Do you buy this Grotto business?

[HurricaneJoe22]

Grotto protects Conchs

Key West faithful say shrine has spared them.

By Maya Bell
The Orlando Sentinel
Posted July 9 2005

ISLAMORADA · The prayer Ryan Gembala whispered when he and his pals ducked into an Episcopal church in Key West this week was not answered. Instead, the co-founder of an Atlanta nonprofit organization was stuck in a rental car on clogged U.S. Highway 1 in Islamorada, eating baked potato chips and bemoaning his disrupted vacation.

"We had to buy mahi-mahi, instead of catch it ourselves," said Gembala, 24.

But if a small shrine known simply as the grotto kept its protective hold on Key West when Hurricane Dennis passed the island early Saturday, Gembala and his friends will be back on Duval Street soon, paying homage to the chapel themselves.

"You'd have to," said Ben Stricker, 25, an Atlanta human-resources consultant whose family owns a house in Key West. "You'd have to believe."

The grotto, formally known as Our Lady of Lourdes, has stood in the gardens of St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church since Sister Louis Gabriel dedicated it in 1922 with the words that launched a legion of believers.

As long as this grotto is standing, she said, Key West would never feel the full brunt of a hurricane.

And for the next 83 years, the capital of the Conch Republic, hasn't, at least not the brunt of a major hurricane.

Oh, there have been near misses, close calls and a visit by relatively minor Hurricane Georges in 1998, but nothing like what the Middle Keys suffered when the Labor Day Storm of 1935 killed more than 400 people. Key West was largely spared.

Coincidence? Not to the 15 faithful who lit candles at the grotto and prayed Friday morning for Dennis to bypass Key West. Not to those who gathered for a Mass at the grotto Friday evening.

"It does protect Key West," said longtime Deacon Peter Batty. "Not the grotto itself. People coming in and praying protects the island."

That's why Batty and other church employees had few second thoughts about defying a mandatory evacuation order issued Thursday for all visitors and all Keys residents south of the Seven Mile Bridge.

About 80 miles up U.S. 1, Richard Truffa, a resident of the Seabreeze Trailer Park, was relying more on his wits than the power of prayer. Nevermind that the fire department had already been through with a bullhorn reminding mobile-home dwellers of the mandatory evacuation order. Nevermind that Georges left two feet of water in the park.

As the skies darkened above and the seas churned a foamy green, the maintenance man vowed to ride out Dennis' wrath in the little tin box he calls home.

"That's all I got -- that trailer -- and I ain't losing it," he said, sucking on a Marlboro as the rain pelted his bare chest. "It's a gamble, but I'm a gambler."

Nearby at the aptly named Rain Barrel -- an artist's village in a series of old clapboard buildings -- Claire Carrier was pretty sure she and the rest of those staying weren't gambling.

"Don't you know," she said to her colleague, "Key West has the holy grotto? So we're safe."

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

The Hrd data shows it had 100 knots at landfall. Which was a cat3...Also the recon shown it had 127 knots flight level winds at landfall/nearing landfall. In which earlier when it was still a 140 mph cat4 it had 131 knot flight level winds. So who knows how much its core weaken.

[weatherwindow]

weellllllllllllllllll.....the track record isnt bad...while not a believer in such things, i also paid a visit to the grotto(its on windsor lane..if anyone feels the need this season), armed with a supply of votives and matches with a for georges, mitch, floyd, charlie and ivan/ can't hurt can it?..........rich