Hurricane Dorian - An Epic disaster

All is well in South Florida; Hurricane Dorian ended up skirting the coast and moving north. We had tropical storm conditions here in Boynton Beach but the really nasty stuff didn't reach us and we have well & truly breathed a huge sigh of relief. Unfortunately, the circumstances required that we do full Hurricane prep. In this case for Groundworks, that meant a maximum effort that included taking out and carefully laying down a huge inventory of trees and palms. We dig, we pull, we wrap and we tarp almost everything to protect it from high winds. Taking down the inventory is actually the final stage in our preparations here; this time around our efforts began on Thursday afternoon with a six page list of items to deal with, each important and each with its own place in the total effort.

The goals we strive for when preparing are to first & foremost insure the safety of our personell and their families. Concurrently our efforts are designed to protect the assets and operational capacity of the business while making sure that behind the storm we can get the business up and running quickly. Being ready means being able to get ourselves on the road very soon after the storm to help our friends & customers recover and reestablish a little bit of normalcy after what will have been a moment of complete & utter chaos. We have performed this dance countless times and with each drill, we get a little better at it. Over the decades we have grown a tried & true Hurricane preparedness drill that is a product of experience and that is no longer all that unusual for us. It has been a while since we have needed to perform it but once we got started, it was all pretty seamless. I say "drill" because in my experience, 80% of Hurricane preparation turns out to be nothing more than an expensive training exercise; a drill. These drills teach us where we are weak and how to do better next time. As with most of these drills, the seriously damaging aspects of this particular storm didn't quite reach us (I am NOT complaining) and though we make a big investment in preparation, it is something that we do because once in a while, the storm will find its way into our nursery and into our lives. When it does, all of that preparation yields circumstances that act to insure (to the extent possible) everyone's safety, it helps to keep everyone calm & comfortable while the weather is raging outside, it positions us for a swift recovery behind the storm and knowing that we are tucked in and everything is in place helps to keep the chaos that try's so hard to invade our emotional states at bay.

Until you have lived one, I do not believe it is possible to fully appreciate just how unsettling and chaotic those hours can be. I have seen too many people decide that a storm isn't coming and isn't worth preparing for. Those types usually hadn't yet actually lived one of these beasts. In my opinion, if you have lived through a Hurricane and still decide you dont need to prepare, (when one is knocking at your door) you are probably also one of those people who will be needing first responders to spend their valuable time & resources saving your ignorant self while listening to you whining "You wont believe what happened to me". Dumb, dumb, dumb and yes, I will believe what happened to you and all I can say is, Your Choices, Your Outcomes.

This time around, Dorian was unlike any Hurricane I have ever seen and in my 40 years here I have seen quite a few. The storm didn't actually get to us, nothing serious anyway but it did do something Hurricanes almost never do; it stopped and it stayed stopped. By Friday night we had done all of our preparations holding just short of taking down all of the palms. All of the softer trees etc were put away and protected but the palms are really tough and a tropical storm isn't going to do any damage. The models were all saying that the storm would slow down then turn north well short of reaching the coastline so while we were fairly well convinced that all we would see would be tropical storm conditions, I chose to error to the side of caution and we prepared for a Cat 1. This was all well, good, fine & dandy until Sunday afternoon when a very powerful Category 5 Hurricane was parked, stationary, just 100 miles east of us. Holy Moly. Stationary as in not moving at all. The models were all still saying that it would start moving north and we would not get the brunt of it but we were staring this monster of a storm right in the eye knowing that the weather man had to be pretty much 100% right in order for you to avoid a solid kick in the teeth. I am a pretty reasonable guy and I could not help but to ask myself; when was the last time the weather man was ever 100% right? Hmm.....

In this case, the storm was so big and so powerful that you are looking at an all or nothing bet. If it comes and the palms are up, they go down hard, the canopies get destroyed and whatever they land on is crushed. In that situation, if you are a guy like me who believes in the term "abundance of caution", you scratch the Labor day holiday, you call all hands on deck and you get seriously busy. That is what we did and our staff of dedicated champions responded; every one of them. We worked together getting the at risk inventory down & safe then we went home and kept our fingers crossed. I have to tell you, we have some of the finest, most talented and best trained field operations teams in the industry. There may be people in the industry who are as good as our boys & girls are but I am certain that there are none who are better. It is true that we train, train, train and that yields personell who know the work and understand safe field operations but the dedication they showed Melissa and I on Monday was the absolute BOMB. I am so darn proud of them, every single one of them from leadership to laborer doing their part to protect the business that feeds all of us. Showing up knowing that a monster is lurking just out of view and safely doing what needed to be done. Unmatched dedication & commitment. I salute each of them, I am in awe of their resilience and I thank God for their fortitude and willingness to stand fast and do what needed doing. Amazing. They made short work of a really big job and once we were tight, we headed out hoping like heck that the weather people had it right while knowing that if they didn't, all would be well.

This Hurricane ran all the way up to 185 MPH sustained winds with gusts at 235 MPH. At 157 MPH it became a Category 5 hurricane so at 185 it was historic, epic. The storm moved through the north eastern Bahamas on Friday destroying portions of the Abacos. That was horrible but at least it was moving. When it reached Grand Bahama Island the central pressure was 910 and it was at its very strongest. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew came ashore at 921 millibars and most of you know what it did. 910 is nearly unprecedented; at this point Dorian was a living breathing nightmare for the people of the Bahamas. Moving through, it did an incredible degree of damage in the Abacos but at Grand Bahama it just stopped and it sat there stationary for over 36 hours.

Its winds damaged or flat out destroyed nearly every man made structure along with every tree, palm and plant. While this was happening, the winds pushed the ocean into the land putting what had been homes and businesses, schools and churches, hospitals and everything else under up to 20 feet of ocean water. The storm sat there stationary until Tuesday at 10 am when it finally started moving again. We were safe here in Florida. Our friends, many of which we have known for most of our lives are in the Bahamas. We do not yet know what has become of them but we can already see that Grand Bahama Island's topography is radically different from what it was on Friday. Go online and look at some of the video; the place is an utter waste land and that is where it is still land; hundreds of acres are gone; the land itself has been claimed by the sea. The authorities still dont know how much loss of life has occurred; even one victim is far too many and looking at the pictures it is apparent to me that many incredible people have lost their lives. Tens of thousands have lost their homes and every single person there has seen the face of wanton destruction. It is mother nature doing as she does, I understand that but I could not blame a single person for believing that they have survived the presence of pure evil.

There are a lot of us putting together relief for the Bahamas and there are plenty of ways to help if you want to. One of the best ways is by donating to the Bahamas Red Cross. They know best how to get to the people who desperately need help. In our case, we have been told that the Bahamian government does not want boats to come; they do not want boats getting caught up in the debris and that is understandable but can I sit by hoping that someone else will take care of people I count as my brothers & sisters? Can I sit by in comfort knowing how bad it is and knowing that I can find my way in with a boat load of relief. Melissa and I are mariners; we have crossed the seas and logged literally thousands of sea miles in our Ocean Master, Seaworks. Neither of us has any doubt about being able to maneuver Seaworks into a position where we can help the people we love. We love hard; we dont know any other way. I have always said that people will be who they are. Yup.