By the dawn's early light, October 8th, 2016 -- a month after the 451st anniversary of the founding of Our Nation's Oldest City -- St. Augustine was still here, surviving Category 3 Hurricane Matthew.
Matanzas Bay and San Sebastian River united, flooding downtown. Whitecaps in Davis Shores. Lightner pool filled for the first time since 1931.
Lives shattered by floodwaters. Trashed are precious furnishings, toys, heirlooms, art, damaged by floodwaters. People made homeless need FEMA help, now.
We're blessed to live here. Once again, a hurricane came and went. Our spirit survives. We're St. Augustine -- diverse neighbors are helping neighbors, united in persevering.
We're a town of 14,000. We've survived 451 years, a special place with divine providence -- we've survived hurricanes genocide, wars, arson, African-American and Minorcan slavery, genocide, Jim Crow segregation and even the British -- who exploited Minorcans in New Smyrna and thrice burned St. Augustine to the ground (1586, 1668 and 1702) and twice besieged it (1702 and 1740), and by Treaties of Paris occupied it from 1763-1784.
America's oldest masonry fort – Castillo de San Marcos – was started in 1672 in response to British arson, surviving two British sieges and cannonballs with its unique porous coquina shell construction and artisans' nightly masonry work restoring sections blown away by day.
Likewise, St. Augustine survived the Civil War -- without bloodshed – in 1861, an Army sergeant turned over the Castillo's keys (Fort Marion), obtaining a receipt from the Confederates. On March 11, 1862, secessionists fled when the U.S. Navy (with Dahlgren guns and U.S. Marines) arrived.
Hurricane Matthew teaches: wake up! Global ocean levels are rising and temperatures are rising, Matthew was probably worse because ocean temperatures are hotter.
Lessons learned:
o Stop building structures in wetlands.
o An estimated two billion in damages in our county alone, some probably preventable. As Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen said, "a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."
o Our governments are enthralled to unwise policies and unjust laws. One corporation built a candy factory on King Street in 2009 without building up nine feet: it is contaminated by sludge. As Lincoln said, "we must disenthrall ourselves."
We must learn and grow: be wiser than a treefull of owls and fight back like a like a bag of raccoons, preserving and protecting what we love. We're in this together. We're uniting to defeat dodgy developers.
We've won some 60 public interest victories since 2005, ending environmental racism, halting illegal pollution, vindicating human rights and neighborhood rights and accountable government. We elected Mayor Nancy Shaver; we need more leaders with empathy, listening to us, making data-based decisions. As Mama Joad said in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, "But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people.
In 1939, Mayor Walter Fraser and U.S. Senator Claude Pepper proposed a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. The time has come to make their dream a reality. The Park will help plan, fund and preserve our beaches and wetlands, reducing flood risks, preserving history and funding the $100 million pumping system that will keep St. Augustine from being underwater forever. Let's preserve St. Augustine forever, combining state parks, forests, water management and beaches, including Anastasia State Park and the Guana-Tolomato-Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTM-NERR) into a National Historical Park and Seashore, protecting St. Johns and Flagler Counties, preserving some 130,000 acres from development and the ocean. www.staugustgreen.com
Now let it be done.
As Woodie Guthrie sang, "This land is our land."
Ed Slavin, B.S.F.S., Georgetown, J.D., Memphis, publishes www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
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