Sympathy for Florida

Hurricane Ian making landfall (NOAA photo)

Sending sympathy and solidarity today to our neighbors, countrymen, and friends on the West coast of Florida and across the central section of the State. Yesterday at 3:05 p.m., Hurricane Ian made landfall (defined as the point of lowest pressure crossing land) at Cayo Costa, 20 miles north of Fort Myers, as a Category 4 storm, with sustained winds of 150 mph. Spreading destruction in a wide swath across the State, it dumped over two feet of rainfall near New Smyrna Beach and more than a foot in Orlando. It is currently downgraded to a tropical storm but is strengthening over the Atlantic and is expected to make landfall again in South Carolina later today, possibly as a hurricane, meaning a storm with winds of force 12 on the Beaufort scale, equal to or exceeding 64 knots / 74 mph.

My friend Jim Sherwood did an extensive photographic project of the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes 20 to 35 years ago now. I'd have to check with him on the time frame, but I know the project included Hurricane Hugo in 1989. His pictures were amazing. One that I remember showed a car neatly perched on top of a concrete lawn table as if on a pedestal, and another showed a more or less perfectly preserved bathroom hanging in the air, the house around and underneath it having been torn away by the wind. The toiletries were still arranged in orderly fashion on shelves and the window with its "X" of masking tape was unbroken. Jim paid his own way to areas devastated by several hurricanes and tornadoes. He used a Pentax 6x7 and Kodak VPS color film, and made 16x20 prints of the work using a Hope commercial processor. The set was extensive and dramatic, but has never been published. Jim is an accomplished photographer, with pictures in the permanent collection of MoMA and other top institutions.

Some friends who were flooded out of a low-lying area of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 opted not to rebuild. They moved instead...to Denver, Colorado, known as "the mile-high city," 5,280 feet above sea level.

Mike

'Golden Oldie' Books o' the Week

I was going to link to The Life of a Photograph by National Geographic ace Sam Abell, the book version of Sam's video talk we've been discussing, but guess what? Sold out since we mentioned it the other day. You can still score one of the few remaining copies of the 4-volume Sam Abell Library from 2013, but buy it directly from the publisher—they still have it at the $75 publication price (I called them in Santa Fe to check), and Amazon is already charging four times more. We need a reprint of Sam's classic Stay This Moment!

This book link is a portal to Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bruce Bordner: "I was very tempted to go out and shoot after Hurricane Sandy in NJ, but I was dissuaded by many stories of homeowners becoming very upset by photographer/videographers 'feeding on their pain.' I can't really see their point unless they thought everyone was making money from pictures of their disaster...I still don't get it, but I didn't want to chance it. Be careful if you're in one of these situations and be very respectful—they're hurting."

Mike replies: I believe most of the scenes Jim photographed were when people were absent. I could be wrong. But I don't recall seeing people in his pictures.

Albert Smith: "I live halfway between Orlando and Daytona and as usual we spend the week before the actual landfall watching every news update for changes in the projected path of the storm. It is nothing less than slow torture. You go to bed thinking it's going in a divergent direction then wake up with the cone right over your town. Five days out, three days out, one day out, they are still not sure. The most distressing sight is the so-called spaghetti paths, a dozen 'expert weather centers' project the expected line of movement and they are always in disagreement. The Euro center seems to be closer than most over the years, but they insist on adding in the never-even-close tracks and averaging them into a cone. I wonder what it was like 100 years ago before satellites and computers when the first clue that a storm was coming was the storm landing. The new technology is great but I know that I shaved some time off my life watching the stress inducing coverage leading up to the storm, 90% of which was wrong.

"We can't complain or feel bad about our situation: tons of flooding, power lines down (no electricity, well water, air conditioning TV, etc.), no supply to stores or gas stations, and mentally contemplating that there will be weeks of this. Giant trees are down, collapsing power lines and assuring no quick fixes. But other than some roofs and underwater living rooms, the houses are still here and just looking at photos from the southwest coast of the peninsula will make us feel like we won the lottery.

"The issues with supply from the pandemic was bad. How can anyone expect to rebuild after this? Thousands of from-the-ground-up new houses will be needed and last year you couldn't find basic housing supplies like drywall or roof shingles for general maintenance. This will take years.

"To my fellow Floridians: be strong. To the folks in the path in the Carolinas, pay attention and don't dismiss what's coming. Good luck to you."

Comments

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Indeed, the scale and depth of Ian’s destruction is hard to fathom from afar. And the story’s far from finished as Ian heads back inland to the Carolinas as I write. Given the current climate patterns and water temperature shifts I just don’t see how south coastal Florida can remain habitable for long.

Back to the ostensible subject of this blog, once again bad weather can make for exceptional photography. Imagine you’ve been assigned to cover this mess. How do you convey the situation to the rest of the nation with your little camera? Try to separate yourself from the human misery for a moment to look at the best news photos from the NYT, AP, Reuters, Washington Post, et.al. Hilary Swift’s work is some of my favorite. She easily trombones between wide-angle situation establishment and close-in human image so vivid you can feel the pain of her subjects. But there are many very skilled snappers down there now presenting a clinic on how to take pictures that work.

[Jeff]

With climate change, your friends could still
move to the highest capital city, Santa Fe, NM, at 7000 feet, almost one third higher than Denver. I spent 5 years there. Great black and white photo opportunities, too.

[John Krumm]

Makes me wonder how our friend Ned Bunnel is making out. Hopefully still up North.

I really dislike storms, but there's no escaping at least some variety. A hurricane would be my nightmare. Here in Duluth we get the occasional really strong straightline windstorm that knocks down trees everywhere, but they are over quickly.

[Speed]

Many years ago, I was a college student in coastal Florida on a campus with salt water on two sides. We looked forward to hurricane season hoping for a few days of excitement without classes. Thankfully we were annually disappointed.

My aunt lived in a water-front house on Florida's west coast and every few years she was flooded -- sometimes an inch or two, occasionally more. Once she escaped to a high school gymnasium while a foot of salt water invaded her house and ruined ... a lot of stuff. Finally, as much as she loved living on the water, she moved away. An expensive lesson. Her nephew was relieved.

We can learn from our mistakes. If we're smart, we learn from the mistakes of others. Keep an eye on Coastal Florida Real Estate prices to see how much we've learned from Ian.

Sanibel, Florida City Official Says Damage is 'Biblical,' Island Now Cut Off From Mainland
https://news.yahoo.com/sanibel-florida-city-official-says-150101103.html

[ChrisC]

Strange thing is these storms have different names in different parts of the world - hurricanes in the Americas, typhoons in East Asia and cyclones in northern Australia. They are all the same thing, a deep low originating over tropical seas. Perhaps these different names prevent us from seeing how significant and frequent these events can be.

[Mike Plews]

I feel terrible for the people in the path of this storm.
We got hammered about a decade ago. A storm tore up the roof and blew apart the north end of the house.
Sitting out a storm in a house with no power and only half a roof is bad but what is happening down south in Ian is horrific.
It is going to take a decade or more to recover from this monster.

[I remember that well, Mike. Hail went right through the siding, right? And the Weber grill went cartwheeling down the deck.

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2014/06/the-june-3rd-storm.html

And Mrs. Plews was without you for a while, but you made it home. Glad you have not had any reprise of that. --Mike]

[Stephen Scharf]

Lest we forget, recently there were also the people of Puerto Rico. Everyone, including the news media, seems to have completely forgotten about the impact of Hurricane Fiona on them. And...it was like, what? About about week or so before Ian? And, did you see the temporary bridge that was completely washed away by Fiona that was put in place after the original bridge destroyed by...Hurricane Maria?

And, out West, I've personally had people who are dear to me lose virtually everything in they had in the world to the Camp Fire (which, lest we forget, completely destroyed the town of Paradise, CA) and the Glass Fire.

Then there was the Altas Fire, the Creek Fire, the Dixie Fire, the Thomas Fire, the Carr Fire, the Rush Fire, the August Complex Fire. I could go on, but you get my point...

[Steven Ralser]

In response to Chris - here is a map showing all tropical cyclones worldwide, color coded for intensity (it maybe a few years out of date).

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/7079/historic-tropical-cyclone-tracks

Tropical cyclone is the name for all such storms - local areas have their own names as chris mentioned. In meteorology a low pressure system is called a cyclone (winds rotating anti clockwise in the northern hemisphere, clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere). A high pressure is called an anticyclone.

[Ilkka]

The really sad thing about this is that these storms are only getting more frequent and stronger until humans make significant changes to the way they live. Not much hope of that happening anytime soon.