I said beforehand that I thought people would be unpleasantly surprised by the power of this storm, and I think they have been unpleasantly surprised.

277

Wilma was bad enough, but within a week or a couple of weeks, we were getting back to normal. Imagine a Category 3 or 4 and six weeks or more of inconvenience.

159

Being an emergency manager and getting a call from the National Hurricane Center director on a cell phone at night is one of the most tense experiences you could ever go through. He just wanted to give me a heads up.

155

Generally speaking, we came through fairly well. There's a lesson here: to acknowledge the power of a tropical cyclone.

146

We haven't even seen Wilma's core pass yet. We can expect this to be stronger than anything we've seen in the last couple of years.

145