Irma looms as the mythical ‘Big One’ Florida has long feared

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — They call it the Big One — a mythic, massive hurricane that would obliterate the densely populated southeast coast. And it has long been the stuff of Florida’s nightmares.

Irma, it appears, could be it. The storm has triggered near-panic in a region of more than 6 million people that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, clustered along a narrow ribbon of coastline that has seen nearly double-digit population growth over the past five years.

Isabella Janse Van Vuuren just arrived — she left her home in South Africa two weeks ago to start a job as a stewardess on a yacht, which she and other crew members spent time securing. As Irma approached, she was trying to decide whether to stay or go.

“I’m terrified,” she said. “I’m not used to this. I just want to go into a cave and hide, basically. This is not a nice feeling.”

But for veterans of life in the Sunshine State, hurricanes are as Floridian as oranges and Mickey Mouse. And every hurricane season brings with it the chance of cataclysm.

In 1928, a hurricane caused Lake Okeechobee to burst its banks, unleashing a 20-foot wall of water that killed an estimated 2,500 people. The event was a key part of Zora Neale Hurston’s classic 1937 novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

Another famed storm, the killer 1935 Labor Day hurricane that swept across the Florida Keys, is central to the plot of the 1948 movie “Key Largo,” which starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Irma could be the strongest hurricane to ever hit southern Florida. Andrew hit in August 1992 and caused widespread damage south of Miami. It caused the deaths of at least 40 people in Miami-Dade County alone, according to the National Hurricane Center, with 65 deaths blamed total.

“It was very scary. We just had no idea how bad it was going to be,” said Rosi Ramirez.

She’s leaving Florida for South Carolina with her three children. “I don’t want my kids to go through that traumatic experience. I hadn’t thought about Andrew in a while. But now I am seeing some flashes of what we went through. It is all coming back.”

Floridians have not been directly hit by a major hurricane since Wilma in 2005, but if they needed any reminder of what might await them, they saw the catastrophic flooding and damage caused by the storm Harvey in Houston.

Jenna Wulf, a native Floridian who is six months pregnant, said seeing the damage caused by Harvey made her family more cautious; she stocked up on water Saturday and the hurricane shutters are going up on her home.

Andrew is often considered the worst storm in South Florida’s history. But in terms of fatalities, it didn’t come close to the “Great Miami Hurricane” of September, 1926, which killed 372 people when it came ashore directly over the city, carrying with it a 10-foot storm surge.