Hurricane Ernesto

It's that time again. It seems like it was only yesterday that we here in South Florida went through Hurricane Katrina and then Hurricane Wilma within a month, I believe it was.

The day Hurricane Katrina hit us directly I was working at a local Burger King temporarily. The owner of that particular fast food spot thought the storm was entering more up north in West Palm Beach and we were only going to get the bands. Boy was he wrong. We stayed working until the eye was right over us and then we were sent home...only...I didn't know we were in the eye so me and a fellow co-worker decided to go to a dunkin doughnuts. While eating I received a call from my little brother in law warning us to get home quick because we were in the eye. As we were getting in our car it literally came out of nowhere as if someone turned on a switch. What began as a light drizzle turned into a hellish nightmare. One by one all the transformers in the area started to overload and you could see the strange eerie blue lights in the sky and then...pitch black. All you could hear was the loud roar of the wind and couldn't see your hand in front of your face how heavy the rain was. I don't know if I could say God was watching over me that night or if it was just luck but a huge palm tree fell within inches of my door. How the wind didn't pick up enough to blow it on my car with us in it is beyond me. We decided to drive home...very slowly since my breaks were barely working. Along the way we had to stop several times to help out a few people who were also unfortunate to be caught outside after the eye passed. One guy drove his car over a medium and couldn't get out so I pushed his car with my truck. Another guy had a similar problem but it was a big tree trunk instead. Then we found a car that was completely totalled in the middle of an intersection and we HAD to stop to see if anyone was hurt but we couldn't see so we reluctantly kept on. The rest of the way was pretty much incident free but still scary as hell. I kept half expecting to hear the sound of a train that you supposedly hear when a tornado is near but thankfully there was none...that I know of.

It was quite an experience....that I don't care to go through again. Here's hoping that we go incident free with Hurricane Ernesto.