CRESTVIEW — Hurricane Ivan's 165 mph winds caused 92 deaths and more than $18 billion in damage across Florida, Louisiana and Texas, among other areas.
The Category 3 storm made landfall in North Okaloosa County on Sept. 16, 2004.
The Okaloosa County School District closed campuses until the storm passed. Meanwhile, Davidson Middle School and Baker School served as emergency shelters, and many local businesses extended their hours to help shoppers get what they need.
The Davidson shelter served more than 400 evacuees.
Food and drinks were trucked in from the Okaloosa School District’s warehouse in Niceville. Red Cross volunteers were on hand to help check people in so a record of who was there could be kept.
Families brought with them whatever they could fit into their vehicles, not knowing how long their stay would be.
Three meals a day were served form the school kitchen, along with snacks and drinks.
Following the storm, the Hub City became a hub for basic supplies: food, ice and especially gas. The stretch of Ferdon Boulevard between Main Street and Interstate 10 basically became a parking lot during business hours.
REMEMBERING IVAN
City officials remember Hurricane Ivan as the lesser of storms to hit Crestview in the past couple of decades.
Aside from trees being knocked down, a few roofs torn off buildings, and a week without electricity, the city escaped relatively unscathed, unlike communities to the south.
“Really, the city wasn’t hit that bad,” then-councilman Ellis Connor said. “There were a lot of power outages, which interrupted the traffic signals. The police and fire had a lot of extra activity moving people through town.”
With Davidson Middle School designated an evacuation center — that ultimately served 400, mostly south county, residents — traffic heading up State Road 85 clogged the city’s main north-south artery all the way through town.
“While the storm is approaching the coastline, any of the evacuation that is taking place takes place in the middle of Crestview,” Fire Chief Joe Traylor said.
SCHOOL’S OUT
Mayor David Cadle was then director of the Crestview High School band, which was affected when the school's observation tower and flood lights around its practice field behind the school blew down.
“As the band director, it really messed our season up,” Cadle said. “It took our tower down and it took all our light poles down, so the practice field was filled with glass. We didn’t have any place to get up and observe band rehearsals.”
Traylor said he and Police Chief Travis Gillihan breathed sighs of relief when flooding didn’t happen during Ivan.
“During the flooding events we’ve had, we’re isolated,” Traylor said. “During Georges we were an island.”
NO FLOODING PROBLEMS
“It was Opal and, before that, Georges, that hit us bad,” said city planner Eric Davis, then an assistant city planner. “It’s usually not the wind that gets us, it’s the water. If we get the rain in the wrong place, if it hits the Yellow or the Shoal (rivers), we’re in trouble.”
“I don’t recall significant damage,” Connor said. “A few awnings down and shingles and metal off of rooftops, but the main problem we had was the traffic coming through town. That’s a nightmare for the police and fire.”
Cadle, whose predecessor George Whitehurst was mayor during Ivan, said the city’s recovery was considerably more rapid than the low-lying coastal communities south of the Eglin Reservation.
“The city recovered very quickly,” Cadle said. “We had damage but our damage wasn’t as severe as the people around us. We bounced back. But Crestview people do that.”
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: IVAN: ‘The main problem we had was the traffic coming through town’