I am attempting to cut and paste the article. "Spring Broke"
beaches, scarce lodging on Florida's storm-ravaged Panhandle
Andy Miller - Staff
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Pensacola Beach, Fla. --- The five undergrads drove 13 hours from the snow of Oxford, Ohio, overnight, only to be greeted by a chilling sign: beach closed.
Six months after Hurricane Ivan hit, and as spring break continues in high gear across Florida's Panhandle coast, an unexpected level of wreckage remains from the storm.
wreckage remains from the storm.
"I forgot about [the hurricane] till we got here,'' Miami University of Ohio student Charlotte Bornhorst said. "You can see a lot of construction going on.''
Fortunately for the student group, the main public beach in Pensacola Beach was open. But pieces of the eight-mile stretch of white sand remain closed, along with most hotels.
To the west, Perdido Key and nearby Alabama beach towns also took a sledgehammer blow from Hurricane Ivan. To the east, coastal towns along the Florida Panhandle received lesser damage.
This coast is a favorite vacation spot for metro Atlantans. Up to 1 million visitors a year to the Panhandle beaches come from Georgia, according to the University of West Florida in Pensacola.
Ivan's 120-mph winds, combined with a 16-foot-high storm surge, smashed into Pensacola Beach last September, damaging or destroying homes and businesses. Beach houses still sit unrepaired and deserted, with roofs covered by temporary blue tarps.
"My home has gone from [resembling] the cover of Southern Living to a fixer-upper,'' said resident Jinny Dancaescu.
Panama City open
The closed hotels include the Beachside, its walls gouged out by water and two feet of sand still piled up in rooms. The Best Western has 50 rooms open, yet its first floor is still not ready for occupancy.
"I have 100 rooms of carpet coming and 40 rooms of furniture coming,'' said manager Isabell Coile.
Statewide, Florida tourism suffered from four hurricanes in six weeks last year walloping resort cities on the west and east coasts before rumbling inland, inflicting at least $22.8 billion in insured losses.
The series of storms, even now, has shifted patterns of tourism, Florida officials say, with some places hoping to soak up vacationers who have switched from their usual destinations.
Panama City Beach, which escaped extensive storm damage, has broadcast a TV commercial in the Southeast that proclaims, along with an inviting beach scene: "Do you remember the hurricanes? Neither do we.''
"We felt like it was important to get the message out,'' said Jayna Leach of the Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau. "We have seen some additional traffic.'' All hotels are open and ready, she said.
West of Panama City Beach, Destin has about 90 percent of hotel and rental condos open. Fort Walton Beach has 85 percent operating, and a marine park attraction, Gulfarium, hopes to reopen soon. Chamber of commerce officials in both towns hope they will draw vacationers who normally stay in Pensacola and along Alabama's coast.
Gulf Shores and Orange Beach have only about half of their hotels and rental condos open, said Mike Foster of the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau.
"We do not expect our spring break to be as good as last year,'' Foster said. "Obviously, some people are choosing to go elsewhere.''
50,000 blue roofs
Pensacola Beach has just three hotels open, but spring breakers have come anyway, many of them on day trips, according to Sandy Johnston of the chamber of commerce.
"I don't know where they're staying, but they're here,'' she said. "The businesses that are open are doing gangbusters.''
Among the day trippers was Carrie Meyer, who came with fellow St. Louis University students from a stay in New Orleans. Her group was astonished by the Ivan fallout.
"There's a tendency to think of hurricanes as impacting Third World countries,'' she said.
The hurricane damaged or destroyed more than 40 percent of housing in Escambia County, where Pensacola is located. The Small Business Administration has made more than $200 million in low-interest disaster loans in the county and in neighboring Santa Rosa County.
"More than 50,000 blue roofs were put on in northwest Florida, attributed to Hurricane Ivan,'' said Roy Dunn, an SBA spokesman.
Many merchants and residents along the Pensacola Beach strip remain upbeat, though they acknowledge that spring break, which generally extends from late February through the first two weeks of April, won't be as profitable as in years past.
The Subway sandwich outlet on the beach road reopened just this month. "I know we won't do what we did last year,'' said manager Rick Maddox.
The construction equipment and contractors give parts of town a frontier look.
"There's help-wanted signs everywhere,'' said carpenter Betty Koon, working on the nearly reopened Paradise Inn. "There's no reason people should be out of a job.''
About 3 million cubic yards of sand were lost from the beaches and dunes here, said Debbie Norton of the Santa Rosa Island Authority at Pensacola Beach.
"We thought Hurricane Opal [in 1995] would be the worst case," Norton said. "I never, ever thought we'd see something like this, and hope we never see it again.
Gripes about insurance
Meanwhile, locals grumble more about insurance than Ivan.
"If people were getting payments from insurance companies, [recovery] would be moving faster,'' Norton said. "People haven't gotten the money, or they are disagreeing with the insurance company.''
Meanwhile, packs of college kids arriving in Destin recently said hurricanes didn't deter them from their pilgrimage.
"We figured it would be some damage, but nothing was going to stop us from coming down here,'' said Mississippi State sophomore Stuart Tirey, who added: "There was a lot more damage than I thought.''
Hank Farmer, a University of Georgia sophomore sitting in a semicircle of Bulldog-emblazoned beach chairs and friends, said: "I knew there was a lot of damage all along the Gulf Coast, but figured if the hotels were open, it was going to be OK.''
