Transfixed by Georges, compelled by Andrew

By HOWARD TROXLER

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 25, 1998

y today or tonight we will see. It is impossible to pinpoint, over the past days, the precise moment Hurricane Georges emerged from the background noise of our humdrum daily cares. But suddenly it loomed over us as the biggest, even the only, thing in the whole world to worry about.

More coverage from the Times on our Georges site.

Georges was just a blip in the news and we were watching the president's videotape, or carping about being sick of Monica-gate. Give us something new. And then with almost no transition we were asking, afraid of sounding silly: Is it time to go to the store? Is it time to act? And we saw the look in each other's eyes and said: The hell with worrying about feeling silly. It's time.

Crazy Ivan drifted off to the north, and fickle Jeanne dallied in the Atlantic, but Georges made a determined beeline our way, a red, swirling pinwheel on the radar map that played constantly on every television, every channel. More like a bowling ball, really, staying to the left all the way down the lane, and threatening to hook into the pocket at the end, with us as the pins.

Hurricane-talk elbowed out all else. No more cigars. No more politics. We quickly re-adopted the vocabulary of categories, of storm surge, of wind damage, of evacuation zones and letters, of bottled water and batteries and canned goods. We speculated knowingly on whether it would be better for Georges to come up through the state, or whether the southwesterly winds of a gulfside storm would slam right into the mouth of Tampa Bay.

There has been something much different about us this time: We have taken it seriously. Our last real hurricane was Elena in 1985 and that time we did not take it seriously, at least, not seriously enough. If there is anything at all good to be said about Hurricane Andrew, here it is: There is nothing like seeing big chunks of somebody else's city scoured from the face of the earth to instill a little respect.

Neighbors have been calling neighbors and saying, are you all right? Do you need anything? One of my neighbors copied the evacuation maps, the recommended list of emergency supplies and phone numbers, and put them on the front door of everyone around. Friends are phoning to say: Do you have a place? Please come to mine. The small talk we make with each other now includes a new question: Where do you live? The answer is: high, or low.

No matter how much you talk about something, no matter how much you think about it and plan for it, there comes a time when you take the first step, or see a change occur, and realize: It's really happening. When we started paying attention, Georges was mostly just a red ball on a TV screen. But on a gorgeous, sunny, late-summer Thursday morning, we woke up to school cancellations, evacuation orders, emergency centers and round-the-clock coverage. Clouds and wind rolled in Thursday evening and even if they weren't the first wave of the storm, they felt portentous.

The idea of evacuation on Thursday jelled into reality, and became a must-do to balance against work and daily life: Pick up laundry, attend meeting, call relatives, abandon home. When would they close the Skyway? How long would the bay bridges stay open? We made checklists of what to bring, still torn between being overdramatic, and being extra-prepared. Would we really need insect repellent? You feel funny putting it in the bag, but then you think about all those people in Homestead in the miserable aftermath of 1992 who would have paid dearly for a can. In it goes.

There finally comes a time when you have done what you are going to do, and then you wait. Everybody told each other the same thing in parting Thursday. Cashiers said it to customers; co-workers said it to each other as they headed home; friends and relatives said it to each other as they checked in. I say it to you now, whether Georges veers west and gives us merely a nasty time, or whether it gives us worse: Good luck to you; see you on the other side.