Chicken Little

     

Wayne Sallade

 I will never forget the first time I met Wayne Sallade.  I don't remember the exact day.  I was working as a journalist at the time, alongside a reporter.  I don't remember the exact story we were working on.  I would bet you a sawbuck though, that it was a story about hurricane preparedness.  It was before before the twin towers and the turn of the millennium.  I would guess that it was probably 1998.  What I distinctly remember about first meeting Wayne, was thinking that I had just met the Chicken Little of Hurricanes.  

     Wayne would not mince words.  He would bombastically drop phrases telling anyone who would listen, (and almost no one did) that we were not prepared.  We had no idea what a category five storm could do, and we needed to be ready.  But no one believed him because we were immune to hurricanes in Punta Gorda.  Yeah, sure Donna had hit in 1960, but that was a fluke, and like a hundred years ago.  And hell, Wayne was the only one who seemed to remember.  He was the Emergency Operations Director for Charlotte County.  His office was in a windowless corner inside of the Sheriff's Office.  Where, in retrospect, he was woefully, inadequately supplied by county leaders to do his job.  And there he sat for years, telling anyone who would listen that the sky was falling-- one day it was going to fall.

Hurricane Charley 2004 (AP photo)

     Then, on Friday, August 13, 2004, the sky did fall.  It fell hard on the sleepy town of Punta Gorda.  That day, and the days that followed will be forever seared into my memory.   I had never witnessed such absolute fury unleashed by Gaia. I wept openly as I surveyed the remnants of the community that I had come to love and call home. The destruction was absolute.  And our very own Chicken Little became a national celebrity overnight.  Suddenly, people were intently interested in what he had to say.  I remember watching him directing emergency relief efforts from his destroyed offices for days without sleep.  He drove on, with textbook knowledge of what needed to be done, and now, people listened.  The sky had indeed fallen, but at least we had Wayne to help us put the pieces back together.  It took years to do it, but we struggled through, With Wayne's help.

Charlotte High.  Rebuilt after Charley. 

  Waynes Alma Matta. Where he was also the voice of the Charlotte Tarpons

(Photo: Florida Weekly)

      Infrastructure that checked in at 75 years old sometimes, which had failed during Charley, was rebuilt.  Buildings were strengthened.  Emergency plans were drawn up and put in place.  They even built Wayne a little castle of his very own to call the Emergency Operations Center where he could operate in the event of such future disasters.  Eventually, all became right with the county.  Wayne moved on to less hurricane ridden areas of the world to enjoy a well earned retirement. The infrastructure that he put in place waited for the next big test.  We didn't have to wait long.

Charlotte County EOC building

      On September 29th, 2022, Hurricane Ian took almost the exact same course as Charley did 18 years earlier.  There were many notable differences though.  Charley could have fit within the eye of Ian. It was smaller, faster, and according to "experts" weaker than Ian.   According to official data, Charley clocked in with 149mph winds.   As I understand it, that reading was taken from the only source at the airport, just before the reading device was blown completely out of the ground. Charley was controversially categorized as a Cat 4 storm.  Ian was promised to be a Cat 5, and according to every official account thus far, was "far worse than Charley".

     Having survived (thus far) through both of these events, some things are becoming very clear to me today.  Most notably, is that I see Wayne Sallade everywhere I look.  After Charley, it took over 30 days before we had a working traffic signal.  This week, we had some working the day after the storm.  Charley struck down nearly every power pole in the county.  Fallen power poles are the exception today, not the norm.  I remember calling my newsroom excitedly  5 weeks after Charly to proudly announce that we had a gas station open and pumping gas on Kings Highway.  Three days after Ian, about a dozen stations are pumping gas in Charlotte County.  In 2004, it took 28 days before the first residents had power restored in Charlotte.  This year, FPL expects to have power to almost everyone within 28 days. Stores are open, Restaurants are open and serving food. Water is available.  Recovery is insanely swift and moving like a well oiled machine. 

     Looking around, it's easy to surmise that Ian didn't even come close to Charley in the scale of devastation, but that assumption would be incorrect.  Glancing at Lee and Collier Counties proves that they were not at all prepared for a storm that they didn't take seriously.  The damage there is almost incalculable, and they didn't come within 30 miles of the eye of the storm, but they got a taste of what 150 mph winds will do to a community that does not listen to their Chicken Little. The center of Punta Gorda through Cleveland and out into DeSoto county where the eye was the most fierce, well that area withstood the mightiest of the storm, because Wayne prepared us.   Completely totaled buildings are again, the exception, not the norm.  Fewer roofs were lost. the power lines are still on the poles, which are still standing.

     I have no doubt that Wayne Sallade is single handedly responsible for saving lives this week.  Dozens, maybe hundreds of lives.  We will never be able to calculate that number, we just have to go on knowing that it exists.  And it does exist because he WAS the Chicken Little that we needed.  He made sure that when we spent years rebuilding, that we did it correctly with the next storm in mind.  A lot of us learned our zones, and when Wayne says "get out", the smarter people actually listen now.  God knows, I did.  Before he retired off to Colorado, I recall Wayne saying on several occasions:  "I have never said I told you so" (Which, lets be honest, is actually KINDA like saying I told ya so without actually saying it).  But allow this writer to take the time to say if for him: Wayne told ya so.  And its very evident that this time around, people actually listened, and we are a better, safer and more prepared community for it.  I'm proud to have known this man and worked beside him.  I just wanted to take the time to say:

On behalf of a very grateful home county:  Thanks Mr. Sallade!