Lido Key residents evacuate as Hurricane Irma approaches

As a longtime Florida resident, Zanne Gordon isn’t a stranger to dealing with hurricanes.

She’s lived on Lido Key since the 1960s. She went to college at the University of Miami, and worked as a flight attendant based in south Florida.

She’s stayed on Lido through a mandatory evacuation before — twice, in the ‘60s, at the home in which she currently resides on Polk Drive. She and her father put out sandbags and posted up boards. Water still filled the home up to knee-level, Gordon said.

“You could swim around (St. Armands) Circle,” Gordon said. “We waded out there. I had a surfboard then, and I surfed down the street.”

On Friday, just a few hours after the county issued a mandatory evacuation order for Lido Key and other barrier islands, Gordon was well into the process of preparing her house so she could get out of the area before Hurricane Irma arrives. Even before the county’s announcement, she wasn’t giving a second thought to sticking around.

“I’ve been in many (storms), and this is the only one I’ve been afraid about,” Gordon said. “This is the only one I’ve thought about leaving for.”

On Friday and Saturday, many residents in the mandatory evacuation areas were making their final preparations before leaving their homes. With an order to vacate by 8 p.m. Saturday, there were varying levels of anxiety about the coming storm, and about what they might return to once Irma passes.

Gordon wanted to leave Friday night, but she didn’t think she could finish securing the valuable items in her house before then. Her husband, Pat, was working long shifts as an emergency responder in Manatee County, helping transport people to special needs shelters. They’d be able to leave by 6 p.m. Saturday, she hoped. They plan to stay at a friend’s house in the Palmer Ranch area.

She started preparing on Tuesday, but she had a run of bad luck as she sought help boarding up her windows. Four different workers canceled on her, she said. Eventually, her children’s friends volunteered to post the wood panels. At this point, she said, she was one of only two people she knows who was still on the Key.

Even before the storm continued to track west toward Sarasota, Gordon was convinced Irma would significantly affect the area no matter what. She’s resigned to the fact that she could lose her house, in a worst-case scenario. There’s optimism that she and her husband will get through this, but she also soberly acknowledges things could get bad.

“I’m in my 70s,” Gordon said. “I’m recovering from cancer. This is going to be stressful and hard.”

For Will Bither, 27, and Briana Dobbs, 25, this is an entirely new experience. They’ve lived in Sarasota for about three years, and rent an apartment in a 1950s house on Lido.

Everyone living in the home has been working together to stormproof it to the best of their abilities, Dobbs said. That means bagging sand and posting shutters over the windows.

“After a certain point, after it passes that, there’s nothing you can do,” Bither said. “We’re hoping the sandbags and shutters hold.”

“We’re nervous, but we’re trying to be as prepared as we can,” Dobbs said.

They started preparing a few days ago, and plan to head to Bradenton once they’ve finished. Although reports early in the week indicated the storm could make landfall on Florida’s west coast, Wednesday forecasts showed a likelier path to the east that tempered some people’s nerves, Bither observed.

“I think people let their guard down for a day or two, and then we realized we shouldn’t have,” Bither said.

They were both surprised at the number of homes on Lido that hadn’t yet been safeguarded, particularly some of the older structures. Dobbs guessed seasonal residents might be out of town and unable to prepare the homes for the storm.

Dobbs has family throughout Florida affected by Irma. On Friday, after the evacuation order, her mother was inside the house on Lido — having already vacated her St. Petersburg home following an earlier evacuation order there. Her grandmother lives in Dade City and went to a hotel with Dobbs’s sister for the storm.

“I’m glad they’re together, and my mom and I are together,” Dobbs said. “We’ll hunker down for the hurricane.”

Dale Pitts and Regina Broderick live in the St. Armands Towers South condominium building. Before the evacuation order, they were split on whether they needed to leave their homes because of Irma.

“We were thinking of riding it out,” said Pitts, 69.

“He was — I wasn’t,” said Broderick, also 69. “I wanted to get off the island.”

Originally from the Chicago area, Pitts and Broderick have lived here for three years. They’re not sure what to expect during Irma, and even their more experienced neighbors haven’t been able to provide much guidance.

“Nobody really knows, because they’ve never had a storm like this before,” Broderick said. “The building hasn’t been damaged.”

As they get ready to head to their son’s house in midtown Sarasota, they offer slightly different levels of confidence about their preparedness for the storm.

“We’re a little nervous,” Pitts said.

“Quite nervous,” Broderick added.

And about whether they think their condo building will hold up.

“This building’s pretty safe,” Pitts said. “This is solid cement.”

“It’s pretty solid,” Broderick said. “Hopefully.”

And about whether they’ll be safe from Irma on the mainland.

“I think so,” Pitts said.

“I hope so,” Broderick said.

On St. Armands Circle, also under the evacuation order, businesses were clearing out and boarding up Friday afternoon. Lara Hatch, the owner of jewelry store Uniquity, said it was the first time she’d had to board up the storefront since 2005.

She said she noticed that people were more nervous than they had been for previous storms, which she attributed to Irma’s proximity to Hurricane Harvey. But she also said there seemed to be more of a collaborative spirit as people worked to brace for the hurricane’s arrival.

“I’m happy to see that neighbors are helping neighbors now,” Hatch said. “This is the first time I’ve seen that, ever. I think people learned that from Harvey, too — we’re all in this together.”