‘When not to flee?’ Randy Wayne White and Hurricane Ian

The brass bell, post-Ian, on Sanibel. Photo: Randy Wayne White.

The original Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille, on Rabbit Road by the beach on Sanibel Island, was battered rather severely by Hurricane Ian Sept. 28. Liberated from the sand, shattered glass and broken boards, however, was the large brass bell that had hung proudly on the restaurant’s front porch.

“I had it made in Cartagena, Columbia,” says novelist Randy Wayne White, who rescued the bell himself. “I grabbed it out of the muck. It’s in the back of my truck now. And it will ring again – at Doc Ford’s Jungle Terrace, when we open.”

The Jungle Terrace restaurant, on Bay Pines Boulevard, will be the second St. Pete location for the Doc Ford’s franchise (the other is on the St. Pete Pier). They are named for the main character in White’s bestselling books – Marion “Doc” Ford, a crime-solving marine biologist who lives in a small town on the lower Gulf Coast of Florida.

White and his business partners hope to open the new restaurant – in the building once occupied by the Green Iguana – by mid to late November.

The other Doc Ford’s locations – the original in Sanibel, one on neighboring Captiva Island, an another on Ft. Myers Beach – are closed until further notice. Assessments are underway; rebuilds are planned.

White and his wife, Wendy Webb, hunkered down in their home on Sanibel while Ian was wreaking havoc.

“Up until that night, it was predicted to hit St. Pete,” White recalls. “The it kept moving south, south, south. I thought ‘I sat out Charley. It can’t be any worse than that. Well, it was worse.”

Hurricane Charley, in 2004, had plowed along a similar path, causing massive damage. White, at the time, was living on Pine Island, just off the coast from Ft. Myers. The White home was 20 feet above sea level, built on top of the remnants of a Calusa Indian mound.

“That old house,” he says, “is just a rock. It was built in 1921, and rode out two or three of the worst hurricanes in Florida history, early on.”

On Pine Island, the Whites had some roof trouble and water damage. Because they owned a large generator, their house became ground zero for friends and neighbors during the first days of recovery.

“Charley was a very different storm. I thought I’d seen the worst possible hurricane imaginable. And it was a terrible hurricane – winds well over 155. But it came through like a blitzkrieg. It was a laser of a tropical cyclone. I could see the tornadoes coming from across the bay. They made a horrific roar like a diesel freight train. And whatever those tornadoes hit, they absolutely destroyed.”

In 2017, Randy and Wendy evacuated as Hurricane Irma approached, packing their car with their most precious possessions and pointing it towards a fishing lodge they leased in Central Florida.

“And the eye of that hurricane ran right over us, at the place where we evacuated,” White explains. “The next morning, I walked out of the lodge and it was like the Germans had bombed the driveway into the place – trees across the road, no getting out. Thank goodness I had a chainsaw.

“So when to flee and when not to flee? I ran right into the hurricane by evacuating.”

Doc Ford’s, Sanibel Island, post-Ian. Facebook.

And that, pretty much, is why the couple opted to ride out Ian; as the fury unspooled around them, White says, they stopped the roof leaks as best they could, and once again tried to put their most precious material things under cover.

“The top floor of our house, the storm windows shattered, but we weren’t afraid. Neither one of us felt a moment of fear. We’ve spoken with other people who rode out the storm in Sanibel, and they said the same thing.”

His commercial-grade generator, elevated 14 feet above sea level, wasn’t affected by the 9-foot storm surge; however, White says, when the winds got to 50 to 55 miles per hour, the panels flew off, rendering it useless (“Briggs & Stratton,” he chuckles, with purpose).

“The last time Sanibel Island was really covered by a storm surge was 1926. What are the odds that not quite one hundred years later the same thing would happen?”

During the worst of it, White says, “I lost all contact with the outside world. Cell phones, everything else. So we didn’t see any news until days later. But here was my thinking: I didn’t hear any tornadoes, I didn’t see any tornadoes, so in my mind, it wasn’t as bad. But it lasted a lot, lot longer.”

With the Sanibel Causeway – the only way on or off the island – immobilized, White, a licensed Ham radio operator, was able to help the Coast Guard locate and rescue several residents who needed medical or other special attention.

Now that they’re off the island, the Whites are living what he describes as a “nomad-like existence,” traveling from place to place until things approach normal again.

As far as Randy knows, there’s still no power at their house. “I’m not sure where we go next,” he explains. “Might rent a place in St. Pete. We need to settle down somewhere, I’m telling you what.”

Work continues on he Doc Ford’s Jungle Terrace location, 8790 Bay Pines Boulevard. Photo by Bill DeYoung.