my garage door. Lucky for me, our house was built in the late 1980s, so it sits higher than some of the original houses still in the neighborhood. At the street level the water was touching the bottom of my mailbox, but thanks to a sloped driveway, the highest point of water that got in our garage was about six inches high at the entrance.
As the water was coming in, I had no time to worry about the Corvette and was resigned that it was going to flood. My backyard Koi pond was already underwater and I could see my fish were swimming out in the yard. So yeah, I thought the Corvette would be next.
We think about when stuff like this happens, we say “I’ll do anything” to save it, not thinking that there may be something more important than a car to save at the same time. As the water was creeping up the front of our driveaway, behind our house is the South Tampa farm and the pasture where my wife’s horse is boarded. That field was under 3-5 feet of water by 11 PM and still rising. My wife and I pulled our horse, and two mini-horses into our backyard where they were still in the roughly three feet of water, but at least they were on higher ground. We then had to wade back into the pasture to save a family of goats from drowning by putting lawn and pool furniture in a pile where they could stand on them. Unfortunately, we couldn’t save Hamilton the pig, and 150 honeybee hives were wiped out as well.
At about 2:30 AM we got the call from a friend that the tide was going out, and sure enough the water dropped even faster than it came in. At 4:30 AM the garage and yard were clear of water. The crazy story is every one of my koi ended up back in the pond when the water receded, and I found Yoda the turtle under some debris the next morning. We were luckier than many of the neighbors on our street who had water in their homes. Our power remained on the entire time, but we lost our internet until Sunday morning. A massive clean-up is now underway.
So, once again, another lesson learned. Even when outside the cone (of destruction), get those cars (and horses!) to high ground at the first sign that flooding could happen. It’s always better to deal with the inconvenience of having to move things around and nothing happen, than to not move and lose everything.
Prayers to those who did lose everything…
Source:
Photos by Keith Cornett
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Sorry to hear that man! It’s still scary no matter your situation as it progressively gets worse like that. I’m in Orlando now, and we barely got anything, but I used to work for Tampa PD, so I’m well acquainted with how quickly and easily that area can flood, especially south Tampa! I got an email from the TPD union that 11 officers lost their homes completely, so they’re trying to raise money for them.
Glad you’re safe!
Wow! As bad as that was you still lucked out. Also glad you guys safely made it through the storm. We live in Charlotte and dodged a bullet. We just had a lot of small broken branches in our backyard. The opposite side of town had an area of pretty bad flooding and some of our city lost power but we didn’t. Still we fared a way whole lot better than our poor suffering neighbors to the west. As most everybody knows by now Asheville was trashed and some small towns in western NC were wiped off the map. Sadly some of Western North Carolina will never ever be the same.
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