Virtual hurricanes could save communities from storms, UF professor says

Aug 16, 2023

As Hurricane Idalia heads toward Cedar Key, the small community in Florida’s Big Bend region where the storm is predicted to make landfall on Wednesday, Kenneth Sassaman is worried that history is repeating itself.

“The storm is very similar to the one in 1896 in terms of its trajectory and magnitude,” said Sassaman, a professor of Florida archaeology at the University of Florida. “I am hoping for the best but worried that Cedar Key is going to get a massive storm surge.”

There will be at least one big difference between this storm’s impact and the one from 1896.

Atsena Otie Key, a barrier island a half mile offshore of Cedar Key, was wiped out in 1896, along with its cedar mill and homes for 50 families.

Today, the island is a popular tourist spot but devoid of major development. Why? Because Cedar Key residents and leaders learned a lesson from the community’s past mistake to build there.

Preserving such recollections, Sassaman said, is key to building sustainable communities along hurricane-prone coastlines. “We need to create modern memories so that people can use those for their own planning and their own foresight for what’s going to come in the future.”

In 2020, he proposed a way to do so, using Atsena Otie Key as an example.

Sassaman collected oral histories of the hurricane of 1896, old maps, photographs and archaeological reports. Coupling those with weather reports, he was going to create a virtual reality experience of what it looked like when the storm arrived and washed a wall of water over the community built there.

Sassaman did create a website with much of the archival material that he collected, but said it is not the same as virtual reality.

Coupling archaeology with modern technology, he said, “can make reality more realistic” and serve as a reminder of why no one should ever build on Atsena Otie Key again.

He hopes to revive the project and believes other coastal communities should lead similar ones.

“That would be fabulous,” Sassaman said. “By reanimating events of the past, they can become part of modern memory.”

And communities can use those memories to determine which areas are too susceptible to hurricanes to be developed and which can be constructed upon, but with more fortified buildings and other precautions.

“We’re human beings,” Sassaman said. “We’re not going to give up on the coast. It’s not only economically important ... it’s a visceral thing. It’s something that humans are just attracted to. But we have to figure out how to be less vulnerable.”

It was a hard lesson for people to learn about Atsena Otie Key. The hurricane of 1896 marked the second time that such a storm destroyed developments there. A U.S. Army headquarters there was wiped out in 1842.

Then, in the 1980s, the land was purchased by a private developer who sought to turn it into “an upscale resort community,” Sassaman said. “There was public backlash by those who said it was foolish to build in a place that was twice destroyed by a hurricane.”

The development was stopped and, in 1997, Atsena Otie Key was sold to the Suwannee River Water Management District.

Sassaman wants to create a time capsule for when 1896 is a more distant memory. He said most people could see the old storm and say, “Let’s get the hell out of here. This isn’t a good place to build.”

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