Photo courtesy of West Florida Historic Trust This picture depicts damage on Pensacola Beach following Hurricane Frederic. history.Ī post-Frederic report from the Army Corps of Engineers showed damage to homes and infrastructure across Perdido Key and Santa Rosa Island in Escambia County cost nearly $6 million.Īdditionally, according to the report, the wind and storm surge ‘moved and flattened the primary dune system from Pensacola Beach to Horn Island, Mississippi.’ At the time, it was the costliest storm in U.S. Overall damage from Frederic topped $2 billion, including $1.7 billion in the United States. But, for whatever reason, my house was a little bit higher than a lot of the others and I got no water inside the house,” said Preston, counting herself fortunate. “Sand had literally covered all the way across the cull de sac, up my driveway, over my lawn, up to the doors. The rising water came up a foot and a half or two feet on our furniture” the woman recounted. In the documentary, an unnamed Pensacola Beach resident describes the damage to her home. The narration continues, “Overall, Pensacola fared better than most coastal areas, but there was heavy damage along the water, nonetheless.” The Pensacola area recorded 96 mile-an-hour winds and storm surge as high as 15 feet. Hurricane force winds had stretched from Hancock, Mississippi to east of Pensacola.” The narrator describes the aftermath, “September 13, the fury of Hurricane Frederic has left a path of destruction 250 miles wide and 150 miles deep. WKRG-TV5 produced a ten-year retrospective titled, “Hurricane Frederic: A Night to Remember.” National Weather Service Satellite image of Hurricane Frederic in September 1979. In the late 1970s, in the run up to Hurricane Frederic, the dunes on Pensacola Beach generally were thought to be taller and wider than they’ve been since. “Once you got to the seawall at the end of the island, there was a field of very high dunes that you could walk thru to get out to the point, if you didn’t go right on the beach.” “At that time you wouldn’t see the Gulf or the Sound in many cases or the bay, on either side, as you drove down because the dunes were so large,” he recalled. Pickens Road to discuss the 1979 hurricane. The gulf winds are blustering the day we meet at Park West on Ft. “Well, some of my memories of coming out here would be driving down to the end of Santa Rosa Island into the Fort Pickens area,” said Mike Aymond, a retired National Park Service ranger.Īymond has been a resident of the Pensacola area since the early 1970s, living mostly on Perdido Key. WUWF Public Media Retired National Park Service ranger and long-time Pensacola-area resident Mike Aymond recalls Hurricane Frederic in 1979. “ If you went down onto the National Seashore, again, you had the same thing.” Pickens Road were huge, I mean 2-3-4 stories high, beautiful. “So, it’s definitely developed a lot more since Frederic. And, the Sugar Bowl was the center of a circular group of tall white sand dunes - and not a neighborhood. Many of the houses on the beach were single-story, concrete block. (In 1979) It was all just dunes, just open beach.”īack then, she recalls, Via De Luna was a two-lane road. “So, you’ve got Sugar Bowl, Calle Hermosa, two more neighborhoods, all the towers at Portofino. “We were the last neighborhood on the beach,” said Preston. Of course, everything east of my neighborhood wasn’t even in existence. “It was not nearly as developed as it is now. She says her neighborhood already was built-out, but there was plenty of room for growth elsewhere on the island. At the time, the graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy worked as a ship’s mate for Exxon. Preston actually bought her home off Via De Luna Drive on Pensacola Beach in April of 1979, a few months before Frederic’s September landfall. “We moved back when we rebuilt our house after Ivan.” “I’ve been an owner out here since 1979 lived here for a year or two and then got married and moved away,” said resident Terry Preston. Prior to that, it was Hurricane Opal in 1995 and Hurricane Frederic, which barreled ashore 40 years ago, in September 1979.įrederic caused a lot of damage along the gulf coast and vividly changed the landscape of the region’s beaches, including Pensacola Beach. For the Pensacola area, Hurricane Ivan, which slammed the Florida-Alabama Gulf Coast 15 years ago, is now THE storm by which all others are compared.
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