By Barbara Wunder, FFVA communications manager

The spring of 2004 had been a fairly dry one in Florida. Welcome rain finally arrived in June, and thunderstorms followed in July, especially along the western portion of the state. Then in August, Friday the 13th heralded an unwelcome guest: Hurricane Charley.

The storm caught many off guard because forecasters had projected landfall at Tampa. Instead, it made landfall with a bang in Charlotte County, zipped northeast through Orange and Seminole counties and exited near Daytona Beach, all in a matter of a few hours. Tampa Bay residents who had been urged to evacuate to Central Florida were promptly walloped by the storm.

The 2004 hurricanes uprooted and knocked over citrus trees across the state.

Damage to citrus groves varied. The storm uprooted trees, broke limbs and knocked fruit to the ground. Greenhouses, barns, tractors, and fences in operations from Arcadia to Orlando were significantly damaged. In addition, winds had blown citrus canker all through the storm’s path, spelling the beginning of the end of the canker eradication program.

On the heels of Charley, Hurricane Frances arrived just in time for the Labor Day weekend. Frances came ashore near Stuart early Sept. 5 and exited north of Tampa late that night. Three weeks later, Hurricane Jeanne made landfall at the same location and followed nearly the same path. Both storms caused heavy fruit drop and widespread broken tree limbs. Hurricane Jeanne was so large it affected all citrus-producing counties except for Hendry, Collier and Lee.

“Jeanne took half of our packinghouse roof off,” said Dan Richey of Vero Beach-based Riverfront Packing. After a two-week cleanup, Richey said, the company was back in business – roof or no roof.

This map shows the path of destruction to citrus groves following Hurricane Charley in 2004. -Map from Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services

“The packinghouse was still structurally intact, so we put on our game face and said ‘Look, we’re going to get through this.’ People rallied. We worked without a roof. If it rained, we all scattered for cover,” he said. Riverfront’s roof was replaced within two months, and Richey says it’s better than ever.

If there was a silver lining to three back-to-back hurricanes, it was that they roared through early in the planting season. Other than citrus growers, many in the industry were able to re-plant and harvest. Most vegetable harvests were delayed up to three weeks.

After the 2004 hurricane season concluded, a Harvester story headlined “All Hurricane, All the Time” reflected the industry’s weariness. Little did they know another unwelcome visitor named Wilma would arrive a year later.

Hurricane Wilma actually peeled tomatoes in its path on Oct. 24, 2005.

SAME SONG, SECOND VERSE

Wilma came ashore Oct. 24, 2005, near Naples and exited four hours later over Palm Beach. The Category 3 storm whipped up trouble for South Florida growers because, unlike the 2004 hurricanes, Wilma hit just as harvesting was getting underway. It screamed across the lower portion of South Florida production areas, passing about 30 miles south of Lake Okeechobee. Winds exceeded 100 mph and actually peeled the skin from tomatoes. In addition to tomato fields, Wilma took out citrus, sweet corn, sugar cane, peppers and other crops.

“We stood 35,600 citrus trees back up after Wilma,” said Everett Loukonen, agribusiness manager for Baron-Collier Silver Strand, based in Immokalee. “It cost the company $500,000 to buck-horn the trees, pull them back up, put dirt on the roots and prop them up with 2-by-4s,” Loukonen said.

Grower John Alger said Homestead-based Alger Farms was lucky because only 65 acres of newly planted sweet corn were destroyed. The company’s Belle Glade packinghouse was another story. “We had to replace buildings, coolers and other things, but we made it, as did everyone else. We’re all survivors. Necessity dictates,” he said.

The 2004-2005 hurricanes destroyed many farm buildings, many of which were not replaced until years later if ever. This photo was taken in 2006.

TODAY ALMOST BACK TO NORMAL

Battered structures still sit on farms across the state as monuments to the hours of high winds and rain that caused mind- and wallet-numbing damage. But growers and shippers have moved on. Some South Florida operations suffered damage from this year’s late-October storm, Noel.

“Now, it’s a different story,” said Danny Raulerson, FFVA director of marketing. “Today the problem is a lack of rain, not too much of it,” he said.

Since the hurricanes, growers have struggled to return to previous crop yields, especially in citrus. “It has taken a while to recover,” Jerry Mixon Jr. of Haines City-based Sunnyridge Farms said of the 2004 storms. “Regarding our citrus acreage, it appears that finally on this coming crop we will be back to normal yields, especially in the Hamlins.”

Hurricane Wilma ripped plastic and stakes from fields in 2005.

Loukonen said that 90 percent of the citrus trees cared so lovingly for in 2005 have survived. “However, the leaf miner and psyllid have found the new flush on some of the trees, and we’re seeing more canker and citrus greening on them,” he said.

In its latest citrus production summary, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the industry is still feeling the effects of the storms. It blamed Hurricane Charley for affecting production in the central and western growing areas, and Jeanne and Francis for doing so in all areas except South Florida. Hurricane Wilma is still affecting production in the Indian River and southern areas, the agency said.

“The fruit supply is working its way back, but I doubt we’ll ever get back to the period before the storms,” Richey said.

Perhaps the storms’ most infamous legacy is that they spread citrus canker to such an extent that the state halted its eradication program. Fallout from that move still is unfolding in the courts, with residents in South Florida demanding more compensation for trees lost to the program than what the state has offered.

Citrus wasn’t the only crop affected by diseases spread by the storms. “As far as our blueberries are concerned, we have been blessed to have fairly good yields since the hurricanes. But I believe more diseases were introduced by the violence of the storms. As a result, we’ve had a rash of plant maladies that we didn’t seem to have before the hurricanes,” Mixon said.

But he ended on a positive note. “All in all though, I believe we’ve recovered quite well. I just hope we don’t have to go through that kind of summer any time again soon.”