The noise came first. Scraping and tearing, like an animal trying to eat through the roof. Crashing and cracking in the yard and beyond. And, too loud and too close, that endless freight train of roaring wind.
Then Jennifer Zambolla felt Andrew inside her Kendall house. The hallway wall she was leaning on buckled. Her mother, talking to the grandparents on the phone, watched the kitchen ceiling crack and quickly hung up.
“My dad said get into the tub, that’s where we are going to stay. From that moment on, the house just fell around us.”
Zambolla was 20, a teller at Barnett Bank. Her mother and father, Patricia and John, owned an restaurant. Mom, radio in hand, got in the tub with brother Jay, 17, and sister Jessica, 7. Jennifer and her father took turns holding the bathroom door closed, her hands aching, rain spilling down the frame. She mainly recalls voices.
Bryan Norcross on the radio, “It’s not over. It’s going to be a long time.” Her mother reciting the rosary and a mantra, “We’re going to be OK. We’re going to be OK.”
Finally, they were. The house was not.
“The concrete walls were there but looking up you just saw the sky,” said Zambolla. “I would not wish the experience on my worst enemy.”
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