Aftermath

Hello all. I'm surviving in Miami. The pictures above are of the front of my house and my landlord's son, Brian, surveying the extensive damage in our neighborhood. I’ll backtrack a bit before moving forward. Early on the morning of October 24th, Wilma hit Southern Florida as a fast-moving Category 3 hurricane. Though it was not nearly as devastating as Katrina in the gulf, or even Wilma itself in the Yucatan, it has still left an entire city (millions of people) without power, and the poor people of Ft. Lauderdale with not much of anything. This was the worst disaster in Ft. Lauderdale’s history. Some thoughts I wrote down as the hurricane passed overhead:

10/24/05 5:30am

I’m sitting on my doorstep (to the rest of the house). It’s farthest from my front door. The electricity went out for good about 5 minutes ago after flickering on and off for a good hour.

Brian’s playing Monopoly by candlelight with two girls. Their discussions have become more and more heated. I was watching a video of Dave Chapelle with the other three guys at this particular hurricane party when the electricity finally went away. So now I’m in here.

Through the corner of the window on my front door, I can see the trees thrashing around and I know this is just the beginning. The eye was supposed to make landfall just after 6am. and we haven’t even begun to feel hurricane force winds.

I’m almost too tired to be scared. Perhaps that was the advantage of staying up all night.

Every once in a while there are blue flashes of light indicating another wounded transformer in the area. I cannot begin to fathom what the winds will be like when the eyewall passes by us. My fellow hurricane partiers don’t seem worried. They are too caught up in their Monopoly game.

I, however, have no history with this. I have no reference point, and so I watch the trees and wonder how they could possibly bend any lower.

I wonder how much light comes through all of this mayhem when the sun comes up?

I am worried for my cat, who has been sniffing the air like mad tonight. He is maybe smelling the ionization, or perhaps fear and despair blowing in from the West.

The news has dubbed Florida the “Here we go Again” state. I wonder how anyone could live through this kind of anxiety more than once.

8:05am

I’m in my shower. Terrified. Everyone else is screaming through the house, equally terrified. Brian tells me this is much worse than he thought it would be. More like Andrew than Katrina. I’ve never heard such violent wind. It sounds like a jet plane taking off. I can’t keep my cat in the bathroom. 45 minutes ago I walked into the living room just in time to see a full grown palm tree come flying towards the back bay windows. It was “Final Destination,” it was a near-death experience. It smashed into the side of the house and everyone screamed bloody murder.

It’s a constant barrage of thunder against the house. I can feel the whole structure vibrating and the pipes on the toilet are clanking together.

I’ve never been so scared in my entire life.

10/25/05

So today is the first full day of reconstruction (as the news told me while I was basking in the electricity at Sherrie Dee’s house). They have been telling everyone not to expect electricity for a full week, maybe more. I don’t know how to live without it. I don’t have a car charger for my phone so I can’t power up anything until I have lights. I can’t drive to Sherrie’s every day because it took me an hour and I only have a half tank left of gasoline. Once I run out of gas I’m shit out of luck because, if there’s no electricity, the gas pumps don’t work.

Patrick Hansen, at the opera, tells me that there’s a gas pump working over by the rehearsal studio, but every working gas pump I saw on my way around town today is encumbered by a line from hell.

There are trees all over the neighborhood. I had to drive up on the sidewalk to get out of here this morning. I think Miami Springs got it the worst in terms of downed tree (excepting Ft. Lauderdale of course). Yesterday, as the sky cleared and the winds died down, I watched everyone go outside and begin to saw through their broken trees. As it were, there are four down in our yard but Brian wants to wait until his parents get home before doing anything about them.

Thank god my car is fine. (albeit hoping gas will be available soon).

As for the opera… who knows. I worked through a tentative schedule for the rest of the week with Sherrie Dee while I was charging stuff at her place. Then, tonight that got shot all to hell. Patrick called her and said that a generator had been donated to them and they were going to set it up in the morning. They’ve suggested two sessions tomorrow using the minimum amount of people possible because the generator will not produce a lot of light.

We’re not sure what to do about that since everything that still needs to be staged includes everyone. Also, two of our singers (one who is in every scene) were out of town for a few days and now they’re stranded, unable to get into Miami, so we can’t rehearse with them at all. So, we are rehearsing the same damn thing we’ve been rehearsing and hoping to god that the electricity comes back on soon so that we can begin to put this whole thing together.

I’m worried about the generator. About having enough extension cords to hook up all those lights. I’m worried about the fact that the bathrooms will be in the dark and they’ll have to fill them with candles so people can see what they’re doing. I’m worried that the light will not be enough to make that precarious set safe. I’m worried that the generator will not work at all and we’ll lose yet another day of time. We open in 16 days mind you. I’m worried that AGMA will have a fit if we’re rehearsing in subpar conditions (or one of the singers will). I’m worried about Lillian being okay with all of this.

I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. For the time being I’m just trying to roll with the punches, but that’s going to get harder and harder as I grow weary of this inability to communicate and this incessant darkness.