Hurricane Irma Fades, But Miami Storm Memories Don't

MIAMI, FL — Bill Robb was motioning with his bandaged hands from a bar stool perch at Finnegan’s Road. The South Beach hot spot was one of the first businesses to reopen after Hurricane Irma forced the mandatory evacuation of this urban resort town. Robb was holding court for his fellow evacuees.

“This is my hurricane damage,” he exhorted, drawing chuckles from the other patrons. “My cat bit me. My cat clawed me.”

In fairness to Otto the cat, it was his first evacuation like so many of the 90,000 residents who call Miami Beach home. Otto may have also known what Robb didn’t, that Fort Meyers was probably not the best choice for their evacuation considering it was only about 50 miles from Irma’s second landfall in Marco Island. (For more hurricane news or local news from Florida, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Miami Patch, and click here to find your local Florida Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Never again, declared Robb, who has lived in Miami Beach for more than two decades and only evacuated for the first time last week.

“I would rather die here in Miami Beach with my friends than live with strangers in Fort Meyers,” he said after the Irma experience.

At a nearby table, Shana Spak was leaning in toward friend Meredith Tobin as she dragged a set of domino tiles across the table. The two women were deadlocked one game apiece in a Double Six match and they didn’t want to be disturbed until there was a break in the action.

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Tobin and her basset hound, Elvis, had just returned from their own evacuation adventure at a friend’s place in nearby Coral Gables, which is inland from Miami Beach. Elvis was experiencing kidney problems during the storm and Tobin’s friend in the Gables invited them both to ride out the storm at his place in case Elvis took a turn for the worse.

“I was not leaving because I had nowhere to go,” she confided. “Everyone left. It was just me and Elvis.” She went to a hurricane party in a Coral Gables garage and suffered through an evacuation traffic jam. But when she realized that she didn’t have Elvis’ IV and special dog food, Tobin knew she had to get back to her apartment even before her city was ready to welcome her and the other returning evacuees.

Fortunately, Tobin ran into a dog-loving Miami Beach police officer, who couldn’t refuse Elvis. It took two trips but Tobin made it home after promising that she and Elvis would stay put.

“There were power lines down over by 41 Street and Royal Palm,” she recalled of the trip back home.

Spak, an IT recruiting specialist, had her own memorable Irma tale.

Having made reservations for a preferred room at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood ahead of the hurricane, Spak said she was told by hotel staff that they needed her room for local Seminoles, who had nowhere else to go.

“We called every hotel within 50 miles and couldn’t find a single room,” she said of the hotel fiasco that went down two days before Irma's Sunday arrival. She finally made it to the Orlando area seven hours later on what would have been about a three-hour drive under normal circumstances.

“We were just lucky that we’re all OK,” said Spak.

With a limited menu in place, Layne Harris was getting her staff back up to speed just down the street from Finnegan’s outside The Café at Books & Books on Lincoln Road. Harris said she rode out Hurricane Irma in her nearby Edgewater high-rise, which lost power for a time.

“It was a lot of wind and rain,” she said, adding that her building staff issued a warning to residents who elected to ride out the storm. “They told us that there would be nobody manning the building. They put sandbags around the doors.”

Harris said she made the right decision not to evacuate her building along Bayshore Drive. Her family in the Naples area invited her to go there. But that area got hit worse than Miami Beach.

A few miles away at the Eden Roc Miami Beach Resort, 18-year-old Michael Moya recalled his first experience with a hurricane since moving to Miami Beach from Los Angeles. He works as a barista at the Starbucks inside the Eden Roc on Collins Avenue.

“It was my first time in a hurricane so it was really scary,” acknowledged Moya, who lives in the Parkview Island area of Miami Beach. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

Raised in Los Angeles, he couldn’t help but compare the experience to an earthquake, which he now prefers over a hurricane.

“There’s no wind or water,” he said of earthquakes. “You just got to sit there and hold tight.”

Meanwhile, in Key Biscayne, about a 30-minute car ride away, a few sailboats were strewn along the shore line of the picturesque barrier island not far from downtown Miami.

It, too, was evacuated ahead of Irma.

Alexia Villalobos couldn’t wait to see if she still had her Tiki bar to tend outside Whiskey Joe's Bar & Grill just off Rickenbacker Causeway. She stopped by to survey the damage the day after Irma hit.

“My reaction was, ‘oh thank God I still have a job,’” she recalled.

Her manager, Annie Duce, did something that many other Miamians wouldn't dare do during a hurricane. She opened a window in her home and watched the storm unleash its fury. Her family and friends also gathered there for a barbecue.

“It was impressive. It was cool,” she observed.

Back at Finnegan’s, Robb and some other evacuees questioned whether the dire warnings ahead of Hurricane Irma were truly warranted.

“I’m liberal, but it really was fake news,” he insisted. “I feel like they get it wrong all the time.”

A sailboat was tossed around by Hurricane Irma in Key Biscayne. Photo by Paul Scicchitano.