Frantic ordeal for those riding out storm

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Mark Webster did what emergency officials pleaded with people not to do.

Thinking his house could withstand a major storm that he didn’t believe was headed straight for him anyway, Webster rode out Hurricane Ivan with his entire family by his side, including two young grandchildren.

Water got so high in the house, Webster put his grandkids on top of the kitchen cabinets, in a small space below the ceiling.

“I might have put them in jeopardy,” he said Saturday. “I screwed up.”

Webster was just one of many people who didn’t heed the urging – sometimes the commands – to evacuate, only to be confronted by Ivan’s assault.

His story includes wading through the chin-deep waters of an offshoot of Perdido Bay called Big Lagoon – in his living room.

Everyone in Webster’s house survived, but at least two people died in his Gulf Coast subdivision. Search and rescue teams were still combing the neighborhood Saturday.

At the height of the storm early Thursday morning, Webster was holding his door shut to keep it from bursting in and the lagoon was rising quickly.

“I was swallowing water,” he said.

Webster’s wife, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law stood on the kitchen counters, but the water still came up to their knees, he said.

Freelance artist Steve Blair and his wife, Kimberly, a reporter with the Pensacola News Journal, rode out the storm in their house in Gulf Breeze, a suburb at the end of a peninsula that sticks out into Escambia Bay. They sent their 8-year-old daughter to stay with relatives in Birmingham, Ala.

By 1 a.m. Thursday, the water was rising and they were starting to regret it.

“There was 3 feet of water out here coming through the front door,” Steve Blair said.

“When the water started coming in we kind of panicked,” he said. “We didn’t realize how high it was going to go. We really didn’t know where to go. Kim called 911 and the lady said, ‘Punch a hole in the roof, climb in the attic.’ “

The Blairs climbed a ladder into a crawl space and stayed there until the water receded.