On the net: Read the full reports from DEP and NSW on Hurricane Dennis at nwfdailynews.com.
Ten years ago today Northwest Florida residents didn’t know it, probably didn’t believe it, but they were closing a decade-long chapter in local hurricane history.
Early that morning, Hurricane Dennis was barreling toward the local beaches. Many had evacuated. Everyone had prepared.
PHOTOS: Hurricane Dennis in 2005
DOCUMENT: National Hurricane Center report on Dennis
DOCUMENT: DEP report on beach and dune erosion
Residents learned their lesson not 10 months before when Hurricane Ivan crippled the area. They hung shutters, bought water and bread and fought the still-fresh memories of 1995’s Hurricane Opal.
When it was over, they breathed a collective sigh of relief. Damage was extensive, but Hurricane Dennis had, mercifully, passed over the area quickly and caused no serious injuries or deaths.
“If it had come down on its own, it would have been a major, major problem,” said Kevin Carvalho, the assistant fire chief for the Okaloosa Island Fire Department. “At this point, it was all about perspective.”
Eye of the storm
Initially, it looked like Dennis was going to slam into Okaloosa County as a Category 4 hurricane. Before it made landfall, it changed its path slightly and lost some power.
Hurricane Dennis hit Santa Rosa Island the afternoon of June 10 as a Category 3 storm with sustained winds just shy of 100 mph and gusts of 121 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
The tidal surge was 6-to-7 feet at the eye and 6-to-12 feet east of the storm.
“Whatever made it through Ivan on the north side, Dennis got,” recalled Buck Lee, who had just taken over as the director of the Santa Rosa Island Authority at the time.
When Lee crossed over the bridge to the island from Gulf Breeze immediately after the storm, he didn’t make it far. Downed phone lines covered the roadways. Once they were cleared, he was relieved to see erosion wasn’t as big of an issue as with Ivan. The biggest problem was flooding.
Lee couldn’t drive through the Gulf Islands National Seashore to Navarre Beach, because the storm had washed it out, but the damage was most definitely there as well.
Two sections of the Navarre Fishing Pier were missing and 26 “major structures” were damaged beyond repair, according to a Florida Department of Environmental Protection report.
Much of Gulf Boulevard in Navarre Beach was either in pieces or covered by sand when homeowners were given the first glimpse.
Wind combined with the incomplete dune recovery from Ivan and Opal, set up Navarre Beach for most of its issues, according to Roger Blaylock, who oversees it.
“(Dennis) wiped out all the repairs that were on-going,” Blaylock said.
When he thinks back on the storm now, it’s hard to separate Dennis from Ivan, and he’s grateful for it.
“It was a stronger, more intense kind of storm, but moving quickly, and thank God,” Blaylock said.
Had Dennis lingered like Ivan, the damage would have been devastating.
‘Like a hangover’
Pockets of Okaloosa County were hit much harder than others. The Parish Point Subdivision in Florosa was overwhelmed with water, but Fort Walton Beach withstood most of the storm.
News was good out of the north and central parts of the county as well. Initial estimates put Eglin Air Force Base at $19.5 million worth of damages to structures and Hurlburt Field a little less than $10 million.
Okaloosa Island wasn’t destroyed, but it wasn’t untouched either.
When Carvalho came back over the Brooks Bridge after the storm had passed, U.S. Highway 98 was covered in water and part of it was gone – again.
Sand was piled up everywhere.
“It’s almost a bit of Armageddon,” he recalled. “There’s nobody on the roads; there’s stuff scattered all over the medians.”
While out assessing damage and checking in on people who had remained, it wasn’t uncommon to see sand filling the first level of a condo and all the contents pushed out the back.
It was a lot to take for a community still healing from nature’s last hit.
“It really felt like we were targeted that year,” Carvalho said.
A little farther down the coast, much of the sand was washed away, and homes and condominiums on Holiday Isle and Crystal Beach got the worst of it, said Destin City Manager Greg Kisela.
Jetty East Condominium also took a biggest hit.
North of U.S. Highway 98 in Destin, it was wind, not water that caused most of the damage. Any home that didn’t have to get a new roof after Ivan, did following Dennis, Kisela said.
But property damage wasn’t what hit Destin the hardest. It was the storm’s timing – peak tourist season. When Ivan hit in the fall, there was time to clean up and rebuild before the next summer.
After Dennis, businesses in Destin were looking at losing 40 percent of their gross profit for the year.
“”It was like a hangover,” Kisela said. “That’s the problem with Dennis - the lingering economic impact.”
Beaches washed out
Walton County was farthest removed from the eye, but that didn’t save it from Hurricane Dennis.
Beaches were all but washed away in the storm.
At the time, officials said they believed every beachfront property in the county sustained some damage during the storm. Eleven were destroyed.
“It was just like somebody had sheared off the dunes,” said Cindy Meadows, the then newly elected county commissioner for the Santa Rosa Beach area. “Some houses were just hanging over the dunes. It was pretty devastating.”
The waves washed away the then new sand dunes and crashed onto Scenic Gulf Drive near the Majestic Sun condominiums. When the water cleared, about a foot of the road was missing.
Most of the public and private beach accesses were partially or completely gone.
Away from the coast, damage was much less significant. Mostly people were just dealing with downed trees and power outages, but repairs along the coast kept officials occupied for a long time, Meadows said.
“We had meeting after meeting to figure out how people were going to restore their properties,” she said. “It was a long drawn out process.”
Stronger than before
Today most of the dune systems have been restored, and area beaches renourished.
U.S. Highway 98 on Okaloosa Island was rebuilt, but this time with extra armor that should protect it when the next storm blows in.
Homes and businesses have mostly returned to normal, and save the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, tourism seasons have gone forward without interruption.
“If there’s a silver lining, it’s your buildings are built to a better standard,” Kisela said.
The pilings are put in deeper and wood frames have been replaced by concrete.
No longer are the first floors of condos occupied by people — instead they’ve switched most over to parking garages, said Carvalho, who serves as a building inspector now. That way, when the tidal surge comes through, refrigerators and beds aren’t pushed out the back.
Everyone is hopeful when the next storm comes along, it won’t be as painful as those in the past.
“To me, (Dennis) was the closing of hurricanes, in what, I hope, is my lifetime,” Carvalho said. “It was very wearing to us all.”
Daily News archives, the Department of Environmental Protection and the National Weather Service contributed to this report.
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Katie Tammen at 850-315-4440 or ktammen@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @KatieTnwfdn.