Another hurricane comes through, this one named Ian, and once again the lives of so many people get flattened and flooded. Wherever you are this morning, wherever you’re listening, we hope you’re safe from the storm.
A hurricane is one of the most brutal things that nature can do to us. Every time a new one arrives I think of that Clint Eastwood line from “The Unforgiven,” about what it’s like to kill a man: “You take away all he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.”
There was a time when part of my job as a reporter was chasing hurricanes. It was a surreal thing to see cars backed up on the interstate, evacuating the coast, and to be one of the only cars on the road going in.
For years I kept a hurricane bag packed in the basement. Portable radio, flashlight, batteries, poncho, Swiss Army knife, toilet paper. Bottled water and canned food. Lunch by Chef Boyardee.
Here in Charlotte, I spent a long night in my little duplex as Hurricane Hugo plowed through here in 1989.
The other times I’ve been on the road, in hotel rooms. In Havelock, I grumbled about lugging my gear to a second-story room, only to come out after the storm and find the ground floor was thigh-deep in water. In Morehead City, I crouched on the far side of the bed for hours as the wind made the sliding glass door warp and wobble.
After the storm passed I’d drive around, looking for people to interview, making sure not to cross any standing water unless I was sure how deep it was. A colleague of mine drowned a rental car once.
One of the worst things about a hurricane is the unfairness of it. The big beachfront houses get the worst of the wind. But inland, usually the most damaging part is the rain. Two or three days after the storm, the rivers flood and the water drains down to bottomland. Rich people tend to live on high ground and poor people tend to live where the water goes.
To spend time in a town that’s really been pounded by a hurricane can make you feel hopeless. But instead, over the years, what I saw time and again was resilience. People scrape mud from their waterlogged houses, wring out whatever’s salvageable, and set about rebuilding their lives.
People will be rebuilding from Hurricane Ian, too, and it’ll be a lot harder for some than for others. It’s in a hurricane’s nature to destroy. But it’s in our nature to survive.
Tommy Tomlinson’s On My Mind column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.
