FLORIDA KEYS — One year to the day after Hurricane Irma struck, life is returning to paradise in the Florida Keys, the iconic island chain at the very bottom of the state.
“We got back on our feet,” Jorge Blanco, 47, a burly commercial lobster fisherman wearing ocean-blue sunglasses and a water-resistant shirt, told the Washington Examiner. “We were able to throw the traps back into the water and are working the traps now.”
But Hurricane Irma, the worst storm to hit the Florida Keys in a dozen years, forcing a mandatory evacuation, has Blanco, a lifelong resident of Key West, grappling with his future on the islands at a time when storms are becoming more destructive because of climate change, and sea level rise is already happening, forcing rebuilt buildings, and roads, to be elevated.
[Also read: Hurricane Florence churns toward Carolinas as dangerous Category 4 storm, no sign it has ‘peaked’]
Blanco, with the help of loans and insurance, is on his way to somewhere near recovery this time. He had just stuffed a sofa and mattress into the cab of his red pickup truck donated by a local nonprofit, furniture that will decorate his home after it is fully repaired in about three weeks, a welcome moment after living the last year in an RV on his property.
He was not sure about his chances the next time, though.
“It totally scares you, especially this storm that came through,” Blanco said of Irma, which damaged about 90 percent of houses in the Florida Keys, and destroyed 25 percent of buildings, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Fourteen people in Monroe County, covering the Florida Keys, died.
“It totally destroyed all the traps, and our boat,” Blanco added. “We had to redo everything completely. Now that you are in debt up to your neck, you’ve got all these storms coming again, you are afraid if it comes back through here, what comes next? We can’t do anything much after that. If another storm hits us, it would really wipe us out.”
Some of Florida’s federal representatives were here Monday to comfort Blanco, and more of the overlooked residents who make their life in the Florida Keys, which is not only for tourists seeking thrills and chills on the water — and slices of key lime pie.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a House Republican who represents Florida’s 26th District at the tip of the state, traveled up and down the 120 miles of the Florida Keys, making stops along Route 1 — the only road in and out of the islands — to mark the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Irma.
They came with an appreciation of progress, but also with a recognition that Florida is lucky to escape the wrath of Hurricane Florence, the latest potentially “catastrophic” storm churning toward the East Coast.
“We know this is not the last time this community and South Florida and the state of Florida in general will be impacted by a storm such as this,” Rubio said during a stop Monday morning at Fishermen’s Hospital in Marathon, a city located in the middle of the Florida Keys. “So that’s why we are happy to be here today. It’s a day to look back on the last year and what we’ve achieved and learned, and what remains to be done.”
Fishermen’s Hospital, the only hospital in the Middle Keys, is currently operating out of a mobile building because Irma shattered the windows, sunk the roof, and molded the insides of the former structure that had stood since the 1950s.
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, the hospital set up tents to deliver emergency care, before it built a 7,040 square foot temporary modular unit a month ago so doctors can provide care under one roof.
“This a reminder of just how devastating Irma was,” Curbelo said touring the same hospital. “This hospital completely destroyed an asset that is vital literally to people who live here in the Middle Keys. Without this facility, without this resource, it would be impossible for people to live here.”
“A lot of people think about the Florida Keys as a place where people have second homes, where people come down here to just have fun,” Curbelo added. “There is a real community here of people who are committed, who live here year-round, who serve this community, and make things happen. Those are the people rebuilding Fishermen’s Hospital.”
Rick Freeburg, the chief executive of the hospital, said it will take about two years for the original hospital to be demolished and rebuilt. It will be repaired a whole lot differently, built tougher to withstand a maximum strength Category 5 storm.
“We are going to build a brand new hospital that won’t be damaged by 150-mile-per hour winds,” Freeburg told the Washington Examiner. Other Marathon mainstays remain shuttered, including the local Burger King, IHOP, and Wendy’s.
Later Monday afternoon, an hour south in Key West, Curbelo celebrated the groundbreaking of a new 208-unit apartment complex that local officials say is meant to address an affordable housing crisis on the islands made worse by Irma.
“Without this, the Florida Keys simply would not be viable,” Curbelo said of the apartments, meant to house the workforce that serves Florida Keys’ tourists.
The apartments, partly financed through low-income federal housing tax credits, won’t be ready for a year and a half. They’ll be built to hurricane-resistant standards. As Curbelo, and colleagues from state and local government, dug their shovels into sand during a photo-op mock groundbreaking, rising water levels encroaching on the land below them, they tried to assure the homes would be truly permanent.
“We are going to continue building, we are going to continue getting stronger, and this is going to continue being one of the unique thriving communities in the world,” Curbelo said.
Blanco knows no other place.
“I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else,” he said. “This is home to me. This is my life here. I’ve got four grandkids now. My wife and I have been married for 30 years. She was also born here. I don’t think about moving anywhere.”
