Scenes similar to this one in nearby Dade City were common across Pasco County, although Hurricane Irma inflicted less damage on Wesley Chapel than many other areas. (Photo: Brandi Whitehurst, PIO for Santa Rosa County Emergency Management.)

In the days leading up to the arrival of Hurricane Irma, one of the most devastating storms to ever threaten Florida, the frenzy was real.

Bottled water, plywood and food flew off the shelves at local stores, days before Irma touched down. Roads were clogged with evacuees heading for higher ground or, as the storm got closer, local shelters. Gasoline was practically drained from every station from Miami to Atlanta, GA.

“We were scared. Everyone was scared,’’ said Meadow Pointe III resident Inelia Semonick. “Waiting for it made everyone nervous.”

The waiting, as it turned out, was the hardest part for most Wesley Chapel residents.

After making landfall and devastating the Florida Keys and Naples as a Category 5 storm, Irma moved up the Florida peninsula and lost much of her power, hitting the Tampa Bay area as a Category 2 hurricane. It still delivered a blast of howling winds, rain and the snap, crackle and pop of tree branches breaking off, but did minimal damage to most of  our area, although plenty of clean-up remains and flooding continues to plague the east and west sides of the county a week after the storm.

“This is not over, we’ve got a long way to go,’’ said Kevin Guthrie, Pasco’s assistant county administrator for public safety. “I told our teams, when we go into recovery mode, that’s when we usually have problems with the community and neighbors. We are always judged by the recovery, not always by the response.”

The 26 shelters throughout Pasco County were able to release some of their 24,100 occupants the morning after the storm. Residents returned home to find trees uprooted, fences down and the power out.

While most power in Wesley Chapel was restored, even as the Neighborhood News went to press on Sept. 15, there were still hundreds of local residents still waiting.

The four power companies that service Pasco County — Duke Energy, Tampa Electric Company, Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative and Sumter Electric Cooperative — reported a high of 217,382 addresses without power, out of 261,000 total addresses, or 83 percent.

As of Sept. 14, that number was down to 51,847, or just 19 percent.

“While Hurricane Irma could have been much worse,’’ Pasco County administrator Dan Biles said, “she still left quite a mess across the county.”

(l.-r.) Meadow Pointe III residents Javier Casillas, Ernie Rodriguez, Gary Suris and Nick Casillas begin cutting up the second of three trees they removed on Beardsley Dr. (Photo courtesy of Inelia Semonick).

The county says that, at the peak of storm damage, 749 roads were closed, but that number was down to 126 by the end of last week.

County crews leapt into action to meet the demands of residents across Pasco.

“Awe-inspiring efforts,’’ said Biles, citing the work of the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO), the Pasco School District, local charities like the Salvation Army, the county’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and others. “Our partners throughout the community have really helped us through this and allowed to get us where we are today.”

The community also has been lauded for its response. As residents returned to homes, or opened their doors Monday morning to assess the damage, many immediately went to work checking on their neighbors and lending plenty of helping hands.

A Few Local Stories

Robert Castillo II rode out the storm in Westbrook Estates with his fiancé, Brittany Velez, and 10-month-old son Robert III. Castillo said that having a newborn to care for heightened the anxiety of the storm.

Like many, he was relieved when he opened his front door Monday morning.

“The anticipation was crazy,’’ said the Wesley Chapel realtor, “but we didn’t get the full brunt of the storm by any means.”

Robert turned to helping his parents, who live in Zephyrhills and had a tree downed, as well as neighbors who needed to clean up and dispose of sandbags.

In Meadow Pointe III, Ernie Rodriguez joined neighbors Gary Saris and Javier and Nick Casillas in clearing a fallen tree from busy Beardsley Dr., using a chainsaw to cut the limbs and move them to the side so traffic could pass. A few yards down the road was another tree, and after that, another tree.

“We did enough to clear the road,’’ Rodriguez said, who then returned home to check on an elderly neighbor. “That’s what people do, right? They help out in times like this.”

Many others across the area joined in, swapping generators, providing their homes to those without power who might just need a shower, and teaming up to clear away debris. Local businesses rushed to re-open so power-free people could eat, with many offering ice to their fellow residents.

District 2 Pasco County Commissioner Mike Moore, who lives in Seven Oaks, said he was moved by the outpouring of support in the area he represents.

“It’s been a joy to watch how the community has come together and answered the call,’’ said Moore, who used social media to rally people to Wesley Chapel High to help load wheelchairs, beds, oxygen tanks and other equipment into trucks to help those with special needs, especially the elderly, return to their homes.

“I’ve been getting calls, texts and messages on Facebook, from people asking what can I do, what do you need?,’’ Moore said five days after the storm ventured north of our area. “It’s never ending.”

Wesley Chapel Nissan, which already was organizing a drive to collect supplies for Hurricane Harvey victims in Texas before Irma hit, ended up diverting a large portion of those non-perishable foodstuffs, water and more to the National Guard soldiers who were stationed on S.R. 54 in the parking lot of the former Target store near the Suncoast Pkwy.

“We had local people in need,” said WC Nissan’s Troy Stevenson. “And, so many people pitched in to help,” including Comm. Moore and Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce president Hope Allen.   

For the most part, there seems to be relief that the most dangerous storm — and certainly the most hyped storm — in more than a decade seems to have only grazed an area that was forecasted at various times to be directly in the path of Irma’s eye.

The Norlands, who live in Quail Hollow, didn’t realize just how much damage Hurricane Irma did to their home until the day after the storm. (Photo: Cristy Norland)

But, the relief and rosy post-hurricane outlooks are hard to read for some residents, especially those in the Quail Hollow and Angus Valley areas of Wesley Chapel, which traditionally experience flooding after storms.

In their preparation for Irma, Cristy and Josh Norland, who run the Bacon Boss food truck and live on Quail Hollow Blvd. just past Cypress Creek, piled sandbags two feet high to protect the home they rent from expected flooding. Inside, Cristy put her more valuable and treasured items, like her dining room table, up on bricks.

The Norlands, including daughters Bria (13), Cassi (11) and Anni (7), weathered the storm at her mother’s house 10 minutes away, and were surprised that the storm passed by without doing nearly the damage they had expected.

When they returned to their home the next morning, however, their relief was quickly washed away by what they saw.

“I just about a had a heart attack when I turned the corner and saw what is now a lake,’’ Cristy says. “It was like a bad scene from a movie. There was water all around the house, two feet deep. I knew right away the sandbags hadn’t done any good.”

Inside, however, the water was only two inches deep, and hadn’t yet breached the surface above the bricks, providing the Norlands with some relief.

“I thought, ‘Thank God we had the precaution to put some things on bricks,’’ says Cristy, who returned to her mother’s house to call her landlord.

When she returned to her house four hours later, another shock: the water in Cypress Creek had continued to rise. The water was up to her thighs in the driveway, it had risen past her windows, and those bricks she had perched important items on? “Comical,’’ she says.

She adds that she saw tadpoles swim by and earthworms float through as she waded through her kitchen. While the food truck was safe, moved before the storm to her mother’s house, the Norlands run their business out of their home and stored much of their commercial equipment in the garage.

The waters, which Cristy says “turned little old Cypress Creek into a raging river,” were devastating.

“A total loss,’’ she said. Her church helped them salvage what they could, but Cristy says ¾ of the house went to the dump.

The Thursday after the storm (Sept. 14), the Bacon Bus food truck had its first gig in two weeks in Lakeland.

The forecast called for rain.

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