Cellular service was absent for over a week. We don’t know what’s going on,” Ferrell said. Ferrell has been cooking for neighbors on a portable Coleman gas stove for the last week, her way of staying busy. There are coolers, bins and baskets of packaged foods such as crackers, cookies and stacks of bottled water all around. “‘Till it’s done I guess,” he said with a casual shrug.Ī few roads up from where the Blackmons are trying to plan their next steps, three more locals, David Weber, Julia Ferrell and Al Burnett, sit under a portable awning at what looks like a cross between a campsite and the pantry of a youth camp. He’s in from Oklahoma, like most of the crews working in this particular part of town, and says he has no idea how long before he’s able to go home. One utility linesman, Rick, descends from his cherry-picker, pulls the pop-top off a can of beans and sucks it down cold before cracking into a container of applesauce. The flashing yellow lights of utility trucks are omnipresent and start to drift into background noise before long. Dumpsters overflow with trash, as sanitation workers have been unable to collect it. Homes that haven’t outright collapsed are missing roofs, dormers and balconies. The splintered home framing, soggy tangles of insulation, home appliances and tree limbs mesh into one another more and more each day as they settle. For the last few days they have been bunking on a boat that survived the storm in a canal to the north.Īll over Port St Joe, thick stacks of refuse line every street. The Blackmons are waiting for a trailer from a friend that they will live out of here in Port St Joe, while they piece their lives back together. While both were functionally demolished by Michael, Port St Joe, sitting a paltry few feet higher on a slight bluff, escaped some of the ocean storm surge that swept homes in Mexico Beach clear away. Port St Joe and Mexico Beach sit side-by-side on the Gulf coast, seamlessly rolling into one another along Route 98 despite the fact that they don’t share a county or even the same time zone. Photograph: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images Please keep those who continue to feel the effects of Michael in your thoughts as rescues continue and they begin to rebuild.View of the damaged caused by Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Florida, three days after the storm hit the area. Cellular telephone company workers and search-and-rescue personnel joined Florida National Guard troops and multitudes of police and firefighters to respond to the storm.ĮCI Board of Directors and Staff send our best wishes to those who have been impacted by the storm. Utility workers are working to rebuild and repair the disrupted and destroyed infrastructure. There are also fears about potential fires given all the downed timber and a desire to burn off debris. Power outages in some areas are predicted to last weeks or months are boil-water orders in several communities, and curfews remain in effect during night hours. At its peak, outages reached over 400,000 and the hardest-hit counties in the Panhandle remain in a primitive state. More than 100,000 Floridians are still without power as of October 22, according to the state Department of Emergency Management website. ![]() ![]() With extensive power outages, and some areas without cellphone service which could be preventing people from reaching out for help, it is difficult to determine how many are still missing. ![]() ![]() In the aftermath, search-and-rescue teams are still combing through rubble in search of people reported missing. Its tropical-storm-force wind speeds stretched for more than 320 miles, with Mexico Beach being the hardest hit.Īs of October 20, the death toll from the storm includes 36 people in four (4) states twenty-six (26) in Florida, three (3) in North Carolina, one (1) in Georgia and six (6) in Virginia. After being downgraded, it became the first Category 3 hurricane to hit Georgia since 1898. With 155 mph winds at landfall, it is also the strongest storm to hit the continental US since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and has affected Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas. Hurricane Michael made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida on Wednesday, October 10 th as a Category 4 storm and is the strongest hurricane ever to come ashore along the Florida Panhandle. PS 6013 Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.Affiliates, Organizations, and Partners.Peterson 30 / Volunteer of the Year Award.
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