Pensacola, Fla. – Ten months later, Betty Jernigan wakes every night at the same time, and she is still in that water – that swirling, black, debris- choked soup that took her mother from her and nearly took her.
“I re-create it every night,” the 59-year-old Jernigan says, her brown eyes widening afresh with the fear of that September night when Hurricane Ivan destroyed life as she knew it.
For nine hours after her Pensacola home disintegrated around her and her 82-year-old mother was swept from her arms, Jernigan clung to debris, swallowing the salty, sewage- and chemical- laden water as nails and tree limbs tore at her flesh.
So why would she choose to stay behind with another monster barreling across the Gulf of Mexico, seemingly hellbent on finishing what Ivan had started?
“We’ve been through the worst,” Jernigan said Saturday as she secured her keepsakes against the onslaught of Dennis. “It couldn’t get any worse. I don’t know how it could.”
Jernigan and her fiancé, Johnny Hawkins, 53, had no qualms about staying in their Grande Lagoon home for Ivan. Just a football field’s distance from the Intracoastal Waterway, the two-story wood house was built to withstand 155 mph winds and had already survived Opal and Frederick.
What they didn’t count on was the 20-foot wall of water Ivan would send through their neighborhood.
Jernigan’s widowed mother, Arvie, had a bad heart and had been bedridden for years. By the time they knew Pensacola was in Ivan’s cross hairs, the area’s critical-care shelters were already full. Besides, she wanted to stay with her daughter.
About 10:45 p.m. Sept. 15, the house lost power. Not long after, the windows started blowing in. About midnight, Betty Jernigan heard a sound as if jet planes were trying to land on the roof. Then, the concrete-reinforced, brick-lined floor began rippling, roiling up and down like a roller coaster. Water began rising in the room.
Betty Jernigan looked at Hawkins and asked: “Are we going to die?” Hawkins replied, “No. We’re not going to die. Go get in the bathroom.”
The bathroom was on the north end of the house, away from the winds. While they cowered in the fiberglass shower, Hawkins braced his back against the door, trying to hold out the wind and water.
Suddenly, the walls began caving in around the door Hawkins was holding up. Within seconds, the wall behind the tub gave way and the shower stall tipped back into the churning water.
Hawkins was pushed repeatedly beneath the water. He was separated from the others and grabbed a cedar tree.
Within minutes, Betty Jernigan knew her mother was dead.
About 4:30 a.m. Sept. 16, Hawkins lowered himself from the tree and made his way to a nearby home, which had survived relatively unscathed.
A few hours later, rescue workers responding to the area of Hawkins’ 911 call found Jernigan about 150 yards from the wreckage of her home, sitting atop a roof, babbling and hypothermic.
