Bonus Photos: Northview Football, Cheerleaders Band
August 31, 2015
For a bonus photo gallery from last Friday night’s Northview at Crestview game, click here.
The gallery includes football action shots, the band and the cheerleaders. For the game action story, click here.
Photos by Gary Amerson for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Jay Teen Killed In Early Morning Wreck
August 30, 2015
A Jay teen died in a single vehicle accident early Sunday morning about four miles south of Jay.
David T. Palmer, 17, was traveling east on Bragg Lake Road off of Highway 89 when he failed to negotiate a curve, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. His 2008 Chevrolet began to rotate clockwise and traveled down an embankment. Palmer was pronounced deceased at the scene.
Investigators believe the crash occurred between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m., but an exact time has not yet been determined. Alcohol was not a factor in the crash. The FHP investigation is continuing.
Teen Killed In Santa Rosa Traffic Crash
August 30, 2015
A teen was killed in a two vehicle crash about 10:40 Saturday morning in Santa Rosa County.
Adrian Lewis Dunklin, Jr., 17, was traveling south on Avalon Boulevard near Santa Monica Street when his 2014 Honda cross the center line into the path of a 2008 Nissa SUV driven by 35-year old Julie Counts Richardson of Milton.
A passenger in Dunklin’s vehicle, 17-year old Aubree D. Manapat Kramer of Pace, was pronounced deceased at the scene. Dunklin and a second passenger in his vehicle, 17-year old Josh J. Jones, received minor injuries and were transported to West Florida Hospital. Richardson was transported to Sacred Heart Hospital with minor injuries.
The crash remains under investigation by the Florida Highway Patrol.
Ernest Ward Seeks Donations Of Legos, Tinker Toys, Building Sets
August 30, 2015
Ernest Ward Middle School is seeking donations of construction toy sets for their new Innovation Center. The school is in need of sets of Legos, Erector Sets, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and similar items.
Call Mrs. Stallworth at (850) 327-4283 extension 110 for more information.
As part of Vision 2020 in the Escambia County School District, schools are going back to the concept of letting students explore, experiment and learn through trial and error. Libraries have become Innovation Centers where students can create, explore, discover and invent using a variety of materials, such as the construction sets.
Mosquito Borne Illness Alert Continues After West Nile Cases Confirmed
August 30, 2015
A mosquito-borne illness alert for Escambia County continues after at least two West Nile virus cases were conformed in the county.
The second case of West Nile was recently confirmed in an adult male. This makes the sixth human case in Florida in 2015.
“Residents and visitors should take precautions to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes and to limit exposure to mosquito-borne illnesses,” says FDOH-Escambia Director, Dr. John J. Lanza. The Escambia County Mosquito Control Division and FDOH-Escambia continue surveillance and prevention efforts. There is heightened concern that other Escambia County residents and visitors may become ill from being bitten by an infected mosquito.
To protect yourself from mosquitoes, the health department recommends that practice of “Drain and Cover”:
Drain standing water.
- Drain water from garbage cans, house gutters, buckets, pool covers, coolers, toys, flower pots or any other containers where sprinkler or rain water has collected.
- Discard old tires, bottles, pots, broken appliances and other items not being used.
- Empty and clean birdbaths and pets’ water bowls at least twice a week.
- Protect boats and vehicles from rain with tarps that do not accumulate water.
- Maintain swimming pools in good condition and chlorinated. Empty plastic swimming pools when not in use.
Cover skin with clothing or repellent and cover doors and windows.
- Wear shoes, socks, long pants and long sleeves when mosquitoes are most prevalent.
- Apply mosquito repellent to bare skin and clothing.
- Always use repellents according to the label. Repellents with DEET, picaridin, oil of lemon eucalyptus, and IR3535 are effective.
- Re-apply mosquito repellent as often as needed to prevent mosquito landings and bites.
- Use mosquito netting to protect children younger than 2 months old.
- When using repellent on children, apply to your hands first and then rub on their arms and legs.
- Place screens on windows, doors, porches, and patios. Always repair broken screens.
Florida Minimum Wage Increase Proposed In The House
August 30, 2015
A House Democrat filed a bill Friday that calls for increasing the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. The bill (HB 109), filed by Rep. Victor Torres, D-Orlando, will be considered during the 2016 legislative session and mirrors a bill (SB 6) filed last month by Sen. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami. Previous proposals to increase the minimum wage have not moved forward in the Legislature. The state’s minimum wage, which gradually increases each year, hit $8.05 in January.
by The News Service of Florida
Put A Ring On It: Tate’s State Champion Softball Team Receives Rings
August 30, 2015
The Tate Lady Aggies won the Class 7A softball state championship last spring, and they were back in the spotlight Friday night as they received their state championship rings from Principal Rick Shackle and Escambia School Superintendent Malcolm Thomas. Photos by Jennifer Repine for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Wahoos Lose To Jackson
August 30, 2015
Pensacola managed three hits Saturday and dropped the second game of the five-game series against Jackson, 4-0, at The Ballpark in Jackson.
After five Blue Wahoos recorded multi-hit games and the club pounded out 11 hits in the opener, the General’s Misael Siverio gave up a season-best one hit in six innings of work and struck out five to improve to 5-11 on the year.
The Pensacola loss and Mississippi victory means the Blue Wahoos lead over the Braves fell to half a game in the South Division with eight to play. Pensacola moved to 35-27 in the second half of the Southern League, while Mississippi improved to 34-27.
The Blue Wahoos are trying to make the postseason for the first time since the team began in 2012. It would be the first time a Cincinnati Reds Double-A affiliate has been in the playoffs since Chattanooga in 2006 — the longest drought of any Southern League affiliate. Chattanooga lost to Huntsville in the first round.
In the eighth inning, Jackson added an insurance run to go up, 4-0, when first baseman John Lara singled to left field to score DH Guillermo Pimental from third.
Generals left fielder Jabari Henry hit a two-run homer, his ninth of the season, to left center field in the fifth inning that put Jackson ahead, 3-0.
Jackson got its first run in the fourth when Lara doubled in shortstop Tyler Smith.
After four bad starts in a row in which he failed to pitch five innings, Pensacola starter Sal Romano had a strong outing, allowing five hits in six innings, walking one and striking out two. Part of the problem was he had walked 10 batters in 12 innings. However, Romano earned the loss against Jackson and is 0-4 since moving up to Double-A Pensacola.
Pensacola right fielder Jesse Winker went 1-4, hitting safely in six straight games. But he got tossed from the game in his last at bat arguing a strike out call. Winker has hit in 20 of his 25 games this month and is batting .368 (32-87) in August and .313 in the second half.
The Blue Wahoos two other hits came when third baseman Mejias-Brean doubled in two at bats and second baseman Ryan Wright, who was 1-4, singled in the ninth inning.
Tropical Storm Erika Has Dissipated
August 29, 2015
As of 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Tropical Storm Erika has dissipated with winds of 35 miles per hour.
However, the National Hurricane Center says people in the Bahamas, eastern and central Cuba and southern Florida should monitor the remnants of Erika. The remnants are expected to move near the coast of eastern and central Cuba today and tonight and into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico on Sunday.
10th Anniversary: Remembering Katrina
August 29, 2015
On the Monday morning of Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on the Mississippi and Louisiana coastlines with winds topping out at a devastating 155 mph.
Many residents had either evacuated the coastal zone or were hunkered down ahead of the strong Category 5 storm.
Some hurricane-hardened folks, however, stayed in their homes lulled into thinking Katrina would not be that bad as it began weakening – its winds dropping slightly as it approached the coast from 175 mph just 24 hours earlier.
Darrell Herron, a Power System coordinator Sr. and his family, living on an inlet about three miles north of the Biloxi waterfront a decade ago, were among them. He and his wife Lori (pictured before Katrina) had survived a number of hurricanes unscathed through the years including Hurricane Camille’s wrath in 1969, which devastated the Mississippi coast with a 24.6 foot-storm surge and the highest hurricane wind speeds ever recorded, at 190 mph.
As Katrina spun closer, the Herrons, including their 16-year-old son, Darrell Jr., were cooking breakfast and watching storm news on TV and the approaching weather from their waterfront porch. They were feeling confident in the safety of their new home, built two years earlier on a mound of dirt at Camille’s storm surge level and upgraded to exceed hurricane codes.
All along the Mississippi Coast hundreds of people, like the Herron family, would soon be caught off guard by Katrina and find themselves fighting for their lives and realizing that you can never underestimate a hurricane.
“You never know what a storm has in it, until it gets to you,” said Darrell, while sitting in the Pensacola home he moved into a year ago when he transferred from Mississippi Power to Gulf Power.
No two alike
“The property we lived on was the same piece of property my wife’s grandmother and her mother was born on,” he said. “They had known what the water had done since the 1940s. We had built to the Camille storm-surge level. That was the benchmark, the highest water level ever. We didn’t think we’d ever have another Camille.”
They had made all the routine preparations for Katrina, and then some. Windows were covered in plywood. Vehicles moved into the garage or on the highest ground. Extra food and generator fuel to last days and even share with family and neighbors who might become displaced by the hurricane was stockpiled.
“We made coffee, talked and thought we’re just going to ride it out,” Darrell said.
They were not even alarmed by the choppy bay water slowly creeping up to their house as Katrina’s eye approached Pass Christian, Miss., pushing a storm surge inland for miles.
“When the hot tub busted through the French doors, we knew things were getting bad,” Darrell said. “My wife said, ‘It’s time to get into the attic.’ Things were floating around the house. We didn’t want to get hurt.”
Even as they climbed into the dark attic with their Boston terrier, Baby, they were thinking they’d be climbing back out soon and mopping up water and drying out their belongings.
“Storms don’t last long. We’ve been through this before,” said Darrell, recalling their train of thought that morning.
They had no clue they’d feel Katrina’s lashing for nearly 10 hours.
“The wind was getting worse. Friends and family started calling us checking on us and telling us to get out,” Darrell said. “Once there was two feet of water in the house that meant the water was 16 to 17 feet deep in the yard. There was no way we could leave.”
He stopped taking calls about 9:30 a.m. that morning to conserve his cell phone battery. The power was out by this time and the only light shown dimly through the attic stairway opening.
“My wife is crying; my son is upset. They’re scared and shocked,” said Darrell, looking down as if the memory was painful to recall.
Fighting for their lives
Then over the constant roar of Katrina’s winds, they heard something even louder. Suddenly, it seemed like the air around them was sucked out through the roof soffits and insulation swirled around them like snow in a blizzard.
A tornado was pulling the roof apart.
“I hollered, ‘Head for the light!’ We needed to get out of there. The light was the roof coming apart,” Herron said.
In a split second, their security vanished when the roof disappeared and they landed in the deep, choppy, debris-filled water in the middle of the hurricane. Darrell and his son found temporary footing on what would turn out to be a piece of the roof that peeled off.
“My son said, ‘I can’t find Mom.’ We started hollering for her. Then her foot popped through the water, trash and debris. My son just grabbed it and pulled her up.”
The memory of that moment is still hard for Lori to recall.
“When I was under the water, I was face up under something very large,” said Lori, a first-grade teacher at Global Learning Center. “I remember trying to push up and turn over. Nothing worked. I remember thinking I’m 37 years old and not ready to die. I wasn’t through living. I remember being more scared than I have ever been in my life.”
The dazed family went into survival mode. All they could see through the sheeting rain was choppy, wind-blown water in every direction. They treaded in water at least 21 feet deep. Seeing the metal roof from the work shed, they swam toward it. When it quickly slipped away in the water, the family swam to two nearby gum trees on which they clung for hours. Later they discovered one of Lori’s toes was nearly severed off, likely from running across the shed’s metal roof.
They felt lucky they were not killed in the ordeal. Darrell and Lori were in a tree about eight feet away from the tree Darrell Jr. wrapped himself around while Katrina’s deafening winds whipped debris around them.
“When we were sitting in the trees, all kinds of things – two-by-fours, anything floating – got picked up and flung by the wind. To keep from getting beaten to death, I tried to get Lori and Darrell Jr. to stay as close to the water as possible. The wind was blowing so hard, my son’s tank top was ripped off. Nothing was left but the strings around his arms where he was hanging on the tree.”
“At one time I heard my son scream,” Darrell said. “A piece of old, blue house foam about the size of a golf ball hit his back leaving a big whelp.”
As they fought to hang onto the trees, Darrell Jr. kept calling out to his dad, asking if he was all right.
“He kept hollering at me. ‘Are you all right?’ I hollered out, ‘I’m all right, son. Are you?’ He said, ‘I’m all right,’” Darrell said. “That’s when I had realized something was wrong with me.”
About that time, Darrell wiped his face and saw blood covering his hand.
“I looked down and saw blood dripping off the bottom of my shorts,” he said. “I felt around and put my hand on top of my head and felt my scalp rolled back. That’s what my son had been seeing; a big hunk of meat hanging off of my head.”
Even though he does not remember what happened, he suspects he scraped his head running out of the attic.
Worried he might lose too much blood and pass out; Darrell made the difficult decision to try to swim for a boat floating about 50 yards way on the edge of his property. It was a friend’s boat he was storing and had life jackets they could wear to possibly swim to his cabin-cruiser that was battered and damaged but still floating in the bay and tied with one line, about 80 yards away.
He swam through the debris, climbed into the friend’s boat and grabbed life jackets. Jumped back into the choppy water and swam back to his family in the trees.
“I just about had to drag Lori out of the trees because she was so scared,” he said.
Secured in life jackets, the family carefully made their way to a bigger boat where they could take refuge in the cabin, and find dry clothes and other supplies to hold them over until they could be rescued.
Once inside the cabin and as the hurricane continued to batter the area, the family did what they could for their injuries – Darrell’s head gash and a gash on Lori’s leg and her near severed pinky toe.
Waiting to be rescued
Even in the worse of situations, Darrell found a little levity.
“When we were sitting in the boat salon, my wife is laid up on the couch; her foot is bleeding and wrapped in the towel. My son is sitting quietly at the dinette table. Our dog is gone,” Darrell said. “I say to my wife, ‘Babe, we may have chosen poorly. We had a $25,000 boat and $600,000 house. We’re on the boat now.”
Around 3:30 p.m., nearly five hours since they were blown out of their attic, Lori kept saying she heard someone outside of the boat. Darrell assured her no one was there; she was just hearing the wind.
He finally decided to kick open the cabin door and ventured back out into the storm to check. There in the blinding wind and rain, he saw his brothers, Dwain and Carsten, waving and hollering at them from a 15-foot aluminum, bass boat bouncing on the waves.
The brothers had spent hours looking for a boat in which to search for their family.
“They came looking for us, thinking we’d be in the attic,” Darrell said. “They had chain saws and axes. They didn’t anticipate the house would be gone.”
Darrell and his family climbed into the 15-foot boat and were ferried to dry land and quickly taken to Ocean Springs Hospital, navigating around roads blocked by debris and National Guard troops. They were among the first injured to arrive at the hospital around 5 p.m.
Darrell and is son were treated and released. Though Lori initially was released from the Ocean Springs hospital, she ended up hospitalized for two weeks in a Georgia hospital when her wounds became infected.
After sending his family to stay with relatives, Darrell, with the help of his other family members began picking through the remnants of their home and searching debris piles for belongings.
All that remained of the house was part of the fireplace hearth, the slab and a single toilet. He did find his and Lori’s wedding rings and few pots and pans. He was able to retrieve still cold food out of his refrigerator he found stuck in debris yards from his home.
Lori’s greatest regret was not removing family treasures out of the house before the storm.
“Take everything that can be replaced with you, like baby books, pictures, mementos from your children’s childhood, things your parents and grandparents had given you and so on. The list is endless. I will always regret not putting those things in a safe place.”
They were however blessed with finding one precious item, by a stroke of luck, a few days after the storm passed. A neighbor showed up carrying a dog covered in mud that she had found in a debris pile.
“It was Baby,” Darrell said. “She was dazed, traumatized and dehydrated.”
Looking back, Darrell said if he could do anything differently, “Naturally, I would not have wanted my wife and child or dog there.”
He urges others to not underestimate any hurricane, saying, “Evacuate.”