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Scootermuze - if you are talking about Opal and Erin in 1995 I was there also over in Ft. Walton Beach. That was a fun storm!
I worked on F-15's at Eglin AFB and Opal nearly caught us off guard when it changed course several times. We barely got out jets out of there before the storm made landfall. I packed the family in the car and headed north to Alabama. Got caught near the Florida/Alabama border and got hammered. Saw huge trees flying across the road in front of me and every few feet I thought we were going to get nailed. Finally got off the road and found shelter when the worst was getting to us. Came back 2 days later and our base was trashed. From the front gate to my house was normal 2-3 minutes but it took us over 30 minutes driving around all the fallen trees and debris. Our house was somewhat OK. A tree limb as thick as my waist went thru our glass back door and a huge tree near a back bedroom was blown over and lifted the floor about a foot. We stayed at the house for a couple weeks then moved into an undamaged house when water started leaking up thru the foundation and down the walls when it would rain.
I lived 2 blocks from the bay and the barrier island across the bay was basically wiped flat. The hotels there were almost completely destroyed. Only the frames remained. Several miles of highway running across the island were 90% torn away by the storm. 50 foot high sand dunes that had stood for as long as anyone had lived there were completly erased from existance.
One of the weirdest things I saw was a 3 story house that was washed off it's foundation and ended up in the middle of the bay. The top floor of the house was sticking up out of the water and people would go out to the house and fish from the roof and the balcony. They left it there for several months till they got rid of it somehow. Weird seeing a building sticking up out of the middle of the water lol..
and to think, I am moving from landlocked Oklahoma to Ft. Lauderdale.. I must be crazy ;)
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Old School
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