A look at one family's search for solid ground after the storm rattles their lives and finances.
By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD
Published August 22, 2004
[Times photos: Lara Cerri]
Nevada Dennis, 33, and his wife Natasha, 30, gather crib blankets while salvaging final items from the bedroom of their rented Port Charlotte home Thursday.
With Briana, 1, on his stomach, Nevada Dennis relaxes at a relative's generator-powered Port Charlotte home Wednesday.
PORT CHARLOTTE - That Friday, as the wind rose outside, Natasha Dennis hurried from room to room with a vial of virgin olive oil her pastor had blessed. With a finger, she drew crosses on all the doors and walls. In every room, she prayed: Spare this house. Spare this family.
So much depended on God hearing her. She had not come this far to see the storm splinter her home, and the life she was building inside it.
Natasha had seen how easily it could happen, how flimsy human plans and walls and ceilings actually were, when Hurricane Andrew destroyed her family home in South Florida 12 years before.
Now Charley was approaching. Natasha's husband kept telling her they were fine. But the 30-year-old homemaker felt a terrible foreboding about the hurricane's direction.
"I can't explain it," she said. "We need to leave."
So they rushed to a shelter with their three kids. As the storm raged, Natasha kept praying.
* * *
Afterward, she and her husband wandered through what was left of their neighborhood. Familiar streets had been transformed into a landscape of felled trees, ripped roofs, buckled street signs, downed power lines.
At the modest, one-story, concrete-block home they rented on Altman Avenue, the ceilings had caved. Rainwater soaked the floors. Debris lay everywhere.
Natasha and Nevada, 33, were newlyweds, married for only eight months. Together, they had a 1-year-old daughter, plus an older boy and girl Natasha brought from previous relationships.
Before she met Nevada, Natasha had been raising her two kids alone. She'd been a single mom since she was 16. From the start, Nevada had treated the children as though they were his own. It was one of the reasons she fell in love with him.
"I always wanted to be married," she said. "I always wanted to have a family."
The rental house on Altman Avenue was supposed to have been their new start together. Nevada worked as an airplane mechanic for a small company at the Port Charlotte Airport. Even before the storm, they survived paycheck to paycheck, trying to improve their credit and buy a house.
Now, as they stuffed garbage bags full of ruined belongings, they found their uneaten wedding cake in the freezer. The cake was from Publix. Vanilla, with pink frosted flowers. They had been saving it for their one-year anniversary in January. With the power out, the cake was starting to spoil, like the rest of the food.
"We've got to throw it away," Nevada told his wife. Neither of them had the heart to do it.
As she stood amid the wreckage of her home, Natasha was overwhelmed with questions. What are we going to feed the kids tonight? How are we going to pay our bills? Where are we going to sleep?
The wedding cake worried her, too. She knew it was an absurd notion, but she wondered aloud if the ruined cake meant that she and Nevada were going to separate.
The storm sent you crazy thoughts like that.
* * *
The first two days after the hurricane, Natasha couldn't stop crying.
They lived on Spam and cold canned sausages. They washed with rainwater that had collected in buckets. They shuttled between the homes of nearby relatives, sleeping on makeshift beds.
The storm shattered the family's finances. Once he made it to the airport, Nevada discovered that his mechanic's tools - worth thousands of dollars - had been damaged. Many of the planes were wrecked, too. No planes to fix meant no paycheck.
Nevada wasn't even sure if his company was going to stay in business.
Natasha remembered how bad Hurricane Andrew had been when she was a teenager, how her family had been without power for months. She remembered huddling in a hallway closet with her mother, who prayed and sang hymns and pleaded with God. She remembered how, in the aftermath, her mother was the figure she looked to for strength.
Now Natasha was doing the praying. She was the one who would have to clench her jaw when she felt like crying, because the kids would look to her for strength, even as she looked to Nevada. While they cleaned up their house, Nevada noticed her shuffling her feet dispiritedly.
He took her aside and embraced her. He told her to take care of Kijuana and Anthony and Briana, to make sure the children got what they needed. If she did that, he said, he'd take care of everything else.
As he held her, she cried again.
* * *
The days ran together. Natasha and her husband foraged for necessities at relief stations around Port Charlotte. They found toothpaste, soap and canned goods. The baby wanted juice, and they could not find juice. The baby's eczema was enflamed by the heat, and they could not keep her cool. The baby wore size 6 diapers, and they could only find size 4.
It made Natasha feel like a homeless person, roaming through the garbage.
Nevada's brother drove down from New York to help, and his sister came down from Tampa. Nevada's boss told him they could store some of their belongings at the airport hangar.
At their house, what was left of their ceiling was spiderwebbed with cracks and looked like it might collapse.
"We've got to get everything out of here," Nevada said, hustling bags toward the family Jeep. "Because it's going to rain."
Natasha marveled at Nevada's focus and calm. It seemed like he could fix anything. With no air conditioning and temperatures soaring, he rigged a car radiator fan to her Nissan's battery, then stuck the fan in the window so the family could sleep. It lasted a couple hours.
That night, Natasha stayed awake. She watched her husband, stretched out beside her, and wondered about their next move. She had heard that federal emergency aid was on its way. But even with the money, she wondered, where would they go? There was nowhere to stay in Port Charlotte. Not for them. Not for all of the other families who had lost their homes.
Natasha slumped against the wall. She didn't even know what day it was.
* * *
Two days later, on Wednesday, she found an emergency relief check in the mailbox at the end of the driveway. It was imprinted with the U.S. Treasury seal and the Statue of Liberty. It was for $1,852. Now when they found a new place, they would have money for the deposit.
The day brought other signs of order returning. Her husband was back at work at the airport, joining a crew hauling away the wrecked aircraft. Natasha and the kids went to her aunt's house, where they sprawled lazily in front of generator-powered fans that cooled the living room. Natasha's oldest daughter played UNO and watched a video, Unbreakable. Her son was feeding juice to the baby. The aunt's phone was working again, and someone was calling to say that the power was coming back on in parts of the city.
Natasha sat on the couch, taking it all in.
"I lost my home. I lost most of my things," she was saying. Her voice was matter of fact, but the despair was gone.
As the afternoon unfolded, she talked about everything that had happened since the storm. She talked about the wedding cake, still spoiling in the freezer. She and Nevada could not yet bring themselves to throw it away. Thinking about it made her laugh, now.
She talked about the Bible, remembering the Book of Job.
"Everything was taken, but everything was restored more than he lost," she said. "We're alive and we're here, so that alone is hope."
Again and again, she returned to the day of the storm. She talked about how frightened she was, about going from room to room with the olive oil, drawing crosses on the doors and walls of their home. She remembered her prayer.
She had been so worried about the house. But now, she said, she understood the house was only a shell.
