MEXICO BEACH, Fla — “I saw the house next door, the roof came up and then all the walls just came down and then the roof came down,” Mishelle McPherson vividly recalled.
The sights and sounds of Hurricane Michael are etched in her memory forever.
“The house was just going back and forth, and I walked into in the bathroom and the water we had in the bathtub, the house was moving so much it had sloshed the water out of the bathtub and the bathtub was almost empty,” McPherson said.
As she clung to her daughter and young grandchildren last October, she feared the worst as the Category 5 storm made landfall.
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“We were on Facebook telling people goodbye because we really thought we were going to die,” McPherson said.
Everyone she was with survived, but four people in Mexico Beach died in the storm, including her friend’s mother.
The old, quaint Florida city she used to describe as paradise was now unrecognizable.
“You get down here and it’s like a war hit," she said. "If you look at pictures of bombings in Iraq, that’s what it looked like. It was like a zombie apocalypse. I lived here 35 years, and I could not remember what street I was on because all of the landmarks were gone. The houses were gone.”
McPherson, like many who lived in Mexico Beach, has now moved away.
“I look out here now, and it’s like a ghost town," she said. "Like somebody did a movie set here and then picked up and left and this is what’s left of it."
Coming back to the Fish House Restaurant where she worked is hard for her, having to look at all of the damage that still lingers nearly 10 months later.
“It’s still raw and still fresh and just like a lemon in a wound every time I come by, and how do you get over things like that?" McPherson said. "Where do you go from there? Maybe coming back over and over before long maybe it will stop hurting. People don’t know how hard it is for the people who live here that they have to do that every day. We don’t have a gas station. You have to drive 11 miles to get gas.”
Everyone here has a story. Everyone here she says is hurting.
“Of course, they call us ‘The Forgotten Coast’, and that’s the big joke now because we are the forgotten coast because everyone has forgotten what has happened here,” McPherson said. “Just don’t forget us, and keep us in your thoughts.”
Having survived a Category 5 hurricane, she encourages everyone to heed evacuation orders. In addition to taking important documents like your insurance paperwork, she says don’t forget to take priceless items like your children’s pictures and family heirlooms.
“A lot of my things got ruined in the storm. I think the thing I miss the most is the pictures because I thought I was coming back. You are never guaranteed it’s going to be there when you get back, so take those things you don’t want to lose,” she said. “Everything you think you’ll want in your next living place make sure you have that with you.”