Staring Ivan in the Eye

By Duwayne Escobedo

Gary Cole watched a 30-foot wave smack down, then saw freezers, air conditioners and roofs zip by in the current past his Pensacola Beach home on the Santa Rosa Sound.

About an hour before Ivan’s eye blasted into the coast, the 56-year-old decided it was time to evacuate – to his Pensacola Beach neighbor’­s second-floor porch.

He stumbled and swam against the rising tide – 6-feet high at times – washing across the barrier island to get to higher ground.

“When I think about it now, you have to be dumber than a box of rocks to stay out here,” he says. “It’s not for everyone. But I wanted to stare Ivan right in the eyeballs.”

So, would he do it again?

Definitely.

“If it was a Category 5, I would worry a little bit,” says Cole, a fisherman and beach resident since 1968. “It really gets your heart beating faster. What a good rush, man.”

Deb Friedman hollered, “Hallelujah!” when she set eyes on her slightly crazy, thrill-seeking, next door neighbor of 20 years. Friedman and other beach residents who evacuated were allowed to return for the first time Wednesday, Sept. 22 -six days after Ivan hit.

“I’m just glad he’s alive. I was so afraid he would die out here,” says Friedman, who left her back door unlocked, so Cole could stay in her place that was rebuilt in 1997, two years after Hurricane Opal destroyed her cinder block home. “He asked me, if the water got high could he come over. I said, “Well, of course.’ ”

Cole was one of about 10 islanders who refused to evacuate, authorities say. One bedridden elderly woman and her husband, who stayed on Pensacola Beach, were also found safe, deputies say.

Cole came out of his Ivan rush with a scratched shoulder, a twisted knee and sore eyes. Cole dawned dark sunglasses as his fellow islanders returned home for the day, because a window blew out and sent tiny shards into his eyes. Cole says he used tweezers to pull the pieces out.

“I feel great,” he insists, despite his hangover.

Cole’s one-story cinder block home, though, not so great. Ivan peeled the roof back like a sardine can and dumped sand in it that’s knee high.

A lifelong Gulf Coast resident, he estimates winds reached 120 mph and the tidal surge washing across the barrier island raced at about 10 knots.

“I didn’t have much of a home to lose,” he says, frankly. “I’ll just tear it down and get me a new one.”

Cole, who CNN interviewed, says only Opal came close to being as fierce as Ivan.

“Ivan was really blowin’,” he says. “It was way better than Opal and Erin and all of ’em since I’ve been here.”

duwayne@inweekly.net