Floridians from Oceanside cope with Irma’s aftermath

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Oceansider Nancy Rodriguez moved to Florida 13 years ago. She was walking her dog one last time through her current neighborhood of Boynton Beach on Sept. 9, the day before Hurricane Irma began ravaging the state.

“We’re already ready,” she said. “We’ve got our shutters and our plywood up, we threw our yard furniture in the pool and brought in all our yard pots and plants.” She had a generator too. “It can run my whole neighborhood,” Rodriguez joked.

Then a tornado passed through her backyard.

Her home remained intact and her family safe, but trees and power were down across her neighborhood, and her backyard garden was destroyed, with much of the vegetation ripped out of the ground. “It was very upsetting,” Rodriguez said in the aftermath. “But no one was injured and the house is fine.”

Now she begins the process of rebuilding.

Hollywood Fla. resident Cejay Scott, who at 18 moved to the state from Oceanside in 1978 with just a “surfboard, sandals and a suitcase filled with bikinis,” initially joined a hurricane party when David hit the state in 1979. But when Andrew devastated the area in 1992 and she volunteered with the relief effort, her attitude changed. “I realized how a hurricane could rock my world right out of its comfortable orbit,” she said. “When I got home one day after post-hurricane volunteer work, I actually kissed my kitchen counter.”

Scott gathered the necessary supplies a week ahead of Irma and planned her evacuation. She left her home with the stockpiled items, as well as a firearm, laptop an Amazon Alexa, and her dog Mabelline on Sept. 8 and hoped to return the same weekend to “kiss my kitchen counter again.”

She wasn’t able to return until the following week. Floodwater had destroyed her water heater and air conditioner. “We also lost some trees,” she said. “Well we didn’t lose them. They’re lying in our yard.”

But after some cleanup, her house too was “fine.”