When a Lynn man’s mom refused to evacuate her Daytona Beach home for Hurricane Irma, he decided not to let her weather the storm alone.
Lillian Durkee has lived in the city on Florida’s Atlantic coast for a decade and knew her health problems would prevent her from leaving her home. Unable to convince her otherwise, her 29-year-old son Mike decided he would go to her.
Against his mother’s will, Durkee made the decision to leave the safety of his North Shore home to be by his mother’s side on Friday and booked a nearly empty flight to Florida the next morning, just hours before it was too late.
“She has a degenerative disc disease and it’s hard for her to travel so she felt trapped,” said Durkee. “I didn’t want her to have to go through the storm alone in that position so I told my boss ‘I’m leaving’ on a day’s notice and found a flight.”
He quickly got to work boarding up windows, packing away plants, and stocking up on necessities, including gas and propane. Soon, 70 mph winds and about 15 inches of water in 10 hours were taking a toll on the neighborhood.
“The wind was high enough to get around the boards and through sliding windows,” he said. “You could feel the whole house sway. At one point, the road was running water.”
When the storm died down, they discovered trees torn from the ground outside the house, overflowing sewers and retention ponds, and vinyl siding and awnings littered throughout the streets.
Still the pair considered themselves lucky.
Inez Firth of Saugus, who owns a home in Coral Springs, was also grateful to not be facing serious destruction.
“All in all, I think we really escaped what was expected to be horrendous,” said Firth, who has two brothers in Naples, Fla., and a granddaughter in the Virgin Islands who were hit hard by the storm.
“One of my granddaughters lives in St. Thomas and we’re still trying to get her home to the United States,” she said. “It’s tough for them down there. They have no power. We can’t get her home. One of my brothers, I still haven’t heard from. The power is still down.”
Still, Firth is optimistic Florida will bounce back.
“As horrible as it is, we’ve had our place for 30 years and we’ve seen storms before,” she said. “Hurricane Andrew took a couple of years to come back from but they came back. There is resilience there.”
In Orlando, the siding and insulation was ripped from the vacation home of Lynnfield softball coach Peter Marinelli, who has been having trouble getting in contact with his neighbor because of power outages.
“From what I understand, they have lost power and his cell phone is on the verge of losing power,” said Marinelli. “I saw a picture online of the back of my house and the siding has been taken off. I think at least the inside of the house is fine. We’re hoping to go down there but I don’t know how soon people will be able to get flights down there.”
Marinelli said he and his wife purchased the home two years ago with plans to spend retirement in the Florida sunshine.
Cathy Thibeault of Lynn has a second home at the Countryside Golf and Country Club in Naples, where the first floor of condos flooded, but her unit was unharmed.
“There’s carport damage, but our condo itself is fine,” she said. “I did hear that they’re out of water, there’s no electricity and no internet, and windows and ceiling fans are broken in the building. There was nothing I could do from home. It was just watch and wait and pray for the best.”
Former Lynn English Principal Andy Fila said his Ft. Lauderdale neighborhood was expecting a heavier hit until last minute. He left his home to stay in West Palm Beach, where he still faced dangerous conditions.
“It was really windy, really rainy, we have some trees down and a lot of debris, but everyone is safe and, as far as I know, nobody here was hurt,” Fila said. “I love Lynn and I love it here. You can’t be scared away by Mother Nature.”
