The Panhandle mourns and rebuilds

The house shudders as the pressing weight of Hurricane Michael’s eyewall heaves against the northwest corner of the house. Rain does not fall, it flies in clouds of pellet drops that whip around the obstacles in their path. Their intermittent pounding sounds like buckets of pebbles thrown against the windows. This Category 4 storm ravages my home community, the Florida Panhandle.

Every long-term Floridian has experienced a hurricane in some way. It is a part of life, a rite of passage in becoming a true Floridian. I remember the powerful 2003-2005 hurricane seasons that brought devastation in the form of Ivan, Charley, Katrina and others. Experiencing those at a young age, I tend to remember less negative details and more juvenile elation on account of the days out of school. Huddled in the closet of my sister’s house with her family under Michael’s onslaught, the stressful memories of the night Ivan struck the Panhandle and sprouted tornadoes across the region come raging in. All the while, outside, the storm screams with the collective whistling of the wind and rain against everything. 

I came home to help with last-minute preparations for securing the homes and property of my family’s farm. Local farmers worked around the clock in the days preceding the landfall to secure what they could of this year’s crop, the coastal communities boarded up their homes and evacuated inland and everyone stewed over what lay ahead in the impending storm. A beautiful  tangerine sun set over the Panhandle on Oct. 9. We would not see it again for two days. No one was ready for the unprecedented strength of this strike on our home.

In the aftermath we mourn. Small coastal communities like Mexico Beach were leveled, the famous Spring Break destination of Panama City experienced great losses and everywhere in the region through Georgia and beyond lie destitute in the wake of Michael’s wrath. Many of the structures on my family’s farm are in ruins and this year’s crop of peanuts, soybeans and cotton may be a total loss for the family that currently farms on our property.

In this mostly rural portion of the state, towns are small, hearts are big and everyone knows each other. Friends and neighbors worked together to clear backroads with our own heavy machinery to allow access to main roads; we offered passage through our property to shortcut flooded bridges; local churches cooked for those without and many individuals reached out to their neighbors. Social media networks were flooded with news and resources for those in need as friends across the nation offered solidarity and material or financial support. Among the dreadful loss of life, property and livelihoods, the fabric of this tight-knit community collectively holds together to brace against this new challenge. We will rebuild, we will band together and we will do it without Trump’s paper towels.

Kacey Aukema is a UF plant science senior.