We lived through many, many hurricanes over the years. My family moved to Fort Lauderdale in June 1964, just a couple of months before our first Florida hurricane, Cleo (Cat 3, 8/20/64 to 9/5/64). I think she was a Cat 2 when it made landfall, strong enough to do a lot of damage. I saw the aluminum roof peel off the carport across the street and fly away. I was 12 at the time, and it really freaked me out.
My firsthand experience with a catastrophic hurricane came in August 1992 with Hurricane Andrew (Cat 5, 8/16/92 to 8/28/92). This hurricane hit landfall in Miami, just 25 miles south of us. That was too close for comfort for us in Fort Lauderdale.
Anyway, jump ahead to 2004. In 2004, there were 9 hurricanes that formed in the Atlantic. The hurricanes that affected us (directly or indirectly) were Hurricanes Charley (8/9/04 to 8/15/04, Frances (Cat 4, 8/24/04 to 9/10/04), Ivan (Cat 5, 9/2/04 to 9/4/04), and Jeanne (Cat 3, 9/13/04 to 9/28/04).
We had a beautiful, tall ficus tree in front of our house. I don’t remember the exact name of the tree, but it was in the ficus family. It wasn’t an ordinary ficus with tiny leaves. It had large round leaves, similar to a grape tree, and it provided much shade and helped cool off the house. It was on the south side, just in front of Patrick’s room, close to the neighbor’s fence. Our new neighbor, Robert, had recently bought the house and had been doing some extensive remodeling and landscaping. He had done a beautiful job.
It was around this time when Hurricane Frances came through. We had boarded up 
the house and were sitting through the storm when we heard the ficus tree creaking and swaying as the winds started gaining strength. This went on for hours. We sat outside on the porch in the pouring rain watching the tree as it leaned toward us, swaying back and forth. The creaking came from two large branches rubbing against each other, and it seemed like with every strong wind the tree leaned closer to us. I was petrified.
The next morning, we were talking to the neighbor about the storm and the tree. He told us that when he was working on his side of the fence, he dug and chopped out the roots of our ficus that had encroached on his property. Ficus trees are famous for growing under houses and causing havoc to the foundation and plumbing. It was causing some cracks in Robert’s driveway and he wasn’t able to plant anything on that side close to the fence. He never mentioned it to Bob at the time. So, after Hurricane Jeanne, we called a tree service and had them chop down the tree. The root system was compromised, and the next storm that came through might bring it down.
Then came the Summer of 2005, a very bad year for hurricanes. Of the storms that made landfall, five of the season’s major hurricanes — Dennis (Cat 4, 7/4/05 to 7/13/05), Emily (Cat 5, 7/10/05 to 7/21/05, Katrina (8/23/05 to 8/30/05), Rita (Cat 5, 9/18/05 to 9/26/05), and Wilma (Cat 5 10/15/05 to 10/26/05) – were responsible for most of the destruction. Katrina had missed us by a hair just south of us, and then blew completely across the state as a Cat 1 hurricane and then, into the Gulf of Mexico where it built up strength to a Cat 3 when it made landfall in Louisiana. More than 1800 fatalities, and over 108 billion dollars in damages, the costliest hurricane in US history.
Wilma came the closest to us, knocking out power and cable for a month. I think that was the year that FEMA reimbursed us for our generator. The whole neighborhood had generators or shared them with the neighbors adjacent to us. I remember one neighbor required oxygen, so Jim, behind us, shared his generator with her. Others ran extension cords, some completely across the street. That was the year that many of us came together, passing out food and ice to those who were low on supplies. This was not catastrophic for us compared to so many other areas that were hit a lot worse. I can’t even imagine what it was like for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
It was then, after Wilma, that we realized if we hadn’t cut down the ficus after Jeanne it would have landed on top of our house.
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