Pensacola begins long recovery

Victims of Florida’s third major hurricane in five weeks endured on Sunday all the now-familiar hardships of disaster: homes without air conditioning, empty refrigerators and staggeringly long lines at the few gas stations doing business.

In places where ice and water were being handed out by relief agencies, trucks and cars congealed into lines a mile or two long, often blocking major intersections.

Yet, there were the familiar signs of hope and recovery as well, including convoy after convoy of tree-trimming crews and electrical workers pouring into a city that remained mostly without power. Street sweepers worked in tandem with front-end loaders tackling the job of clearing some of Pensacola’s historic downtown streets.

Some residents took the desperate situation in stride.

“We’re all in the same boat,” said Lowell Weaner, 58, who waited 90 minutes in a line of cars at a distribution site. “It’s frustrating, but it’s not just you; it’s everybody.”

The Rev. Russell Levenson of Christ Episcopal Church, where Sunday services were moved to a large meeting room because the church bell had fallen through the roof, gave his congregation “permission slips” to grieve for things they lost but urged them to look for hope.

“Maybe you lost the trees but not the house. Maybe you lost the house but not the stuff in it,” he said. “Maybe you lost everything, but you’re still here.”

President Bush visited the Pensacola area and nearby Alabama on Sunday, his third such visit to Florida, where hurricanes Charley and Frances struck in the past five weeks. This time, Bush flew by helicopter over the areas hit hardest when Ivan howled ashore Thursday with 130-mph winds and towering waves.

“I want to tell the citizens of this part of the world that we’re praying for you, that we’ll get help out here as quick as we can and that we ask God’s blessings on you and your families,” the president said during the tour.

Ivan’s path across the South and Northeast has left 50 people dead, 19 of them in Florida. In the Caribbean, the storm killed 70.

The president has declared disaster areas in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina, freeing up federal money for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans and other programs.

In Florida, Pensacola and surrounding Escambia County took the hardest hit from Ivan, damaging bridges that cross its bays and connect the mainland to the barrier island of Santa Rosa Island. It left virtually all the county’s 300,000 residents without power, water and sewer service.

Yet, one Pensacola neighborhood, the historic district of Seville, seemed to hold up remarkably well to Ivan, providing a measure of vindication to a woman named Pete Baucum.

Since 1971, the mother of four and grandmother of 10 has battled criminals, neglect and City Hall to transform her historic residential district on Pensacola’s waterfront from a slum the city wanted to raze to a community popular for festivals and devotees of Florida’s early architecture.

“I can’t wait to go to City Hall and say ‘nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah,’ ” said Baucum, 74, laughing.

She has a man’s name because as a child she once came to the table with dirty hands, prompting her family to call her “Pete” after a field hand they knew who never washed before dinner.

On Sunday, Baucum held a kind of endless meeting with neighbors who drifted in and out of her dining room. They were the same friends who each night since Ivan’s visit have shared contents of their refrigerators and pantries to assemble community meals cooked in kitchens that have gas stoves.

The key topic was how well their homes, built in the mid- and late-1800s, resisted Ivan’s winds and water. With exceptions here and there, the historic district at the south end of Pensacola -- an area exposed to Escambia Bay -- surrendered few shingles, eves or windows to the storm.

“I did lose the roof of my birdhouse, and I have no idea where it went,” Baucum said, assessing the damage at her one-bedroom home on East Intendencia Street.

The homes fared well because of their construction. Timbers are oversized by today’s standards and iron-hard. Roofs are pointed and don’t give the wind much to grip. And the homes were built on blocks several feet above the ground to escape flooding.

Yet the women in Baucum’s dining room said their feisty homes could have been bulldozed for redevelopment long ago if not defended.

“Good neighborhoods have to be fought for,” said Susan Butler, 47, a high-school teacher of Spanish and history.

Over the years, the historic-district neighbors battled vandalism, burglaries, loud bars and a lack of city services. “It made us tougher than nails,” said Denise Daughtery, 59, a movie location manager.

The story from coastal communities, however, remained grim Sunday. Residents still were not allowed to return to the areas, where hundreds of homes and condominiums were obliterated or severely damaged.

Todd Livingston, who led a Federal Emergency Management Agency search team along Perdido Key, said his team combed through residential structures ranging from washed-out single-family homes to high-rise condominiums “that will definitely have to be demolished,” he said.

Emergency workers planned to use sonar to search for other possible victims in Escambia Bay, where a trucker was killed when an Interstate 10 bridge collapsed during Ivan. Authorities concluded search-and rescue-efforts in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.

Still, some progress toward recovery was being made.

Gulf Power Co. had restored power to 30 percent of its customers in the Panhandle as of Sunday, leaving about 250,000 homes and businesses still without power, most in Escambia County.

While most residents remained without power, they got a small reprieve: Temperatures reached only the mid-80s during the day and were forecast to drop at night to the 60s, with no rain.

And forecasters said Sunday that it appeared hurricane-weary Florida would be spared a visit from Tropical Storm Jeanne.

The storm turned toward the open sea Sunday, making it more likely it would not strike the southeastern United States.

Information from wire services was used in this report. Kevin Spear can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5062.