Former Winnipeggers describe harrowing experience during Hurricane Irma

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This article was published 11/09/2017 (2959 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Former Winnipeggers Robert and Barbara Riess planned to sit tight and wait out Hurricane Irma from their home in the Florida city of Naples.

But when they heard the eye of the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean was coming right for them “we decided to get out of Dodge,” said Robert.

They headed to Miami to a son’s condo early Saturday morning where theoretically they should have been safe but the storm moved unpredictably.

“The hurricane force winds were 140 miles wide, so from the eye over Naples that was 70 miles on each side, and Miami is 120 miles away, so we thought we’d escaped,” explained Robert.

Not so.

“There were huge storm surges, whitecaps hitting the seawall and filling the streets with water like they were rivers,” said Riess.

If you ventured out, you had to watch for flying debris, which could be anything from patio chairs to tables people didn’t secure. Riess saw the wind pick up jet skis personal watercraft.

“You see incredible wind, and rain, and all the trees are sideways, and things are being hurled through the air,” he said.

There were also tree branches and signs fired through the air that could kill a person on impact, he said.

Robert and Barbara huddled in the condo in Miami but with the power knocked out, and the elevator out of commission, everyone had to use the stairs to get to the lobby. It wasn’t bad for them on the 6th floor but some people were on the 38th floor.

“You’re going down two flights of stairs per floor, and you’re in complete darkness. You have to use the flashlight on your phone to see anything.”

To make matters worse, the building manager allowed people’s dogs to do their business in the lobby because it was too dangerous outside.

He returned to Naples Monday morning to clear blue skies but the power was still out as of Monday afternoon.

Much of Naples withstood the hurricane and didn’t flood but there are trees down and debris everywhere, he said.

Naples was fortunate that the hurricane sucked all the water out of Naples Bay otherwise the flooding would have been much worse. “They were forecasting water at 60 mph and 16-18-feet high water, and it would have devastated Naples.”

Riess said on the same day as Hurricane Irma struck, Naples suffered its worst storm damage from Hurricane Donna 57 years earlier.

“Not only was it the same day but Hurricane Donna had the exact same track,” he said.

The Riess family left Winnipeg in 1988–Robert has an internet marketing firm-but still return for a couple months every summer to their cottage in Victoria Beach.

Winds of up more than 200 kilometres per hour ripped through the “sunshine state” on the weekend, with about 130,000 people moved into shelters. About one million households lost power.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca