Published
5 years agoon
PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Their home full of soggy furniture and mosquitoes, Wilmer Capps was desperate to find shelter for his wife and their son Luke, born just three days after Hurricane Michael ravaged the Florida Panhandle.
The story of Luke’s birth is just one amid the chaos that life has become in areas of the Florida Panhandle hit hardest by Michael.
With the hurricane bearing down on their native home of Panama City, Capps and Smith sent their three other children to stay with relatives. Doctors had planned to induce labor on Oct. 11, the day after Michael made landfall between here and Mexico Beach, wiping out a wide expanse of buildings and timber.
Smith went to the hospital as planned that day, courtesy of a ride in a police car along streets crisscrossed with downed trees and powerlines. Smith said workers at Gulf Coast Regional Medical Center told her they couldn’t deliver a baby that day, so she walked several miles (kilometers) home after being unable to find a ride back.
Anya Mayr, a Gulf Coast Regional spokeswoman, said the hospital has operated only as an emergency room and hasn’t admitted patients since Michael. About 560 people have been treated for injuries ranging from storm wounds to heart attack and chainsaw cuts, she said, and more than 170 have been transferred to other hospitals by ambulances and helicopters.
Labor pains started the next day, so Capps drove Smith to a hospital about 80 miles (130 kilometers) to the north in Dothan, Alabama, which was flooded with coastal refugees from Michael. She gave birth at 1 a.m. last Saturday, three days after Michael’s landfall.
Discharged from the hospital and unable to find a hotel room nearby, the couple drove back to Florida, where conditions had improved only slightly since Michael.
Still unable to stay at their storm-damaged home amid oppressive heat and bugs, Capps settled on the Walmart parking lot because they were low on gas and were fearful of driving at night with a curfew in place. The store has a reputation for letting travelers sleep in the parking lot overnight, and Capps knew it.
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