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After storm's miss, calm returns
By JO BECKERand RICHARD VERRIER © St. Petersburg Times, published September 27, 1998 Saturday was supposed to have been the day that Hurricane Georges flooded coastal Pasco County. But by 10 a.m., Kling and his wife sat sipping coffee in the sunshine outside their Sea Pines home in Hudson. K.T., Kling's peach-tinged cockatoo, scampered on the hood of the family car. Kling's sleepy 15-year-old son, Jeramie, dreading the work ahead, spoke hopefully of a hurricane brewing off the coast of Africa and suggested leaving the plywood and sandbags as is. "We are emphatically grateful," said Kling, whose home was slammed by the March 1993 no-name storm. "The canal didn't even get over the sea wall." It was that way all over Pasco County on Saturday, as people awakened to find that Georges had given them such a wide berth that there was hardly a puddle to be found. The county lifted its mandatory evacuation order, fed 1,378 people breakfast and then sent them home from emergency shelters. Emergency Management Director Michele Baker said she had not received a single report of hurricane-related flooding, though she would continue to watch the storm surge expected at high tide. She won't have estimates of what the county spent to prepare for Georges until next week, but she said it was worth it. "I hope people realize that this time they got lucky," she said. "The next time, it could be a whole different situation." Those who spent the night in shelters did feel lucky, lucky to be spared the wrath of Georges and thankful for the kindness of strangers. Alice Sack, 83, of Beacon Square Gardens, was apprehensive about spending the night among strangers at River Ridge High School. Sack is recuperating from back surgery and uses a wheelchair. "It was great," Sack said Saturday morning, as she waited outside the shelter for a bus to take her home. "I can't say enough good things about everyone who helped out here, the goodwill." Steve Lang, 35, is a truss builder from New Port Richey who also stayed the night at the River Ridge High shelter. Lang said he was grateful to the volunteer nurses who assisted his mother, who has leukemia, and his grandmother, who has a heart condition, both of whom stayed at the shelter. "The nurses were really helpful," he said. His wife didn't have any regrets about coming to the shelter. "I'm just glad we took the precaution," said Mollie Lang, 27. "I worry that the next time people say to evacuate, everyone will ignore it." Daryl Zeppi will. Zeppi, a demolition worker who was evacuated from a hotel in Port Richey, had no complaints about the shelter at River Ridge, just the mandatory evacuation. "I don't think it was necessary," said Zeppi, 36, whose wife and daughter spent the night at his mother-in-law's. "The next time, I'm going to stay at home." Two Bosnian families were among the 200 who stayed at the Gulf High School shelter Thursday night. The families are refugees sponsored by the World Relief charity and have been in the United States for just one month. "I was quite scared," said Sanja Korda, 28, who was with her husband and two children. "In my country we have only winter storms." Korda, who lives in Port Richey, said she and her husband are used to leaving their home. She said they've moved five times since war forced them to leave their home in Zadar, Croatia, in 1995. As she waited for a cab to take her home from the shelter, Korda said, "I felt safe . . . They are very good people." Elsewhere, life also returned to normal. People waxed cars, went to the mall. Some returned hurricane supplies to Home Depot. Many of the businesses along U.S. 19 reopened. Over on Miller's Bayou in Port Richey, Glen Locke used a wheelbarrow to haul the sandbags he had placed around his doors out to his backyard shed area. "It was all for nothing," Locke said. "I guess." John DeLuca packed the ice chests of his well-worn shrimp boat Cracker Boy and prepared to head out to sea for six days. His seaman's sense told him that he would safely be out of Georges' way. Besides, he has bills to pay. "The price of shrimp has been dropping, and I can't afford not to go out," he said. On Hudson Beach, couples strolled along the water's edge. A nearby boarded up house, with the words "My House, Not Yours Geoges" spray painted on the plywood, seemed an apt backdrop. "I'm just so happy," said David Gonet of New Port Richey as he surveyed the placid waters of the gulf. "It really could have been bad. Instead, it's actually pleasant out."
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atrick Kling spent hundreds of dollars boarding up his house and woke up every 90 minutes throughout the early morning hours Saturday to check the canal level in back of his house.
