Folks, here's what I know at this time;

Pcola Beach has sustained major damage. Power estimated to be turned on between 2 weeks to 2 months.

30-40' storm surge has impacted everyone below hwy 98.

Rick White: Might want to consider an alternate site for the Wave nationals. Only residents of Pcola Beach are allowed and there are no hotels for anyone except locals.

Haven't heard a word out of Ft Walton except Hwy98 has 2 more passes thru it before you get to Destin.

Dunes from Ft Walton to Pcola have been flattened.

Curfews in the area are from 7pm-7am. Please do not come to sight see, please!

JMAC and John Williams: contact me at (850) 689-1846. I have phone, power and water.

I'll update periodically as information is passed through EMA channels.

Bob Curry

Thanks for the update, Bob. I gathered from just TV pix that they really got smacked.
Should you ever or whenever make contact with anyone over there, give them our blessings. We pray they are all OK.

Meanwhile, I am sure we had better move the NAs to Lake Eustis.

Sounds worse than Andrew in Homestead.
Rick

Here is a video... supposedly 2:12 into the video is Pcola beach, tristen towers area, about 15 seconds is all.

http://www.wwltv.com/perl/common/vi...ltv.com/091604aerials.wmv&props=noad

And the Pcola News Journal is supposed to have a crew on the island and plan to have pictures up this afternoon at:

http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/

It's hard to tell the condition of Key Sailing, but the photos of neighboring businesses don't look promissing. The first set of photos shows some of the businesses in their area with damage. http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/news/guides/hurricane/galleries.shtml

Check out photo 10/17, the building looks like Key Sailing. Note the stair way on the right side and the white frame in the foreground, the restrooms to the right. That looks like the PBYC in the background.

S Beach

That is Key Sailing! Notice you can see thru the building on the left side. That must have been a ton of water going thru there.

Bob

Don't know if this link will work....


web page

In a way the damage looks worse than Hurricane Andrew, mostly because Andrew was all wind damage from the hurricane and associated tornadoes. And Andrew cut a narrow swath.

This damage on the Panhandle seems much more widespread and has the added factor of all the water damage from surge and waves.

As with any disaster, lots of people feel as though they should go there and help -- but it looks like it is difficult to get there at all right now because of the roads and bridges that are out. And as of this morning they were not even letting residents back in.

One interesting thing about damage to coast areas is there are not a lot of trees out there on the beaches, so that's one less factor to deal with for cleanup. Although, I'm sure it is more of a problem farther inland.

It's nice to say, "Our thoughts and prayers are with you," but somehow it seems that it would be even nicer to show up there with a shovel and a generator and lots of extra gas, and get to work.

Anybody have any ideas what people can do to help?

Mary:

The very best thing anyone can do right now is stay away and donate to the American Red Cross. They'll be in there for months. I've been at ground zero on few hurricanes and they won;t let you in unless you have a driver's lisence and a local address. The hotels are jammed with residents with no home to live in and they need the hotel space. The FEMA workers need housing too so it's best to leave the clean up to those who have the govenment credentials that will allow them access to the area.

Your intentions are right on though. Many feel the way you do (including me) that would like to assist Kirk Newkirk, Brad Stephens and others who are likely in a fair amount of hurt right now.

Best wishes to all.



It's nice to say, "Our thoughts and prayers are with you," but somehow it seems that it would be even nicer to show up there with a shovel and a generator and lots of extra gas, and get to work.

Anybody have any ideas what people can do to help? [/quote]

Mark, I know you are right, of course. The best thing most of us on the outside of this disaster can do is stay out of the way.

The Red Cross provides food, water, shelter. I am guessing that the Key Sailing crew does not need those things. But the Red Cross doesn't help them to clean up the mess and get their business operational again.

Some like to send clothes, food and other goods. The problem with that is distribution. Its been my experience that cash to the Red Cross or Salvation Army is the best way to help them.

thom

http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/

LOTS of photos of the beach and Pensacola.

The dunes and the island between Navarre and Pensacola Beach appear to have been flattened; no road, no dunes, no sea oats. Click on the attachment to this e-mail for the photo.

That's fine for the overall recovery. I'm just thinking in terms of how to help friends and people we know.

When tornadoes hit our place in Key Largo, along with a lot of other areas both residential and commercial, it was not the Red Cross or any private or governmental agency that helped with the cleanup -- it was friends (in our case, sailing friends). If it had not been for them, I don't know how we would possibly have cleaned up the mess.

I am sure that there are enough sailing friends in their area, between them and the yacht club, to help them, so I am not really worried about that.

I have e-mailed Kirk to ask if there is anything that outsiders can do, but I don't know if he is able to get the message. They probably do not have power yet.

For news about Ft. Walton, Mary Esther, Navarre, the Northwest Florida Daily News has suspended their on-lin subscription. They have a good edition today. Go here and hit the button in the page "Access Paper".

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/index.shtml

Fort Pickens is flooded. It looks as if that part of the island may have become a permanent wetland with about two or three feet of water. I hope it drains but the island past Tristan Tower has suffered a lot of leveling and erosion.

"...donate to the American Red Cross."

You know, Mark, I really have problems with that.., the United Fund, et al.
When I was a kid, three of us decided to paddle a canoe down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Needless to say, we spent quite a bit of time camping out along the river bank and meeting many "River People."
They would all tell stories of the floods and how they lost their homes and all sorts of stuff. None remembered the Red Cross helping out.
But, one restaurant owner had quite a story. The Red Cross came to him and asked for donations, so he made up a bunch of sandwiches for them.

Later he went down the river site and there was the Red Cross selling his sandwiches to the victims. This so outraged him that he hurried back to his restaurant, made up a bunch more stuff and set up a booth right in front of the Red Cross booth and gave his food away.., along with some pretty cuastic comments about this so called "do-good" organization.

And as Mary pointed out, we saw nothing of the Red Cross.., or anyone like them after getting hit by a hurricane and a few weeks later a tornado thrown at us by Mitch. The only help was from our friends (by the way, some of them were friends that we helped out after Hurricane Andrew hit them in Miami).
FEMA was there to help, I must say, and arranged for a big loan to overcome the disaster at a very low interest rate.

And I recall a big shakeup in these organizations after 911. Seems as if the funds donated to the victims of the attack had a helluva time seeing any of it. It is a shame that the officers of those groups make tons of money.., all from donations that are supposed to go to people in need.

In other words, sending money to the Red Cross will not help our friends.
How about setting up a fund in a local bank there to send donations that could be directly used by catamaran sailors in need?

Rick

I don't recall seeing the Red Cross when Isabel hit us last year.
FEMA, yes. Red Cross, nope.

Tracie

Greetings fellow catsailors;

I'll make this brief. Thanks for all your concern and comments. I live in northeast Pensacola, off Scenic Hwy over looking East Bay about 3-4 miles from the beach as a crow, rather a seagull flies. Ivan kicked our butt, no way around it. I am writing on my laptop powered by my new generator (thanks Sears), and for some unknown reason, I have the only operating land line telephone working in our area. Go figure. We are in our 4th night of no power, many areas with no water, and gasoline is a luxury. As far as I know there is still no power anywhere in the city, except emergency centers like hospitals, etc. We're about to eat our way through the freezer, so it looks like we're all about to go on a diet. (I may able to sail an F18 after all.) The night that Ivan hit was pretty wild. It sounded like a freight train going over my home for about 8 hours solid. Fortunately, my family and I all made out fairly well. Lots of lost roofing, trees down, pool filled with neighbor's roof, and general chaotic mess. Oh yeah, my ARC22 and Nacra 6.0 survived just fine tucked away in the corner of my backyard. Ivan did manage to push the boats and trailers back a ways, but all remains in great conditions minus the debris covering them. The beach is a wreck as you've seen photos, but it will be back.

Thanks again for your thoughts and prayers, and look forward to getting back to sailing with you.

I just returned from Gulf Breeze this afternoon. John, Agata and Isabella MacDonald came up and stayed with us near Montgomery and weathered the storm just fine. John and I left for Gulf Breeze Friday. It took us ~5 hours to get there after waiting in line for 45 min for gas. Hwy 41 was mostly one lane due to the HUGE number of trees and powerlines down. The damage that we saw in the panhandle was very spotty. You could see one house missing a few shingles while another would be decimated. No power, spotty lan lines, spotty cell coverage, and most people had water. John and Agata were lucky, there was very little damage to their house, however they lost all but two or three trees.

We heard from Mark Smith and know that Capt Kirk and John Williams are "ok", however cell reception was so spotty it was hard to contact any of them. We do know they went out to the beach on Saturday via boat, but have not heard a report from them.

We broke curfue on Friday night to go to Ft. Walton Beach to see Brian Lambert. He and his family were fine, but were also w/o power. The drive between Gulf Breeze and Mary Ester showed a lot of damage. In some areas the water was well over Hwy 98 with plenty of debris scattered about. There were a few boats on the shoulder with pleny of downed powerlines and bilboards.

We spent Saturday cutting down trees and helping the neighborhood clean up. Later in the day we went to see if we could locate another cat sailing friend on the south side of 98. His house was ~2-3 blocks from the sound and there was SIGNIFICANT damage in the area. The quantity of debris was amazing. We did not see them, however we hope that they are all ok.

After seeing the devistation that some people are dealing with first hand, I can not imagine going through it personally. I feel very sad for all of those dealing with such a great loss and hope them all the best during the recovery. It will be quite some time before life returns to normal as all the bridges in the area were heavily damaged and several sections of 98 were washed out. Both the Bob Sikes and 3 mile bridges lost sections of the approaches and I'm sure will take weeks/months to repair. From reports of people in the area it looks like the island was breached in ~4 locations. I cannot be for sure, but this is what people I know have seen.

The Red Cross, National Guard and many other organizations were giving out ice water and food with a smile. I know their efforts are greatly appreciated by all those whom they have helped. Here in Montgomery we just got power back ~4 hours ago, however even if we didn't have power for another week I would feel fortunate compared to some of the people I saw in Gulf Breeze and southern Alabama.

Will R

Key Sailing