BRADENTON, Florida — While much of Florida was digging out Monday from the destruction caused by Hurricane Irma, Aroostook County native Rachel Ravasio Blanco was happily breathing a sigh of relief.
That sigh was not because the storm missed her community of Bradenton, Florida, but because the worst of it was over.
“Today is the first day I’ve breathed easily in a week,” she said. “I’ve been here 18 years now and I’ve never seen panic in an entire community before. After watching what happened in Dallas last week, everyone here in Bradenton was instantly alert and concerned.”
Ravasio Blanco grew up in Limestone, as her father Master Sgt. Randall Ravasio was stationed at the former Loring Air Force Base. She graduated from Limestone High School in 1992 and the University of Maine at Presque Isle in 1997. She spent a year as a reporter for the Aroostook Republican and News in 1997 and also worked for WAGM-TV for two years.
She is now a project specialist for the State College of Florida in Bradenton.
“Since I live in flood zone A, which is the first area to flood, I started looking for a hotel inland last Tuesday (Sept. 5),” Ravasio Blanco said. “I spent two hours searching, ready to pay whatever it took but everything was sold out. That was probably just as well as there was no gas, either. We ran out of that early Wednesday (Sept. 6).”
Her in-laws live eight miles to the east of Bradenton and took her and her husband, Bernado Blanco, in after a mandatory evacuation was announced Friday.
“It was surreal to pack up knowing that anything I left behind could be lost,” she said. “There were a few tears, but mostly just that horrible fear of not knowing what was going to happen.”
Ravasio Blanco said when the storm finally hit over the weekend, there were times when she was afraid the doors to her in-laws’ house would blow in.
“We spent the night fully dressed in case there was a tornado or something else went wrong,” she said. “In the end, the storm weakened and we were spared. There were downed trees and fences but little damage to our property, which is amazing.”
The county-wide curfew, which began at 3 p.m. Sunday, was lifted at 9 a.m. Monday and she returned home immediately to find no real damage, other than the area being without power.
“The fear that had propelled and controlled so many of us all week was suddenly gone,” she said. “I hope I don’t have to go through another week like that again any time soon. It was exhausting.”
