Hilton Head survived Idalia. The harder we work, the luckier we get

My yard got a good dusting of debris, and a hefty pine limb crashed to earth a foot from the house.

But another “house” worried me after the fickle whims of Tropical Storm Idalia whipped by here on Aug. 30.

I wondered about two sea turtle nests on the beach where we watch the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean on Hilton Head Island most mornings.

Idalia, which slammed onto Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane, came by here on a day of extraordinary tides pulled higher by the rare blue moon, the second full moon of the month.

That stormy high tide pushed wrack from the sea right up the “door” of the turtle nests, much like the tufts of pine needles and oak leaves by my door.

Yet it looks like scores of little turtles will still be able to escape their leathery eggs soon, bubble to the sandy surface and march to the sea in this miracle we call life.

Their safety is no accident or fickle whim.

Neither is ours.

Idalia was far less damaging than it could have been because we in Beaufort County have learned a lot over the past 35 years.

MORE TO COME

We were lucky.

Idalia was still lashing wind gusts in the high 60s along our coastline.

Its storm surge flooded the parking area at The Sands in Port Royal.

And the peak tide of 9.23 feet was the fifth highest in recorded history in Charleston.

It dumped about 7 inches of rain in a day as close as Statesboro, Georgia.

One of its tornadoes near Charleston lifted a car straight up in the air.

Almost 2,000 homes lost power in Beaufort County.

Yet here we sit, safe, in a watery slice of land jutting into the mighty Atlantic like the prow of a ship.

All the Idalias yet to come won’t be as kind.

We know it, especially those whose homes were crushed or flooded by Hurricane Matthew in 2016 or those who witnessed the hammer of our era: Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

Better yet, local leaders know it. And it showed.

HARD WORK

Our leaders were prepared for Idalia, yet they didn’t overplay their hand.

No gaggles of mayors preaching to us. No emergency preparedness workers telling us we might die.

We had no orders for curfews. No premature evacuations. No grandstanding. But we were informed constantly throughout.

That was not an accident or a fickle whim.

We got lucky, but we also saw the resilience of years of preparation.

For example, Hilton Head has healthy dunes to keep storm surges at sea thanks to a special tax on overnight lodging that pays for regular beach nourishment. The town had to fight for that.

We have invested in buried power lines.

And like the little turtles, we are a people who have learned when to lay low.

Those two nests weren’t originally laid in the dunes by the mysterious nocturnal mothers their babies will never know.

The nests were gingerly, and scientifically, moved into the dunes for just such a thing as Idalia more than 50 days ago by volunteers working at dawn with the nonprofit Sea Turtle Patrol Hilton Head Island.

The harder we work, the luckier we get.

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.