I was glued to the television yesterday morning when I woke up, stunned by the images of Hurricane Irma plowing through the Florida Keys at full force. I’m a born and raised Floridian, live in Sarasota, and was also worried about the storm’s trajectory as nearly every projection had the storm’s eye plowing right over my home. Thankfully, Hurricane Irma began to weaken rapidly after made landfall around Naples and by the time it made it to Sarasota the storm was only a Category-1.
The Florida Keys, however, felt the full force of Hurricane Irma’s wrath and some of those islands will never be the same. Houses, restaurants, bars, and resorts that have been there for decades were literally blown away. The 2-lane highway in and out of the Florida Keys is blocked from Key West to Key Largo with boats that washed up onto the road and other debris.
I was just in Islamorada three weeks ago for my birthday and caught my first ever bonefish (a 9-pounder!). Some of those densely populated islands in the Florida Keys are less than a mile wide. Some strips of lands are a hundred yards wide. There are COUNTLESS bridges between Key Largo and Key West. It might seem hyperbolic to say that the Florida Keys will never be the same after this hurricane, but it’s quite possibly the truth. There will be years of rebuilding ahead.