Most interesting to me was that he said the storm surge arrived 12 hours prior to Dennis making landfall 200 miles to the west! Many of us watched the CNN coverage of the surge in St. Marks. However, I missed any details of the surge in Apalach, which is around 60 miles SW of St. Marks.
Hey Terri,
Thanks for the inquiry. My Mac has been in the shop and I just got it back to find your note. We did OK, since we are up on pilings some 22 feet above ground level. However, we had 8-10 feet of storm surge over the ground that took out my storage shed and shop, stairs, and dock....
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My neighbors to either side did not fare quite so well. The folks to the east lost their entire house and furnishings since they were on the ground, while my neighbor to the west, who just completed a big-bucks home, had a lot of first floor damage, and lost his brand new, loaded Action Craft 25 foot, $60,000 center console that was sitting on his trailer in his driveway. A fleeing neighbor woke them up about 5:00 am to tell them to get out NOW since the water was rising fast, and they had to leave the boat and trailer behind, both of which were carried across the canal to the island behind us where they were deposited amidst a grove of pine trees. ...the boat was fully filled with both fuel and water and the overall weight was more than the first crane could handle. So he is looking for another, bigger crane. And this was all 12 hours before Dennis even made landfall over in Pensacola, some 200 miles away!! Couldn't believe it!
Another friend lost both of his cars and boat the same way when the storm surge rose about 6 feet in 30 minutes and he could not save anything, nor could he leave. He ended up swimming among the water moccasins trying to save his neighbor's dock that was also lifted off the pilings and was floating away. Cinder block houses at Shell Point that had withstood about a dozen hurricanes over the past 60 years or so were totally demolished by Dennis .....
