WIS News 10 - Columbia, South Carolina | Pensacola residents return home for 1st look at Ivan damage

Pensacola residents return home for 1st look at Ivan damage

(Pensacola Beach, Florida-NBC) Sept. 23, 2004 - Residents of one Florida panhandle beachfront town were allowed back into their homes Thursday. It was their first up close look at the damage caused by Hurricane Ivan.

Homeowner JJ Waters says, "After I saw the other destruction I pretty much had an idea. I just was not quite as prepared. I wasn't prepared to see what it really was."

She was among the hundreds who crossed the Sykes Bridge into Pensacola knowing full well the paradise they left behind was lost.

JJ's house survived Opal and Aaron in the 1990's, but Ivan was much bigger, so she expected the worst. And, that's exactly what she found, "I saw the side of the house was missing. I saw the sink. The bedroom was gone. The walls were gone. That's pretty much ... the first thing I saw. ... And, I knew then that it wasn't too good."

posted 12:00noon by Chris Rees