GRAPHIC:
September 16, 2009 marks five years since Hurricane Ivan devastated the Florida Panhandle. Emergency managers reflect on their response to the storm. 

Ben Nelson:
Ivan was a monster. It was a Category 5 hurricane a couple of times along its path through the Caribbean and in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Dave Halstead:
As you remember it was coming actually towards the Florida keys initially. Again, the Florida keys much like the Tampa Bay basin, is one of our major concerns for life safety when it comes to search and rescue and security and hospitals and health medical. It missed the keys. We drew a sigh of relief until we saw it heading towards the panhandle. 

Ben Nelson:
And although Ivan weakened as it made landfall just to the west of Pensacola it was a huge storm, had all of the hurricane hazards.

Dave Halstead:
And again, remembering that Pensacola really took the brunt of that storm being on the heaviest wind side, the right of the eye of the storm, which actually hit Alabama. 

Ben Nelson:
It had tornadoes in the Panhandle, we had flooding in Pensacola, and then obviously the big hazard was the storm surge. 

Chuck Hagan:
What was unique about Ivan is that we prepositioned our resources at Eglin Air Force Base in anticipation for landfall. What we didn't anticipate was losing of the I-10 bridge.

Ben Nelson:
I'll never forget the image of seeing the Pensacola Bridge on Interstate 10 with part of it missing with the tractor trailer.

Chuck Hagan:
We had to completely change our deployment strategy. Some driving trucks in from the opposite side of Escambia county in from the Alabama state line or coming in through other highways north of the area

Dave Halstead:
We marshaled a lot of resources. We staged them here in Tallahassee and we moved them into the Pensacola area literally as the storm winds were dying down.

Chuck Hagan:
We also had to activate the Florida Air National Guard to provide rotor wing or helicopter aircraft. Fortunately being on Eglin it was a perfect air base for us and we were flying resources into Escambia County for the first few days. Critical items such as water and food and so forth.

Miles Anderson:
Everywhere you went, I mean total devastation, total road blockages, just, you know, annihilated.

Dave Halstead:
We were really focused along the coast. We were focused along the barrier islands that were out there and, again, that devastation was so severe that our search and rescue teams ended up taking actually a couple days to work through all of the collapsed buildings and partially collapsed buildings that were left in the wake of Hurricane Ivan.

Miles Anderson:
You'll see where waves have come right over the barrier islands and houses that you'd never thought would be pushed out of there are gone.

Ben Nelson:
That was just a real big eye opener to just how powerful water is and what a devastating impact storm surge has on communities.

Miles Anderson:
It took my breath away when I look at the downtown Pensacola on the waterfront where you're there with the evidence and you witness that there's been two to three feet of raw sewage throughout the streets of the downtown area. 

Mike Delorenzo:
The damage that it did to the bridge, the I-10 bridge, the damage it did to the beach area was reminiscent. I had the opportunity to be in Hurricane Hugo back in 1989 and the damage that I saw brought back memories of Hurricane Hugo when it went into Charleston. 

Miles Anderson:
And then you're up in the air looking at the debris field and it's gone way inland, which you can hardly believe, and then you look at the quantity of debris and how it's spread out, submerged debris, stuff that's come from barrier islands back to the onshore and onto the intercoastal. It's just total devastation no matter where you went. 

Charlie Shinkle:
When I first got up there, there were no homes beachside. They were just gone. And now you go back and except for the fact that it looks an awful lot newer you can't tell that the storm ever went through.

Ben Nelson:
The residents there have rebounded, and again the beaches have been restored. It's another testament just to how dedicated the local citizens were, with state and federal help, to rebuild their community and get it back to the tourist destination that it is. 

Dave Halstead:
All those lessons learned, all that experience that was gained during Ivan we used later and we continue to use today.

GRAPHIC:
FloridaDisaster.org
FEMA.gov