Hurricane IvanThe National Weather Service identified Hurricane Ivan as a tropical storm on September 2, 2004. Residents of the Alabama Gulf Coast didn't pay a lot of attention to Ivan until September 12th, which by coincidence was the 25th anniversary of Hurricane Frederick. I wasn't living on the coast during Frederick, but it didn't take long after I got here to notice that Pleasure Island residents marked time by Frederick. It changed the Alabama coast forever - some for the good and some for the bad. Hurricane Ivan was the 5th hurricane of the 2004 hurricane season. It reached hurricane level strength on September 5th, soon after leaving its origination point at Cape Verde Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean. By September 7th, it was in the Caribbean. It reached Cat 4 status when it rolled through Barbados, Grenada and St. Vincent. On September 9th, Hurricane Ivan had sustained winds of 160 miles per hour. It was a Cat 5 when it hit Jamaica. It narrowly missed the Cayman Islands, but the Islands still got battered. A total of 68 people were left dead at that point. After passing Cayman it quickly regained Cat 5 strength. The western tip of Cuba was next in the path. By the time it entered the Gulf of Mexico winds had dropped down to 140 miles per hour. Weather forecasters predicted catastrophic destruction. Pandemonium soon broke out on the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle. Coastal residents began boarding up windows and packing up precious memories. While they were doing those things, they were deciding whether to evacuate or hunker down. ,
Hurricane Ivan was going to be a big one, bigger than a lot of people had ever seen and one that most on the Alabama coast had only read about. Before Frederick, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama were sleepy little fishing villages. Frederick demolished what little that was there apart and set in motion a building boom that grew larger each year. Multimillion dollar condo developments now covered the beachfront. Thousands of people had cashed out their savings and investments, borrowed from banks and mortgaged their homes to pour everything they owned into Gulf Shores property - and everybody was nervous and afraid for their future. At 2:02 a.m., CDT, Thursday September 16, the eye of Hurricane Ivan hit Gulf Shores, Alabama with 130 mph winds, just below Cat 4. The storm surge was 10 to 12 feet and waves in the Gulf were 55 feet. Fort Morgan, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach in Alabama and Perdido Key, Pensacola and Navarre Beach, Florida suffered major damage. My family evacuated to Birmingham two days before Hurricane Ivan's landfall. The trip which normally takes a little over four hours took eleven hours. The night of the hurricane we didn't sleep much. We saw film footage the next day that looked like bombs had been dropped. 
We couldn't get back on the island for another two days, and when finally could it was only a quick look in a supervised shuttle. Trees and telephone poles were down everywhere. Yachts were in the middle of the road. One condo complex caught fire and burned. Businesses were flooded. Some condo complexes were totally destroyed. Roads and bridges were washed out. Our home had been flooded with sixteen inches of water. We knew it was bad news, but never having suffered a major flood before we didn't know at the time that our home would have to be dried out, gutted and rebuilt.Our contractor estimated our time-frame for rebuilding to be two months. We moved into our rental condo across from the beach that had suffered only minor damage. Others in the complex weren't so lucky; their units were almost destroyed. Five months later (three months past the estimated time our contractor had promised us) our home was completed. As time progressed with our rebuilding, the workmanship got worse and worse, as skilled workers abandoned our contractors for more lucrative work with larger companies. Our contractor replaced them with whoever he could find for the money he could afford to pay (which as time moved on, became less and less). With a little math we arrived at the conclusion that our contractor had lost money on the job. He lost money. We got a poorly constrctedt home. It gets worse. Before we spent the first night in our home, we left for a ten day trip to visit our daughter in Colorado. When we returned home, upon pulling into our driveway, we immediately noticed that all of our windows were fogged. As we were putting the key in the front door, we heard water - lots of it. Our contractor at the closing days of the job had his brother-in-law (the painter) do the last of the plumbing. The pipe to the wash tub in the laundry room was not installed properly. Water pressure had pulled the tubing apart, shooting water through a wall and flooding our home all over again - before we had spent even one night in it. The moral to my personal story is that if you suffer major damage to your home from a natural disaster do not make decisions in haste. Take all necessary precautions to prevent the disaster from become worse. Tarp your roof, cover your broke windows and dry your house out. Beyond that, it is better to wait until you can get the best workers who do quality work. Too many people find that out the hard way.
The rebuilding of the island was slow and tedious, but as typical for major hurricanes, real estate values shot through the roof. New construction picked up at a faster pace than before Hurricane Ivan. Tears were turning into smiles.Then Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and Mississippi and rewrote the books. The news media had left Alabama soon after Ivan and most people in the rest of the world soon forgot about the terrible storm. Unlike Ivan, the media wasn't going to let the world forget about Katrina. Katrina didn't hit the the Alabama beaches or the Florida Panhandle, but from a financial standpoint it might as well have. Coupled with the national real estate bubble, Katrina set in motion a financial meltdown that will take years to unwind. Insurance premiums increased and real estate values plummeted, wiping away the equity of those who bought just before the bubble and leaving those who bought at the peak of the bubble "upside down." Multimillion dollar real estate real developments in the planning stages were canceled, squashing the dreams of thousands who were already counting their profits. 
Hurricane Ivan By the Numbers2 Million People Evacuated the Northern Gulf Coast More Than 1 Million People Were Advised to Evacuate New Orleans 400,000 Didn’t Leave New Orleans Waves 65 Miles South of Mobile Bay were Measured at Almost 50 Feet High 120 People Died 52 of Those Deaths Were in the United States 1,500 Buildings Were Damaged or Destroyed in Gulf Shores Alone 16 Million U.S. Residents Were Impacted by Ivan United States Damage Estimates: $15 Billion
|
