Hurricane Joins Long Line of Calamities : A Wink of a Fierce Eye Is Latest Blow to Florida City

Pity poor St. Joe, for there was a time when this panhandle city on the Gulf of Mexico was considered the jewel of Florida.

In 1836, the state’s first railroad was built here, a nine-mile stretch to Lake Wimico. And two years later, the Florida Constitution was written here not far from the pine-covered shore. St. Joseph was to be the state’s first capital.

But then came the yellow fever epidemic of 1839. Economic disaster followed. The railroad was abandoned. The lake grew shallow. By 1840, this was a woebegone city largely deserted except for fishermen, mosquitoes and pelicans.

Friday, the 5,000 people here cleaned up after the latest bit of hardship--100-m.p.h. Hurricane Kate, who winked her fierce eye right above the city, now called Port St. Joe.

“It roared through, and I mean it sounded just like a freight train,” said City Councilman Bennie Roberts, who watched the storm from his Jeep, parked against the solid north wall of the Faith Bible Church.

Kate was the fourth hurricane to batter the Gulf Coast in a season that already has inflicted $3 billion in damage from Florida to Louisiana.

Friday, Kate--downgraded to a tropical storm--swept north through Georgia and South Carolina, washing out bridges and leaving thousands without power. Rain, spawned by the front, which was expected to move northeast and out to sea, fell in North Carolina, West Virginia and Maryland.

About 10,000 households here in the Florida Panhandle still were without electricity Friday, and spokesmen for utility companies said it may be a week or more before all power is restored. An estimated 8,000 people in Georgia were without electrical service. A 7 p.m.-to-dawn curfew was declared in Tallahassee, Florida’s state capital, where all government offices were closed.

Three people in other parts of Florida and one Georgia man died in the storm. Here in St. Joe, however, the silver lining within Kate’s fearsome clouds was that no one was killed or badly injured. These days, life in the city revolves around the big paper company whose offices sit at the west end of downtown. The mill was little damaged by the storm, a better fate than many homes on Constitution Avenue along the shoreline and the small shops along Reid Street.

“We stayed in the store until the roof from next door started blowing by,” said Jimmy Costin, co-owner of St. Joe Hardware.

He had decided to wait out the late-afternoon hurricane, standing behind his cash register. “We heard the lumber yard crumble next door, and we made a run for it over to the paper company.”

Walter Scott, the pharmacist, had taken his family to Pensacola for safety. When he returned Friday morning, he found that the front window of his drug store had blown out and soggy greeting cards were strewn across the floor.

“Most of the get-well cards are ruined,” he lamented. “And I had a special section of praying-for-you cards that didn’t make it either. I guess we’ll find out how good the insurance is.”

The wind had knocked the window out of the Great Day Family Discount Store. A display stand of umbrellas was emptied onto the floor, and a circle of corduroy pants was twisted up like wet towels.

Power was still off, and the ice cream had melted at Junior’s Food Store. Tire irons had spun through Renfro Auto Parts, and the floor was a jumble of tires, glass and welding supplies. The scoreboard had fallen on the high school football field, where last year the St. Joe Sharks had won the Class AA state title.

“Let us see the bright side,” said Father Thomas Crandall, who had peeked at Kate from a window in the rectory of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. “We had been thinking of removing a 30-foot tree beside the rectory, and now it has been efficiently removed, thank the Lord.”

Others were equally thankful that the damage had been relatively light.

“Our window crashed into the street, but the plants seemed to fall back into the shop,” said Tim Ard, of The Decorator Den flower shop. “The silk flowers are soaked, but they’ll be OK.”

Then, too, the marble statue at the Constitutional Convention State Museum was unscathed. Palm trees and pines were split all around it, but the white slab suffered not a scratch.

It remains to remind visitors of when St. Joe was the center of the state and its founders promised:

“All men are equal before the law and have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing happiness and obtaining safety.”