Still No Word From WB

Well, Hurricane Ivan is gone, but his memory still lingers on. WB wrote on his blog (Click HERE) of the preparations that he was making for the approach of the storm.

Unfortunately, Ivan ended up coming ashore at the worst possible place that it could, considering that WB lives on the Blackwater River in Milton, just across the bay from Pensacola.


Blackwater River Area, Milton, FL 

This area was in the NE quadrant of the storm and received the brunt of the winds, rain, and storm surge.


WB works on a burm to hopefully protect his home from storm surge flooding from Hurricane Ivan. 

I have been trying to get in touch with him since the morning after the storm hit with no success. Hopefully, he and his mom made it OK through the storm. My prayers are still with them and I hope that I hear some good news in the next couple of days.

While trying to see if I could find some information on WB, I did find an article about a couple of his friends in the Pensacola News Journal. According to the article:

At 2 a.m. Thursday, a co-worker called Vernon Compton and Mack Thornton, waking them from a hurricane snooze in the hallway of their home in Milton. Were they all right, he asked? “Then, boom!” Thornton said. A huge laurel oak almost 4 four feet in diameter snapped off at the base and smashed into the front porch and living room of their Conecuh Street home.

“A limb hit the front door and blew a panel off it and it flew all the way through the house to the kitchen,” he said. “It blew glass everywhere. If we had been standing there, we would have been dead.”

Damage to the Escambia Bay Bridge 

Thornton said they had moved into the hallway about midnight when radio reports said the worst winds were coming.

When the tree hit, they sprang into action to save the 1930s house -- which might have saved them with its strong wood structure and the skill of its long-ago builders.

“When the tree hit the roof, huge limbs split off it,” Compton said. “The beams in the walls and the roof held them off. Part of one limb landed in the living room, the tree rolled and lifted the roof about an inch. The wind blasted in and we thought we might lose the house.”
But the house held.

Within 15 minutes of the tree fall, neighbor Phillip Stangland was on the porch with a flashlight, asking if they were all right. “That’s the kind of people we have in our neighborhood,” Thornton said. “The wind was blowing 120 mph and he comes across the street to check on us. I shouted to him, ‘We’re OK -- go get under cover!’

For the entire story click HERE.

Unfortunately, from a couple of other photos that I have found from the area along the Blackwater River, I fear that the flooding may have been significant there. Hopefully the burm that WB built was sufficient to give him the extra elevation that he needed to protect his home and possessions from flooding, but until I am able to get a hold of him, I won't know whether his efforts were futile.


Flooding at a location not too far from WB's home 

You can rest assured that I will post new information once I have it. In the meantime, please remember to keep WB and all of the others who have lost property and loved ones to the destruction of Hurricane Ivan in your prayers.