Once Was Enough

November 1999 Table of Contents

ONCE WAS ENOUGH: The Aftershock of Floyd
by Betsy Bracey

A massive wall of water struck Treasure's Cay's Windward Beach on 14th September,1999.
No one doubts it, but without a video record it's not easy to say just how high it was. We know it hurtled up the bight from the south. We know what it did when it crashed into that shore. We can see how it demolished homes and landscape, torpedoing them with such force that 100 foot casuarinas toppled like saplings, shutters disintegrated like rice paper, sliding doors blasted out of their frames and windows shattered as easily as crystal.
We are told that this 'wall' was 15 to 18 foot when it met the first of its targets. Perhaps. It doesn't matter much, for however high, it was a monster of destruction. Once trapped within the confines of rooms this sudden blast of sea water created a vortex clutching everything in its wake - furniture, carpets, appliances - and spun them so recklessly as it rose and ebbed that they became objects of their own devastation, ripping out sheet rock, doors and cabinets as easily as a child obliterates his sand castles and leaving nothing but crushed debris glimmering with shards of glass and coated with great mounds of weed and coconuts plucked from palms like so many grapes.
It was amazing, the energy, the force, the inevitability of the incredible destruction trapped in that storm surge. Abaco lost many homes to this runaway violence and the worst was probably over within 30 minutes, subsiding rapidly as liquid does when freed of its confines. But what a 30 minutes it must have been! How we would rush to our screens to see such a video.
When those of us who lived by the edge of the sea went to find the remnants, we were speechless. There just wasn't anything to say. It was all so graphically evident. There wasn't even anything to do. Just stand, stare and look at one another.
In the ensuing days some precious possessions tucked high within closets were discovered, photographs mostly, and here and there some surprisingly delicate bits that miraculously settled gently on the flotsam. Strange finds, gratefuly collected, long to be treasured, mementos of the holocaust that struck Abaco in September of '99.
Eyewitnesses, terrified but fascinated, viewing from their trembling upper stories, tell of a river that gushed down Marina Drive six feet deep, driven by wind so fierce as to create white capped waves which indundated cars and carts well over their engines and, later, of lower condominiums flooded and totally ruined. One resident who stayed to care for her doggies witnessed them swimming frantically through her living room toward the somewhat safe haven of her bed, which was already awash. Another friend tells of his terrified children clinging to him while he experienced such pressure on his chest that he could scarcely breathe.
For each survivor there is a tale both strange and impossible not to share. No one who lived through it laughs about the hurricane of '99. This astonishing demonstration of wind and water power was simply too awesome to laugh about. Floyd is an end of the century story for Abaconians to tell throughout the next.
But for now, conversations end with "Now I know"; "Next time I"ll leave"; "Thank God we survived" and "Once was enough. Yes, once surely was enough".

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