Every year, for five months, the coasts of the United States are in hurricane season. If you are fortunate to not live near the coast or have never had to experience a hurricane and its devastation, then you’re pretty lucky. Hurricanes generally range in severity from what seems like a typical storm or less than a little rainstorm, to severely damaging. These hurricanes are like tornadoes over water only worse. they don’t just come out of nowhere and you know when they’re coming and have an idea of where they will hit. Only, they can strengthen quickly and it will be too late for your family to evacuate safely.

Hurricanes bring destruction in the forms of flooding, and strong winds that will break your windows and can tear your houses down. They don’t typically affect only a small area and in fact, leave trails of destruction in their path for miles and miles. The towns and cities in its direct path get torn up from winds and rain but the towns in close proximity to the storm catch all of the severe flooding from the back winds of the storm. The issue with hurricanes is that many people will stay behind if the hurricane is less than a category 3 storm. Unfortunately, many hurricanes gain in power and if one chooses not to evacuate, they can be left without resources, like gas, to be able to leave when the storm gets closer. Or all stores will be closed down because there is no food or water left, no gas also means you can’t run your generator for as long. Phone towers will go down and you won’t be able to contact anybody, not even emergency services to let them know where you are for them to come help. That is one of the scariest realities for many people.

On October 10, 2018, my family lived at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, right outside of Panama City. We had been through a few hurricanes since living there but nothing near as crazy as what we were going to experience. My parents went into town and bought all the supplies we needed for us to hunker down (shelter in place and stay home and inside to be safe). because Hurricane Michael was only supposed to be a category 2 storm, That night we got word that the base was under a mandatory evacuation order by the governor of Florida and we had to leave. We packed clothes for two days and headed to Alabama for what we thought would be a night or two. When my parents woke me up the next morning, my mom was crying because our base had been a direct hit, the people who had not evacuated were posting videos on Facebook, and everything was destroyed. The town next to ours was so heavily flooded it was completely underwater. and there was even a shark on the main road to our house! They knew we would not be going home anytime soon but didn’t know what our house looked like or if it made it through the storm. We went out and grabbed clothes and food for everybody because we didn’t know how long we would be evacuated. It was a couple of months before I got to see our house again, well before I got to see what was left of our house again.

The ride to the base through the town that was once full of life was just sad, there were branches and trash everywhere. People slept in tents outside of their houses to protect what belongings they had left. the park where my siblings and I played every day after school that was once surrounded by big oak trees was just gone…a pile of trees and brush in front of the beach and nothing more.

Hurricanes can be predictable and unpredictable at the same time. My family lost everything but the clothes on our backs and our lives that day, but not everyone was so lucky to have been able to evacuate. My parents helped people search the debris for their loved ones and their belongings several days a week for over a month.

In conclusion, hurricanes aren’t always the worst they can be. Sometimes they’re just a little rainstorm with a little bit of wind that knocks your deck chairs over. Sometimes they make your roof leak or flood your road just a little bit, but sometimes you get hurricanes like Hurricane Michael. Those are the ones that are so bad their name gets removed from the list of names for hurricanes, never to be used for another one. Like Hurricane Katrina, and the devastation it caused all of New Orleans. Hurricanes can be big bad storms that destroy whole cities and even countries. It takes a long time to recover from really bad ones and sometimes places never do fully recover. They also don’t just happen during hurricane season and could happen at any time. I’d make sure you have some nonperishable snacks always on hand because you never know when the next one might affect you.