Well, thought I'd drop a note to the list for anyone who might have been
wondering about those of us in "hurricane country."  We here at the Records
Mgt. Department at The University of West FL are back today after our bout
with Dennis.  The eye of the storm came in about 10 miles east of here.
Once again, our emergency preparedness plan went without problems and we
don't have alot of recovery to do thank goodness.  The campus had some
building damage but mostly trees down....certainly not the damage that we
had from IVAN.

My family and I stayed on campus during the storm.  One university building
is a public shelter.  Fortunately this hurricane went through very quickly,
unlike IVAN, and the center was much smaller so the hurricane force wind
field was smaller.  I'm sure the winds here were at least 110-115 miles per
hour at the height of the storm.  I was watching out a window in the
building we were in...and it looked about the same as IVAN.  Anyway, it was
certainly a stressful situation as usual.

Most homes did OK...and we didn't have as much debris to clean up as last
time...although it was and is a real chore cleaning up downed trees and
limbs, etc. that are left after the storm.  Our Florida panhandle is
beginning to really look ragged!  The landscape took such a beating from
IVAN...and Dennis just added to that.

The beaches here will not be the same for years...mostly because of the
damage done from IVAN.  I really believe that if this cycle of hurricanes
continues that the barrier island that is known as "Pensacola Beach" and
"Navarre Beach" will eventually be several very smaller islands instead of
one.  It's just a big "sandbar" and now with the lack of dunes and despite
the insane attempt of local government to pump sand back onto the island
(popularly called "beach restoration")....well, I just don't think it will
all continue to stay above water.  But then that's part of the natural
lifecycle of barrier islands.  They are always changing shape, etc.

Anyway, that's how it is here in Pensacola, FL and we're just glad that it
wasn't any worse...and that EMILY isn't coming north through the Gulf!

Cheers,

Gus
Records Mgr.
Univ. of West FL
Pensacola, FL

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