Opinion

Actually, we're in safe zone

Over a 125-year period, Manatee and Sarasota counties have been among the safest coastal counties in Florida when it comes to hurricanes.

By Matt Walsh
| 5:00 a.m. June 4, 2025

Sarasota
Opinion

The 2025 hurricane season has begun, and, no doubt, you, your neighbors and friends have all said: “I hope we don’t have another season like 2024.”

Odds are pretty good we won’t.

Sarasota had its 100-year hurricane last year with Hurricane Milton, making landfall on Siesta Key. And, yes, we took additional shellackings with Hurricanes Debby and Helene.

But if you look at the accompanying map and table, the probabilities of a 2024 repeat for Sarasota and Manatee counties look low.

In fact, overall, you can say Manatee and Sarasota counties have been among the safest coastal counties in Florida in the past 125 years when it comes to direct hits. Until Hurricane Helene brought 140 mph winds, Taylor County, in the elbow of the Big Bend, was Florida’s least hit coastal county.

Unfortunately, thanks to Hurricane Milton, Sarasota County is slightly less safe. It now falls in the 10-12 “strike” category. And even though the barrier island communities of Bradenton Beach, Holmes Beach and Anna Maria all suffered horribly from Helene and Milton, over the past 125 years Manatee falls in the category of having five to six “strikes,” according to analyst Robert Allison of SAS. That puts Manatee among the 12 coastal counties that have experienced the fewest hurricane landfalls in 125 years.

The safest coastal county? Up until last year, that was Taylor County, up in the Big Bend. Hurricane Helene made landfall just southwest of Perry in Taylor County on the night of Sept. 26 with peak Category 4 winds of 140 mph. That moves Taylor County into the three to four strikes category.

Perhaps take some solace in this as well: As you peruse the list of Notable Florida Hurricanes, note that in the past 100 years, there has been only one two-year period of consecutive strikes — 2004 and 2005.

None of us, of course, knows whether any of that data matters, because none of us knows how Mother Nature is going to treat us from year to year. That’s why parishioners at St. Mary, Star of the Sea, Catholic Church on Longboat Key always recite the Hurricane Safety Prayer at the end of each day’s Mass (reprinted for your use).

Hurricane prayer

The following prayer is recited at each Mass at St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church on Longboat Key during hurricane season.

O God, Master of this passing world,
Hear the humble voices of your children.
The Sea of Galilee obeyed Your order
And returned to its former quietude.
You are still the Master of land and sea.
We live in the shadow of a danger over which we have no control.
The Gulf, like a provoked and angry giant,
Can awake from its seeming lethargy,
Overstep its conventional boundaries, invade our land,
And spread chaos and disaster.
During this hurricane season, we turn to You, O loving Father.
Spare us from past tragedies whose memories are still so vivid
And whose wounds seem to refuse to heal with the passing of time.
O Virgin, Star of the Sea, Our beloved Mother,
We ask you to plead with your Son on our behalf,
So that spared from the calamities common to this area
And animated with a true spirit of gratitude,
We will walk in the footsteps of your Divine Son
To reach the heavenly Jerusalem, where a stormless eternity awaits us. Amen.

Written by the Most Rev. Maurice Schexnayder (1895-1981), second bishop of Layfayette, Louisiana, after Hurricane Audrey in 1957, which killed 416 people.

You can say this: The author of the prayer, the late Bishop Maurice Schexnayder of Lafayette, Louisiana, has it right where the prayer refers to our memories of hurricanes always being so vivid and “whose wounds seem to refuse to heal with the passing of time.”

Many Sarasota and Manatee residents are still hurting and trying to recover from the awful trifecta of Debby, Helene and Milton. And most of us probably know of someone who decided he or she has had enough of the hurricanes and has decided to leave the state.

But take heart. Florida and Floridians are resilient. Although hurricane season always brings one, two or three doozies through the state or on the edge of our coasts, Florida always comes back.

One yardstick for that can be seen in population growth.

When you analyze the effects of Hurricane Andrew in 1992 in Miami-Dade, Hurricane Charley in 2004 in Charlotte County and Hurricane Ian in 2022 in Lee County, the same thing occurred.

In the year after the major hurricane, population declined. But in the following year, it popped back up — and even surpassed the total population that existed in the year of the hurricane.

Floridians have survived hurricanes from the beginning of time. This year will be no different — God willing.

D-Dau, June 6, 1944

‘Into the jaws of death’

Courtesy of the National Archives:

“This photograph, entitled, “Into the jaws of death,” is one of the most well-known and evocative of the photographs taken on D-Day during the Normandy landings.

It shows the soldiers of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division as they landed on Omaha Beach on the morning of the initial invasion wave.

The image captures the first moments after the soldiers left the landing craft, as they waded through heavy surf, dodged deadly artillery and machine gun fire, and encountered mines and other obstacles as they attempted to move ashore to capture and take position on the beach.

The photograph is credited to Robert F. Sargent, chief photographer’s mate (CPhoM), U.S. Coast Guard.

According to the National Coast Guard Museum, CPhoM Sargent, a veteran of the earlier invasions of Sicily and Salerno, took the image from his landing craft at sector “Easy Red” of Omaha Beach around 7:40 a.m. local time.