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MARIANNA, Florida – After tracing desperation along Florida's panhandle coast, Hurricane Michael swept through rural communities of the state. The storm hit them with a brutal and unexpected force that left residents and officials stunned – and facing an impressive recovery.
The fact that a fierce storm could blow from the northern Gulf of Mexico and cross a series of states before taking refuge in the Atlantic Ocean on Friday morning was always a possibility, but no people here would he believed it.
"We are a group that has been warning him for years," said Rodney E. Andreasen, director of emergency management for Jackson County, where Marianna is the county seat. Mr. Andreasan said the area has sustained winds of 130 to 140 miles at the time.
By the time Michael passed through Georgia, he was still ranked among the category 3 major hurricanes with a clearly defined and devastating eye.
"All the rest we cleaned ourselves with our bare hands," said Brunson, 27.
Hurricane winds were so strong, said Mr. Brunson, that he did not hear a tree break and fall into his own backyard – away from home, thankfully, and his four children, aged 1 to 6 years old. old.
"We did not think it would be so bad," he said, the debris of the storm scattered around him: a door that belonged to the backyard was in the front yard, just like what was left from a theater. A trampoline that he thought he had secured had torn a hole in his roof.
Now, Mr. Brunson, who works in a nearby Dunkin & Donuts, and his neighbors fear weeks without electricity – and perhaps without pay – while the city of Marianna and the rest of the country's vast rural counties Florida are struggling to recover from a disaster commonly associated with beaches. Some fear that the torn coast, beloved by locals and tourists, will attract the most attention and money, leaving places like this, with meager savings at first, unattended.
"We are one of the largest counties of dirt roads in the state of Florida," said Eric Hall, county commissioner, about the difficulties of moving after the storm.
On Lafayette Street in downtown Marianna, the entire facade of a law firm at the corner of the street was destroyed, revealing two floors of desks and filing cabinets in the interior. A beloved restaurant looked like a box missing the front and the top.
In neighboring Gadsden County, where authorities announced at least two tornadoes hit Wednesday, Steve Sweet died in his wife's arms after a tree fell on their house, his wife told reporters on Thursday. Gayle Sweet said that she had waited outside and that she had refused to seek treatment until her body was removed.
On Friday, during a phone interview, she said that she was still too heartbroken to talk about her loss. "It's a nightmare," she said through her tears. "He was so wonderful."
In Quincy, a row of dozens of cars lay on the street Friday morning from a parking lot in a nearby prison at the National Guard's arsenal. Members of the armed forces provided families with water boxes, ready-to-eat lunch boxes and roof sheets. Shortly after the arrival of the trucks, the rumor spread in the city – despite the lack of electricity and mobile phone – that help had arrived.
"There is no shower. We can not use the toilets, "said Halina Ciucci, whose house depends on well water powered by an electric pump. "We hope to find an open training center. to get money because no one takes credit cards. "
Ms. Ciucci, who left Fort Lauderdale years ago after losing everything in Hurricane Wilma in 2005, was shaken by a storm in a mobile home. "It was horrible," she said. "I'm from the south and it's the worst I've been to."
Shakeria Dillard and Davaughn Wilson arrived in a van and asked for tarps for their damaged roof and all that they could get for their four children. They said they fear that their power will not come back for weeks.
"We will have to stay," Ms. Dillard said. "The money is limited."
They left without what they hoped for most: ice cream.
The damage has spread deep inside the Apalachicola National Forest, where in the Sumatra Outpost, about 25 miles from the coast, Ashley Raffield and his wife, Brandy, have announced that They were off Wednesday night as Michael's last winds passed to clear a path outside. the house of Mrs. Raffield's sister, nine months pregnant.
"We are just trying to find the Red Cross," said 32-year-old Raffield Thursday at Eastpoint, the closest town to Apalachicola Bay, where the couple had found a small open market to buy baby food for their little girl. "To see if we could take showers or something."
Mr. Raffield said his grandparents used to evacuate Apalachicola on the coast to Sumatra during the hurricanes – so the family did not expect Michael to inflict them as much. wrong.
"It's gone crazy," he says. "It's worse here than here."
Christina Caron and Julia Jacobs contributed to New York reporting.
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