Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Hurricane Dennis

Nick's bar greets landfall 'like a Springsteen concert'

By CHRIS TISCH
Published July 11, 2005

	[Times photo: James Borchuck]
	St. Pete Beach: Michael and Ashlea Davis canoe down the 3600 block of Casablanca Avenue on Sunday. Related content: Go to photo gallery More photos from AP A punch, but pulled Latest from AP 1 death reported in Escambia Around Tampa Bay, windy and watery

PENSACOLA - It is just after 2 p.m. when the wind kicks up. Loud bangs and scraping metal ring out from a downtown corridor.

The rain becomes blinding, hurtful to the skin, as an entire city block suddenly is enveloped in a whitewash.

"This is it!" says restaurant owner Nick Zangari. "It's made landfall!"

The wind tears off a sidewalk lamppost outside the business. A large section of a 25-foot-tall tree snaps off like a pencil and skids down the street.

"This is what it's all about!" Zangari yells.

Last year, Zangari holed up in his wood and brick restaurant, New York Nick's, as Hurricane Ivan devastated Pensacola. He said he was never scared. On Sunday, he rode out his second major hurricane in a year.

A voice on the radio announces: "The sheriff's office has only been running on life-and-death cases. Now even that is going to stop."

Buildings creak and scream. Metal scrapes on metal, whining and squealing.

"This is excitement," Zangari roars. "C'mon, more!"

* * *

Zangari is proud to say that Hurricane Ivan did little to his business. A leaky window on the second floor allowed in a trickle of water, sogging three ceiling tiles below.

And that was it.

On Sunday, Zangari, 45, had no intentions of leaving for Hurricane Dennis.

He set up an air mattress and blanket on the stage for a place to sleep. His 15-year-old daughter set up her bed on a couch in her dad's tiny office. Zangari sent his wife and 1-year-old daughter to safety in Mississippi.

It was early morning when the rain began flying horizontally. The streets were empty.

At 9:18 a.m., the wind tossed a warning shot into Zangari's front door, dislodging an NFL pennant - the Green Bay Packers - from its perch. It fluttered to the ground. Zangari picked it up and pinned it back on the wall.

"I think this is going to be the storm that finishes off what Ivan didn't," Zangari said. "Seventy percent of the beach looks like it was hit yesterday. This is the end of Pensacola Beach."

Just before 9:30 a.m., someone phoned Zangari to report that the government is controlling the hurricanes with a laser beam - and for some reason taking revenge on Pensacola.

"What a crackpot," Zangari said.

At 11:15 a.m., the power cut out. The lights went dark, the ceiling fans whirred to a stop, the heat and humidity in the bar immediately began to swell.

Outside, the rain fell harder, faster.

* * *

Zangari is from Syracuse, N.Y., where he remembers riding out a blizzard in a bar for three days and nights. He ate a lot of chicken wings and drank a lot of Labatts.

Zangari is fascinated by nasty weather.

"I'm wired different than most people," said Zangari, squat and bald, dressed in a Syracuse T-shirt, shorts and sneakers. "I gear up for stuff like this."

He came to Pensacola in 1981 for spring break with two college buddies. They went back to school. He never left.

He opened his own place two years ago and became hurricane central for news media and assorted partiers during Ivan.

He made T-shirts - "I survived Ivan the Terrible" - that sold out in two days.

But as Dennis began making its way ashore Sunday, the only people in his bar Sunday were a few police officers, a couple of newspaper reporters, a cook and a waitress.

"After what happened with Ivan, nobody wants to party," he said. "When you get hit, you don't forget."

* * *

It is shortly before noon when small tree limbs start to snap, then skedaddle along the streets. Construction material from Ivan repairs soon begins to fly and tumble: Styrofoam, insulation, shingles. Blue tarps flap like tassels from many roofs.

At 12:15 p.m., Zangari stands outside his front door, watching the wind start to peel a roof down the street. He bites at his thumbnail. He says he's not nervous, just pumped up.

"It's just like a Springsteen concert. You're all amped up," he says.

He remembers how Ivan ripped into a dress shop down the street. The wind was zinging dresses in the air, up and down the street. He thought how it looked like the tornado in the Wizard of Oz , carrying away witches.

At 12:25 p.m., a TV station from Los Angeles calls to interview Zangari. "It's deteriorating by the minute," he tells them.

"Oh, my God," his daughter, Allison, says, "my dad is famous."

At 12:44 p.m., another reporter calls.

"Hey, London?" Zangari says. "How are you all doing over there?"

For the next hour, the weather stays constant, with winds gusting to about 60 mph.

Then the radio plays a tornado warning from the National Weather Service. Zangari pours himself a "mouthwash" - a half-shot of peppermint and cinnamon schnapps.

Radio advisories say the storm is close.

About 2 p.m. the commotion begins in earnest, with screeching metal and deafening explosions.

At 2:40 p.m., Zangari gets another call from a reporter.

Almost breathless, he yells into the phone: "This is the height of the storm!"

The wind pries a board off a nearby building and flips it down the street. A sidewalk garbage can, anchored by a square-foot chunk of concrete, tumbles down the road, then gets caught in a swirl of wind and spins like a top.

The mysterious explosions continue.

"It sounds like bombs going off," Zangari tells another reporter on the phone. "We hear noises, and we don't know what it is."

The street turns into a river of water and debris and trash. Water gushes out of drainage ditches and rises to curb level.

The wind digs into the roof of a Masonic Lodge across the street and twirled away shingles. A hole develops and grows rapidly as the wind pulls and pulls.

Zangari goes to the back doors of his restaurant. Pressing his palms on the glass windows, he feels them shaking, and retreats.

"I don't trust them," he says.

Then, the wind suddenly changes direction.

The river on the road reverses, creating waves. All the debris starts heading the other way. The storm fires another blast of white wind down the street, ripping more boards loose.

The wind slows for a moment, and everyone waits for it to build again.

But it is done.

The wind putters and, by 3:30 p.m., the rain is reduced to a normal Florida downpour.

People emerge from buildings to inspect the damage, which is minor downtown compared to Ivan.

The storm was intense over downtown Pensacola for only about a half-hour, much less than Ivan.

"This one had a lot of the same intensity but it seemed to come at the same time, whereas Ivan was stretched out," Zangari says. "It was a very, very intense storm all at once."

He thinks more people downtown took precautions.

Late in the afternoon, he cleans up the sidewalk in front of his business and hopes the power will come on soon. He takes calls from the Washington Post , CNN and Fox News.

"Now we have to clean up and more forward," he says, "and prepare for the next one."

[Last modified July 11, 2005, 07:36:41]