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Pensacola |
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Skinwalker Log October, 23, Saturday, 2004
Pirates Cove.
Shauners has returned to his life.
Yesterday, Ed suggested we go to the base for lunch and a tour of Pensacola on our way to the airport.
The tour was grim. There were coastal homes in neighborhoods that quite literally have simply disappeared. Homes cut in half with one side gone. It could have been the top half gone or back, front, side, even the bottom of some buildings was gone with only a roof sitting on the ground. There were houses blocks away from their foundations. Cars smashed, boats on cars, boats on houses. I have seen pictures of Beirut, locations in Bosnia and the Middle East that looked like this, but never in the USA. People told us it looked like a bomb had hit. We could not conceive of that until we actually saw the damage.
The neighborhood roads are clear but every square foot of ground holds debris. Clothing, toys, books, blankets, beds, refrigerators, barbecue, a Mercedes, a bicycle with training wheels, a bible, timbers, a ball cap, basketball, carpeting, vacuum cleaners every conceivable household item lay cluttered, exposed on the ground, snagged on a tree branch.
One could simply look in a yard and read it like a book about that familys particular interest and way of life. Each family laid open, exposed, for every gawker like us to see, to examine.
Hand written or spray painted signs on houses from insurance companies, most started or ended with ROE. We dont know the words to the letters, but we know it means this house condemned. Others signs such as We are safe, Welcome Home, We shall overcome. God Bless our Friends, Dear Insurance Company 30 days and we have not heard from you. Enter at your own risk, Wife Menopausal. Looters will be shot, Citizen Justice on looters, Help, we have fallen and we cant get up, House for Saleas soon as we find it! Yes, many of the signs displayed a clear sense of black humor.
Some people were living in their front yards in campers, motor homes, tents.
The memory that has crystallized the destruction for me is the thousands on thousands of homes with blue roofs. The blue roofs are blue tarps taped, nailed, laid, tied, secured in some fashion to keep the rain away from holes in the roof.
We went to the Pensacola Naval Air Station and drove around. It was damaged but what struck me most about the Air Station was the Marina where we stayed. It was a nice marina. It held, we were told, 350 boats. It is not there. Maybe 30 boats clustered at one end where there is a short dock, these appear to be the floating wounded.
The rest of the marina is somewhere, but not here. It is gone, maybe a few pilings left. The boats are gone. Some are visible on the shore across the bay in backyards, many still sunk in the lagoon. It is all gone.
If this is what Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda near Englewood looks like
. I hardly believe what I saw yesterday. This morning it is all a bad dream.
Today, we move on.
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