Hurricane Michael battered inland rural communities with such force that it stunned residents and left them with a daunting recovery they didn\u2019t expect.<\/b>
\nMARIANNA, Fla. \u2014 After carving a path of despair along the coast of Florida\u2019s Panhandle, Hurricane Michael drubbed the state\u2019s inland rural communities with such unexpected brutal force that it left residents and officials stunned \u2014 and facing a daunting recovery.
That a ferocious storm could blast north from the Gulf of Mexico and through a battery of states before it finally fled to the Atlantic Ocean early on Friday was always a possibility, but not one people here thought likely.
\u201cThere\u2019s a group of us who have been warning about this for years,\u201d said Rodney E. Andreasen, director of emergency management for Jackson County, where Marianna is the county seat. Mr. Andreasen said the area felt sustained winds of 130 to 140 miles per hour.
By the time Michael crossed into Georgia, it was still classified as a major Category 3 hurricane with a clearly defined and devastating eye.
\u201cWe\u2019re only 40 miles from the coast as the crow flies, and hurricanes don\u2019t respect coastlines,\u201d Mr. Andreasen said.
[ See the devastation of the storm in pictures.]
Hurricanes are fickle beasts, their projected paths never certain, their total destruction sometimes not known for days. The death toll continues to rise, with people killed by trees or washed away in cars in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia.
Still, Mr. Andreasen could not have foreseen the magnitude of devastation at home: Much of the county\u2019s road department was a pile of rubble. The sheriff\u2019s office lost its roof. Even the generator at the emergency operations complex failed Thursday night, before another one was brought in.
\u201cThis is the worst disaster Jackson County has ever seen,\u201d Mr. Andreasen said. Three of the 16 deaths were recorded in that county. A fourth remains under investigation, and the sheriff said his deputies continued to find people trapped inside their homes by felled trees.
The first sign of help Darryl Brunson and his brothers said they saw was on Friday, when marked police cars raced down their street, their intent unclear, and maneuvered across an obstacle course of trees. A few minutes later, heavy equipment yanked one of the huge tree trunks from the ground and hauled it away.
\u201cEverything else we cleaned ourselves with our bare hands,\u201d said Mr. Brunson, 27.
[ We asked readers to tell us about what the storm is costing them.]
The hurricane\u2019s winds were so strong, Mr. Brunson said, that he did not hear a tree snap and fall in his own front yard \u2014 away from the house, luckily, and from his four children, who range in age from 1 to 6 years old.
\u201cWe didn\u2019t figure it was going to be this bad,\u201d he said, the storm\u2019s remnants scattered around him: A gate that belonged in the back yard was in the front yard, as was what was left of a playhouse. A trampoline he thought he had secured tore a hole in his roof.
Now Mr. Brunson, who works at a nearby Dunkin\u2019 Donuts, and his neighbors fear weeks without electricity \u2014 and perhaps without paychecks \u2014 as the town of Marianna and the rest of Florida\u2019s vast rural counties struggle to return from a disaster usually associated with beachfronts. Some of them worry the shattered coast, beloved by residents and tourists alike, will draw most of the attention and dollars, leaving places like this one, with shoestring economies to begin with, unattended.
\u201cWe\u2019re one of the largest dirt-road counties in the entire state of Florida,\u201d said Eric Hall, a county commissioner, of the challenges of getting around after the storm.
On Lafayette Street in downtown Marianna, a corner law firm\u2019s entire facade was blown out, exposing two floors of desks and filing cabinets inside. A well-liked restaurant looked like a box missing the front and top.
In nearby Gadsden County, where officials said at least two tornadoes touched down on Wednesday, Steve Sweet died in his wife\u2019s arms after a tree fell on their home, his wife told reporters on Thursday. Gayle Sweet said she waited outside and refused to go to a hospital for treatment herself until his body had been taken away.
On Friday, she said in a phone interview that she was still too heartbroken to talk about her loss. \u201cIt\u2019s been a nightmare,\u201d she said through tears. \u201cHe was so wonderful.\u201d
In Quincy, a line dozens of cars deep stretched into the road Friday morning from a parking lot in a prison next to a National Guard armory, where service members offered families cases of water, boxes of ready-to-eat meals and roof tarps. Shortly after the trucks pulled in, word had spread around town \u2014 in spite of the lack of power and cellphone service \u2014 that some help had arrived.
\u201cThere\u2019s no shower. We can\u2019t use the toilet,\u201d said Halina Ciucci, whose home relies on well water powered by an electric pump. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping we can find an open A. T. M. to get cash because no one is taking credit cards.\u201d
Ms. Ciucci, who moved years ago from Fort Lauderdale after losing everything in Hurricane Wilma in 2005, experienced the storm inside a mobile home. \u201cIt was horrible,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m from down south and this is the worst I\u2019ve ever been in.\u201d
We asked readers about the costs of
Shakeria Dillard and Davaughn Wilson arrived in a van and asked for tarps for their damaged roof and anything they could get for their four children. They said they feared their power would not return for weeks.
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to stay,\u201d Ms. Dillard said. \u201cMoney is limited.\u201d
They left without what they hoped for most: ice.
The damage extended deep inside Apalachicola National Forest, where, in the outpost of Sumatra, about 25 miles from the coast, Ashley Raffield and his wife, Brandy, said they went out late Wednesday as the last of Michael\u2019s winds passed to clear a path outside the home of Ms. Raffield\u2019s sister, who is nine months pregnant.
\u201cWe\u2019re just trying to find the Red Cross,\u201d Mr. Raffield, 32, said late Thursday in Eastpoint, the nearest town on Apalachicola Bay, where the couple had found a small market open to buy baby food for their infant daughter. \u201cTo see if we could take showers or something.\u201d
Mr. Raffield said his grandparents used to evacuate from Apalachicola on the coast to Sumatra during hurricanes \u2014 so the family never expected Michael to inflict so much harm.
\u201cIt got crazy,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s worse up there than it is down here.\u201d<\/p>\n

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