People of the Everglades survive, thrive in wake of Hurricane Irma

Chad Gillis
The News-Press

Carol Balman lights a Virginia Slims 120 cigarette, runs her feeble pink fingers through her short, blonde hair and sits back in an old white plastic lawn chair perched in the mud in her front yard.

“Now you see what it looks like in the Everglades after a big storm,” she says, holding back tears and choking on her words. “I just thank God that we’re still alive. That’s all we’ve got now. Everything's gone.”

Carol and Dave Balmon, of Pinecrest, Florida off of Loop Road in the Big Cypress National Preserve rode out Hurricane Irma in the kitchen and small camper behind them. Both have been through several hurricanes, but Carol is still rattled almost month later and says its the worst she has experienced. Dave is a lifelong Floridian and says “I’ve been there done that and I have the t-shirt to prove it.”

Balman, 69, and her husband, Dave, 71, rode out Category 3 Hurricane Irma in a 20-foot tow-behind camper on a small chunk of land that’s about 2 feet above sea level.

Winds of 120 miles per hour or more hit the area and caused a tree to fall on the trailer, and Carol thinks the tree pinned the trailer to the ground and saved their lives.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Carol says to a crew of National Park Service workers who are cleaning up tree debris along this remote stretch of Loop Road in Monroe County.

She gets up to hug one worker. “I love you,” she says, holding back more tears.

It’s been a month since Irma made landfall on Sept. 10, but Carol is having a difficult time mentally and emotionally processing the storm and the damage it brought to this tiny old logging town called Pinecrest.

Carol loves gardening and takes pride in keeping their landscape and massive trees (many of which were lost during Irma) in showroom shape. 

Some smaller buildings were lost, but it's the trees and plants that Carol misses most. 

The Balmans have lived here for about 50 years, and Carol said Irma hit their home harder than any storm in the past half-century.

This storm tested the Everglades and the people who live here, more so than any storm in recent history.

Betty Osceola, a member of the Miccosukee tribe stands on a saturated boardwalk at a historic tree island named tear lnd that the tribe uses for educational purposes. The isand is underwater from rains in June and Hurricane Irma.

A few miles away, on the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida reservation, Betty Osceola walks carefully along a boardwalk she and her workers built in the wake of Irma.

The area is still flooded, a few feet above healthy levels, so the crew built new docks on top of their old docks so people can walk from the store near the highway to the swollen Everglades out back.

“I think indigenous people have a different feel for hurricanes,” Osceola says before boarding one of her airboats. “We look at it as another person. It just takes a different form. We have stories about hurricanes and we were told that when a hurricane comes it washes the land and it creates a new cycle.”

Gladesmen: A culture preserved within the Florida Everglades

Osceola stayed in her traditional Miccosukee village in a building made of modern walls but with a thatched hut roof.

She said the roofs, made from sable palm fronds, allow the wind to rush through the ceiling rather than rip it off.

Betty Osceola, a member of the Miccosukee tribe and airboat operator stands on a temporary dock at her airboat business along the Tamiami Trail in Dade County. High waters from a June storm and Hurricane Irma are leaving areas flooded. Osceola takes it all in stride, saying hurricanes cleanse the landscape and start regrowth.

This is the same type of structure Osceola has used before, and her ancestors used for centuries to survive countless hurricanes and tropical storms. 

Irma ripped down signage and tore at parts of the roof at Osceoa’s airboat operations along Tamiami Trail in the far west of Miami-Dade County.

The storm sunk six of her airboats, but that didn’t keep Osceola and her crew down.

“On the third day we were taking cash and doing airboat rides,” says Osceola, one of about 600 tribe members. “I thought we’d close for a week but the tourists decided we needed to open after three days. So we took them out.”

Voices of the Everglades

As the people of the Everglades have adapted their lives to the land, the Everglades itself evolved with hurricanes as part of a natural cycle.

The ecosystem is flooded but looks about the same as it did before the storm. Some hardwood trees snapped and were uprooted, but, for the most part, the vast cypress and sawgrass prairies look just like they did the day before Irma made landfall — just wetter.

There are areas in the historic River of Grass where high, relatively dry land interrupts the sawgrass prairies and massive wetlands. 

Called tree islands, the ecologically unique features are where the Seminole and Miccosukee have lived, farmed and held ceremonies since at least the 1800s.

More:Medical examiner confirms 'storm-related' death in Everglades City

More:Gov. Scott says Lake Okeechobee dike must be fixed or algae blooms will continue

These lands are flooded and have been for much of the summer, since record June rains dumped more than a foot of precipitation across the area.

Hurricane Irma only added to the problems. These islands can be destroyed if they are under water for too long, Osceola explains. 

"It's going to take months for this to dry out, and that's if it stops raining," Osceola said about 10 minutes before it starts to rain, again. 

Jack Shealy of the Everglades Adventure Tours and Skunk Ape Research Headquarters walks through the campground run by his family in the Everglades. The area sustained minimal damage in Hurricane Irma which included flooding and some wind damage.

About 40 miles to the east, Jack Shealy assesses the damages at the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters, a tourist attraction and campground near the Turner River in Big Cypress National Preserve. 

"We got flooded, but it's not the first time," Shealy says while walking through the main store, where two of the three drips from the ceiling are being collected in old buckets.

"I could tell the storm was going to be big because all the animals were acting strange. I saw turtles crossing to the north side of the highway (instead of the other direction) and fire ants were going up the trees. Normally, you only have black ants in the trees and the fire ants stay on the ground. And the bugs, the mosquitoes, they were biblical." 

Shealy fled the campground days before Irma made landfall in the Everglades City area, about 10 miles from the Skunk Ape Headquarters. 

His family has guided tours and rented to campers here for more than a century. 

"We've never run from a storm in 100 years, but I've never had a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old," Shealy says. "And we've never had help before and we're not (asking for it) now. We're moving on and not dwelling on it. There's no time for tears. It's time for everyone to get back to work, just like they did before the storm." 

An alligator lies in the waters at a Miccosukee tree island in the Everglades. The island is used for educational purposesnow but used to be home to Miccosukee clans. The tree islands are under water due to June storms and Hurricane Irma.

Several camping trailers at the headquarters were destroyed in the storm, one lifted several feet in the air by the roots of a fallen tree. 

Shealy says he spent days clearing the camp roads of fallen trees so people could get to their campers and RVs. He did that with about a foot of water on the 35-acre property. 

"It's as bad as I've ever seen," Shealy says. 

More:Irma is long gone but her visit may cost Florida for years to come

More:Southwest Florida crops, honey production could be hurt by Irma battering beehives

As bad as the storm was, it's no match for the collective wisdom and skills of the people living in the historic Everglades. 

Some folks are clearly shaken by the major hurricane, but everyone The News-Press spoke with said they planned to stay firmly entrenched in their homes and campers.

Shealy reflected on lessons he's been taught by elders and others in the area and deferred to Osceola, saying her culture better understands things like hurricanes and what most outsiders consider natural disasters. 

“It washes away the illness and cleans the land,” Osceola said of hurricanes. “Everything feels clean (now). The air feels lighter.”

The Balmans are living in a fifth-wheel camper they borrowed from some friends. It sits near an old gas station with a sign out front sporting a toy rifle that reads: "We don't call 911." 

They spend their days under a white canopy tarp tied up for them by the National Park Service. The tarp ruffles in the stiff breeze and keeps them dry, mostly. 

"But we love it out here," Carol says while snuffing out her Virginia Slim. 

Connect with this reporter: Chad Gillis on Facebook

A cypress stand is seen off of Tamiami Trail in the Everglades. The eye of Hurricane Irma raked over this area.