Here's How Miami's Blind Handled Hurricane Irma

For hours, Hurricane Irma's winds battered Jorge Hernandez's house in Flagami. Days prior, he had mounted accordion shutters as a precaution, but now, the metal clanged violently against his windows. Petrified, his fiancée and her 18-year-old daughter scrambled through the pitch-black darkness, but even as they got upstairs, they realized there was no escape. The sound reverberated on every floor.

"I was OK though," Hernandez says. "I can manage around our house without lights, no problem." When Hernandez was nine, doctors had diagnosed him with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare condition in which the back of the eye is permanently damaged. Since then, the 51-year-old technology instructor from Cuba has learned to live without eyesight.

Days before the storm, Miami-Dade County offered beds in special needs shelters, emergency transportation services, and meals-ready-to-eat to its disabled population. Even so, the majority of the county's estimated 67,000 blind people opted to ride out the storm at home, either alone or with their families. Blindness is an especially hard disability during a catastrophic storm, so many prepared days in advance, stocking up on supplies and reaching out to their local communities for help. Though streets flooded and power was lost, Miami's blind say they fared reasonably well during the storm, avoiding injury and weathering Irma's wrath.

Days before the storm, 55-year-old Denise Valkema from Kendall heard about the storm while listening to a weather update on her iPhone. "I didn't need to see the cone to understand that we were in the cone," says Valkema, who decided to stay at home. "With the proper tools, we can do anything, but with blindness, things just need to be done in a different way."

As president of the National Federation of the Blind of Florida, Valkema instructed her members to stay connected with a support network, like a church or neighborhood organization, and to ask for help when needed. Blind herself, Valkema asked a neighbor to help her cover a leaky roof with a tarp before the storm. "A lot of times it's about asking for assistance," she says. "You can't be a shut-in."

With preparation, Valkema says, blind people can be independent during a natural disaster. Days before the storm, the county advised civilians to prepare at least 72-hours worth of food and water. It was a manageable task even if a person cannot see, says Valkema. who quickly called an Uber and stocked up at her local Publix supermarket. "It doesn't matter if you're blind, elderly or if you just don't have friends in the area; we need to make more of an effort, instead of doing things last minute," she says.

Those who waited out the hurricane agree.

Twelve miles away in Flagami, Hernandez first heard about the storm five days before it made landfall. Frantic, he notified his parents, who lived nearby, and called his brother, who owned a house in Marathon, a city deep in the Florida Keys. "I was scared," says Hernandez, "I wanted them to be safe."

Though Hernandez survived Andrew back in 1992, he knew Irma was in a different league. The next day, he dragged his fiancée and her daughter to the grocery and the two stocked up on a week's worth of tuna and Vienna sausages. "It was hard trying to get water," he says, "Literally, none was to be found in Miami." Coming home, he boarded up the windows and shoved a hurricane kit in the bedroom closet. "I was in charge of making sure we could get to the flashlights quickly," he says.

In spite of their preparation, the entire house lost power when Irma hit Sunday morning. Out of three people. Hernandez was most prepared to navigate a blackout, but even he couldn't brush away the fear when murky floodwater began seeping beneath the front door. "Every hour, we had to run into the living room to mop it up," he says.

The next morning, the storm passed. Rattled, Hernandez and his fiancée rushed outside to assess the damage. Scanning the backyard, she confirmed that only their back fence was destroyed. "We were lucky," he says, but his family members not so much. A hundred miles south, Hernandez's brother's house in Marathon was five foot deep in floodwater, lost beyond repair. Hernandez whispers: "I got teary-eyed. The whole family visited that house many times."

Perhaps most tested by the storm was Joanne Carswell, a 64-year-old ex-physical therapist aide from Coconut Grove, who says she's still reeling from the damage Irma wrought.

Back in 2009, a failed knee replacement surgery caused Carswell to lose function in her left knee. Meanwhile, her right knee struggled with arthritis. With barely one functional leg and major vision loss, Carswell called Special Transportation Services and fled to her friend's house the Friday before the storm. Unfortunately, her friend, Bernadette-though not visually impaired-was also wheelchair-bound and to make matters worse, clinically asthmatic.

Throughout the weekend, the two swayed to the soothing sounds of gospel music and comedy shows, until the storm came. As houses throughout the city lost power, Bernadette's air conditioner began to flicker. As the heat and humidity built up, Bernadette started to hack violently. "Even though she had an oxygen machine, she couldn't catch her breath and had to sit up," says Carswell. "She kept saying, 'Help, Joanne, help.'"

Five years prior, Carswell's own nephew had died of an asthma attack. She knew she wouldn't be able to help Bernadette in case of an emergency. "I was so scared," she says.

Two days after the storm passed, Carswell returned safely home. Besides the spoiled food in her fridge and the felled trees in her backyard, Carswell found little damage to her house. She later discovered that Bernadette was admitted to the hospital due to respiratory problems that same day. Even so, Carswell says she doesn't blame anyone for the challenges she experienced staying at home.

"FPL, Comcast, the county and the city-everybody worked so hard," says Virginia Jackal, president of Miami Lighthouse, a sanctuary for the visually impaired, "They could only do what was humanly possible." Even though he county's blind and visually impaired were offered help getting to shelters, she says many refused. "Blind people do things by habit-by touch-so a new routine, like going to a shelter or being forced to take a new route, can be worrisome," she says.

Jackal notes that past studies have suggested that people with disabilities like visual impairment might have worse experiences with trauma and stress after natural disasters. Since 80 percent of her clients live alone, Jackal says isolation was a major concern. Even so, she says most of her clients have checked in to say they survived the storm without too much inconvenience. "When you're blind, you're used to seeing in the dark, and here, we teach our clients how to use other senses in different environments," she says.

If anything, Hernandez says the aftermath of Irma has been more difficult to navigate. Just a few days ago, he was walking to the Walgreens nearest his workplace with his cane when he realized the sidewalk was littered with fallen trees and debris. "It was so hard to walk around the trees," he says, chuckling. "It was like a little obstacle course."