Many in Storm's Path Decided Not to Leave
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
HORSESHOE BEACH, To live in the path of a forecast hurricane these days is to be bombarded by dire Katrina-inspired exhortations, and as Tropical Storm Alberto moved toward this small, low-lying town of shrimpers and crabbers, there was the usual ominous noise.
The National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane warning, which echoed ceaselessly from televisions. Gov. Jeb Bush urged caution, the county ordered an evacuation and emergency management leaders convened a City Hall meeting to encourage people to leave.
And after all the scary buildup, many and maybe most of the people here said: Nah, we're staying.
The center of Alberto made landfall in the Big Bend area about noon on Tuesday, bearing winds of about 50 mph. The rain came in lashes, and gusts swayed the Spanish moss that drapes the cypress trees. A few power lines were toppled. Water surging in from the Gulf of Mexico made several streets impassable.
But the storm, which never reached hurricane strength, proved to be no more than a mild inconvenience for most people in its way, and the holdouts savored their instincts for survival.
"Well, I got faith in God, and I looked to God to see me through," said Marjorie Neeley, 79. She spoke from her front porch as the floodwaters, which had reached some nearby yards but never hers, began to recede.
She had rejected not only the official evacuation pleas, but those of her daughter, Sandra Mills, 47; great-grandson Justin, 8; and a Dixie County emergency official who turned up on her porch as the water was rising Tuesday morning
"Grandma said she wasn't going nowhere," Justin said.
"I tried to get her to leave, but she said no, so we just rode it out together," Mills said. But before they did, "I told her to think about my life and Justin's life."
Scott Garner, chief of emergency management for the county, estimated that only 30 percent of residents in Dixie's coastal communities, which include Horseshoe Beach, complied with the evacuation order. About 50 people went to shelters.
"All we can do is get the word out there and let them make their own decisions," he said.
Despite the scientific authority of the forecasters and the sway of state and local leaders who have made hurricane preparation a priority, many in this enclave, as well as elsewhere along the nation's hurricane-threatened coasts, prefer to make the evacuation decision based on personal storm experience and meteorological insight.
"I don't think I could be considered a foolish person or one to take chances," said Daphine Spivey, 66, a native of the area who stayed home with her husband, a building official. "If it had been a bad one, we would have left."
She said the predicted storm surge of eight to 10 feet was less than what her house withstood in the "No Name" storm of 1993. So the couple thought they could ride out Alberto, too, and they did.
"I think you have to use common sense," she said, noting that her grandfather used to get a sense of storms by observing cows, pigs and other animals.
"I guess the Lord gives them the sense to know," she said.
Michael Webster, 35, his wife and two kids didn't evacuate for Alberto, either.
Webster said he has new respect for hurricanes, having worked a front-end loader during Katrina cleanup in Bay St. Louis, Miss. But he said he would leave Horseshoe Beach only if the storm winds exceeded 100 mph.
"This is nothing," he said after lunch with his family at a restaurant.
Outside, college students were checking a wind gauge built atop a 30-foot orange crane they had deployed. One of them said the strongest sustained winds measured were 30 mph.
Experts, nevertheless, say that defying evacuation orders and hurricane warnings is risky.
"When people try to gauge their actions on what happened in the past, disastrous things can happen," said Eric Blake, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center.
The trouble is that most people's storm experience is limited, he said.
"There hasn't been a major hurricane there in most people's lifetimes," Blake said, referring to the Big Bend area. "There are always uncertainties in the forecast. People are taking a chance with their lives, and we'd like to discourage that."
But Billy Rollison, 74, a Navy veteran who was out watching the tides as the storm passed Tuesday, questioned whether people who don't know the area can judge.
"They sit up there with their computers and checking the winds and all that," he said of the county's emergency managers as he watched Gulf waters cover part of the road. "Ain't none of them have been down here for a storm."
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