http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9702409.htm
SURVIVOR'S STORY
Decision to ride out Ivan leads to brush with death
When Ivan came calling, adrenaline junkie Don Butler was there to meet him in a waterfront town house. What followed was a terrifying ordeal that took Butler to death's doorstep.
BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@herald.com
NAVARRE - Don Butler should be dead. He had made his peace with God. He had phoned his wife and told her goodbye.
But then his animal survival instincts kicked in and he fought 120-mph winds, a 20-foot tidal surge and cutting rain to live another day.
Although the waterfront town house where he spent the most trying six hours of his life didn't make it, he and his dog, Zeus, did. Theirs is a classic tale of human and canine survival.
Unlike the vast majority of waterfront residents in Navarre, a small coastal town in the path of Hurricane Ivan, Butler decided to ride out the storm in his wood-frame house 100 feet from the bay.
''I had given up,'' Butler said Friday afternoon as he wandered awestruck around the shell of what was his home. ``I knew I was dead. I woke up this morning like I was in somebody else's skin. I couldn't believe I was alive.''
To prepare for Ivan, Butler covered the windows of his town house with aluminum hurricane shutters, thinking it would be enough. His wife and daughter had fled to a friend's house in Jacksonville.
And then Butler made perhaps the worst decision of his 41 years. He decided to stay home and ride out the hurricane.
He stretched out on his living-room couch, watching his wide-screen television. By 2 a.m. Thursday, Butler had nodded off. Power went out suddenly, and he awoke to a gurgling sound. He reached down and felt inch-deep water in his living room.
His backup plan -- to grab his already packed bag and Zeus and run out the front door to his truck -- collapsed the moment he tried to open the front door. The pressure of water rushing into the house prevented him from opening it. He grabbed Zeus and retreated upstairs.
By the time he reached the steps, water was three feet deep in his living room. The house was pitch-black, save for what light came from the flashlight in his hand.
Once upstairs, he shone the light on the staircase and watched as the sea water consumed each step until there were only three steps between the water and him.
'It didn't rise up gradually, it was just like `Boom!,' like a damn sledgehammer,'' he said.
He called his wife on his cellphone.
'He was screaming at the top of his lungs and then, `The water is rising. I have nowhere to go', '' Butler's wife, Beth, said Friday. ``I was crying, he was crying. My husband is a very macho man. For him to be in such an emotional state, I knew this could be it.''
Butler lay down on his bed, hoping it would act as a boat if the room flooded. Water, debris and his floating refrigerator pounded against the first-floor ceiling, making the floor beneath Butler shimmy.
The back and side walls downstairs collapsed. Gulf waters were now flowing freely through his living room. He knew he couldn't stay. He called 911, but they told him they couldn't risk a rescue attempt.
''It was insane. My whole house was rocking with the waves,'' he said. ``I called the people that were important to me and told them goodbye.''
Beth Butler felt helpless.
''I never thought I would see him again,'' she said. ``He told me he loved me, loved our daughters, and that he was going to try to get out. It was about 5 a.m.. He said if I didn't hear from him in an hour, something was wrong. He didn't call me back until 10. It was the most uneasy five hours my daughter and I have ever experienced.''
Butler led Zeus to his daughter's bedroom, opened the window and saw a miracle. His neighbor's boat had crashed into his garage.
He climbed out of the window with his dog, walked to the edge of his garage roof and jumped onto the boat with Zeus.
From there, Butler walked to the back of the boat, where the water was a bit more shallow, and lowered himself, his dog and his bag into the brown water. Floating debris pounded them from all sides. Hoping he wouldn't step on a dead body, he swam and waded up the street until he pulled himself out of the water. The wind was still whipping furiously, thrashing his skin with rain and sand.
He reached Highway 98 and flagged down a passing vehicle. The driver gave him a ride to his wife's nearby beauty salon.
''I went through every range of emotion, and the last one was anger,'' Beth Butler said. ``It was the stupidest move of his entire life for him to stay there.''
On Friday, Butler said he would never spend another night in a waterfront property during a hurricane.
His wife, who said her husband is an adrenaline junkie who climbs a 300-foot tower several times a week as part of his job as an Air Force engineer, won't let him stay behind again.
''You know, I've always hated the name Ivan,'' Butler joked Friday. ``It's a commie name.''
