Hurricanes may be getting bigger, but death toll is shrinking

In Jennings, Fla., handyman and “man of God” Bubba Smith held onto his wife during hurricane Irma, who sang “whoo-ee” when the wind roared, their prayers joining as chorus.

“It reached out and touched us,” he says, as the 878 people in his little town, “where everybody knows each other, whether black or white,” looked out for one another.

Here in Perry, Fla., Billy Williamson, a former Lake County sheriff’s deputy, holed up in a 1920 bungalow with boards nailed helter-skelter across its windows, alongside 24 family members and some lanky hunting dogs.

“We’ve never been this prepared before as a state,” says Mr. Williamson. “You have to remember that it’s not one storm, but lots of storms that come out of it: tornadoes, hail, rain. The potential for destruction was high. So, we did good.”

At about 400 hundred miles wide, Irma