Former Mayor Mike Gilroy said federal and state officials were
not prepared
Gilroy – A former city mayor living in the heart of hurricane country said the worst of Hurricane Katrina passed over his Florida panhandle home, but that the area has had its fair share of recent storms.
Mike Gilroy, 69, retired to Gulf Breeze, Fla., in 2000, following a seven-year term on City Council that included two years as mayor.
He said the area was hit hard last September by Hurricane Ivan and, more recently, by Hurricane Dennis.
“Dennis went right over the top of us,” Gilroy said. “It was supposed to be the storm of the century. It did not do that much damage. When (Katrina) was heading this way, we were not wishing anyone bad luck, but we were glad it did not hit here.”
A close miss in Pensacola equated to 90 mile per hour winds and “sideways rain,” Gilroy said. The area experienced tropical storm winds for about 12 hours before it hit, and for 24 hours after it passed.
Gilroy said Katrina undid repairs he had made to a fence and roof tiles following the last hurricane, but “it wasn’t anything like the damage in Biloxi and New Orleans.”
At press time, thousands remained stranded on rooftops and in buildings in the flooded city of New Orleans, where bodies floated through city streets and National Guard were authorized to shoot looters on sight.
The signs of the devastation have quickly reached into the surrounding states.
“Gas is scarce here. Hardly anybody has unleaded,” Gilroy said. “The gas lines at some stations are about a quarter or half mile long. A lot of cars from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi are coming. You’ll see trucks with 50-gallon tanks filling up with gas.”
Refugees fortunate enough to have families in surrounding states were also arriving.
Gilroy spent Friday morning with a 90-year old World War II veteran who evacuated his native New Orleans before the city flooded.
“He introduced me to his granddaughter and wife,” Gilroy said. “They had evacuated prior to the hurricane but said their house was gone. They’re here living with a daughter. He said he’s never seen anything like this before.”
As a former civic and military leader, Gilroy appraised the situation in New Orleans as one that suggested a clear lack of preparation.
“It seems to me that if you live in a place that is surrounded by dikes and is under sea level, that you’d have a plan for a catastrophic hurricane and the dikes failing, just as the city of Gilroy has plans for a catastrophic earthquake,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to me that there was a plan in place and that it was followed. You’ve got to give them credit though because this is probably beyond anything they imagined.”
But the devastation in neighboring states have not made him second-guess his decision to retire in Florida, said Gilroy, who did not evacuate his home during either of the storms this summer. He added that news reports should not exaggerate threats of danger, which he felt happened in the run-up to Hurricane Dennis.
“That’s a problem,” Gilroy said, “because when people hear it’s going to be the storm of the century and it is not, you sort of get a little blasé about it and think you can stay for all of them.”
