While much of Cayman breathed a sigh of relief that Hurricane Ian had skirted the islands, bringing only minor damage to coastal properties, Caymanian Lenny Verhoeven anxiously watched the hurricane’s progress as it headed towards her family – and old hometown – in Florida.
Verhoeven’s mother and brother, Amy and Jesse Cardona, along with dog Buddy, are hunkering down at a neighbour’s house in Charlotte County, bracing for the full force of the dangerous category 4 storm, as it makes landfall in Florida with winds of close to 150mph.
Verhoeven said that the relief she felt after Ian passed Cayman turned quickly to a “nerve-racking” situation.
“I knew that the next line of fire would be my family up in Florida because that is typically how the storms go,” she said.
She fears the devastation may be massive.
18-foot storm surge fear
Speaking with the Compass from Florida around midday on Wednesday, Jesse Cardona said he brought his mother to stay with him as he watched Ian intensify.
“Right now, it looks like we’re actually getting the beginning of the eye. It’s picked up quite a lot within the past hour and you can just hear rumbles of wind on top of the roof. It’s crazy,” he said, as he pointed his phone camera outside.
Through the hurricane-proof windows, the trees were dancing manically in the high winds.
“This storm has me so nervous. It’s going so slow, like 10 or 14 miles an hour. The storm surge is what’s freaking me out. They were mentioning 18 feet of storm surge and I can’t even imagine that. Just looking at my house right now, I can’t imagine 18 feet,” Cardona explained.
“If and when it does flood from the storm surge, I really don’t know what I’m gonna be looking at,” he said.
Cardona shared this video of Hurricane Ian outside his neighbour’s home, around 2:30pm Wednesday. Prior to shutting the doors, he showed the Compass the scenes outside the home at Port Charlotte, where there was some flooding on the street and powerful gusts.
Cardona said some of his neighbours had opted to hunker down rather than evacuate.
He chose to do the same.
“I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve lived through Charley and other hurricanes to where I don’t want to deal with the hassle of traveling out of the state of Florida… There’s only really three or four main arteries leading out of the state,” he said, as he recounted one of his sisters taking three days to get back home after evacuating to Jacksonville following the passage of another hurricane.
He added that he wanted to “stick it out”.
“I’m confident that I’ll be fine with my life and I don’t know… it’s a little exciting just to watch it, to be honest with you,” Cardona said.
Verhoeven, who has been in constant contact with her family, told the Compass around 2pm that Cardona and her mother were hiding out in the closet as a tornado warning was issued for the area they were shuttered in.
In the eye wall of #Hurricane #Ian in Fort Myers. We’re live on @weatherchannel along with @StephanieAbrams and @JimCantore #HurricanIan pic.twitter.com/gSBdmAUjWX
— Mike Seidel (@mikeseidel) September 28, 2022
They have also lost power, she said.
‘I thought my family had perished’
“I am very nervous, because it is taking almost the exact same path as what we dealt with [in 2004] with Hurricane Charley,” Verhoeven said.
Cardona agreed that watching the storm trend towards them was unnervingly reminiscent of Hurricane Charley in 2004.
Charley hit Florida a month before Ivan struck Cayman.
“Charley was smaller and it was faster and so we didn’t have any storm surge really. It was just a lot of wind, a lot of wind damage,” he explained.
Verhoeven, who said she will be watching Ian anxiously until she gets word the storm has passed, said the entire experience has brought painful memories that she had compartmentalised.
She said in 2004, before Charley hit, much of the area was evacuated, but Cardona and their parents decided to stay and shelter at the family home. Verhoeven and her then-husband stayed in a hotel.
“It was such a scary experience because we were in constant contact and, at one point, [while] being on the phone with them [they were] screaming because they thought that the attic door was going to give way and the roof was going to come off… so then, all of a sudden losing all communications with them and not being able to get a hold of them,” she sobbed, as she continued, “[I was] thinking that my whole family had just perished.”
She said it was a “life-changing” experience, when they made it back to see the devastation afterwards.
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