Here in Florida, we know about hurricanes.
My wife Jeanne and I will never forget Hurricane Elena back in 1985. That storm came into the Gulf of Mexico and just hovered offshore. There were instructions to evacuate because of the danger of high winds and flooding.
What made it interesting for us is that Jeanne was pregnant with our first child, and she was at full term. So while everyone else was either leaving town or getting to a safe place, we evacuated to the hospital. That was on Saturday, August the 31st and that’s when our baby was born. Everyone said if it was a girl we should choose the name Elena, after the hurricane. Instead, our son’s name is David.
A few months ago, in the hurricane season of 2024, we had Hurricane Milton to deal with. Since it was headed directly for where we live, we left town with our dogs and spent the week up in Jacksonville. We came back and discovered that, unlike some other people, we had no damage and no flooding.
But not everyone fared that well. My guest today is Ber. She lives about an hour or so from me, in a rural part of Florida called Dade City. She’s been through lots of hurricanes. But after what happened to her with Hurricane Milton, she probably won’t go venturing outdoors at the height of the storm any more.
(for the pictures of Ber’s injuries, you will need to scroll all the way down – past the transcript – to see them. They are graphic.)
Social links:
https://www.facebook.com/ber.rocha
https://www.tiktok.com/@berrocha
https://www.instagram.com/ber_maid
Ber’s GoFundMe page:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ambers-recovery-and-farm-restoration
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
Here in Florida, we know about hurricanes.
My wife Jeanne and I will never forget Hurricane Elena back in 1985. That storm came into the Gulf of Mexico and just hovered offshore. There were instructions to evacuate because of the danger of high winds and flooding.
What made it interesting for us is that Jeanne was pregnant with our first child, and she was at full term. So while everyone else was either leaving town or getting to a safe place, we evacuated to the hospital. That was on Saturday, August the 31st and that’s when our baby was born. Everyone said if it was a girl we should choose the name Elena, after the hurricane. Instead, our son’s name is David.
A few months ago, in the hurricane season of 2024, we had Hurricane Milton to deal with. Since it was headed directly for where we live, we left town with our dogs and spent the week up in Jacksonville. We came back and discovered that, unlike some other people, we had no damage and no flooding.
But not everyone fared that well. My guest today is Ber. She lives about an hour or so from me, in a rural part of Florida called Dade City. She’s been through lots of hurricanes. But after what happened to her with Hurricane Milton, she probably won’t go venturing outdoors at the height of the storm any more.
Scott
You live in Dade City, Florida. How long have you lived there?
Ber
We have lived here since we closed on December 28th, 2018, so it has been six years officially this past December.
Scott
And just to be clear, your first name is actually Amber, but everyone just calls you by your nickname Ber, is that right?
Ber
Yes, and they have called me that for over 15 years now, so it’s definitely been a long-standing nickname that I gained when I was a very little baby bartender.
Scott
You live there with your wife, Stacy. I understand I haven’t met her, but she’s from Ukraine, right?
Ber
Yes, she’s from Ukraine. She does still have family there. Her mom is there. Her aunt is there. Her brother is there. Her grandma and her grandpa, which is her babushka and her dadushka, they are all still there, which is, of course, a very touchy subject because–
Scott
Yeah, she’s got to be concerned, right?
Ber
Yeah, I mean, probably a few years ago when everything got really bad. It was a daily thing, kind of holding your breath hoping that you could get through to talk to them. There were times when her mom and her family only had running water for an hour at a time. Anytime that her mom didn’t answer her phone was scary because you don’t know.
Scott
And you met Stacy because of a horse farm that was in your family, right? How did that come about?
Ber
My whole family is originally from Tampa. I grew up on my parent’s horse farm. I was on a horse when I was still in my mom’s belly. We had a ranch in Thonotasassa off of Morris Bridge Road. I grew up there. I moved away in my 20s for a little bit because what 20-year-old doesn’t want to get– actually, I moved out when I was 18. Two weeks after my 18th birthday, I packed my stuff, I threw it in the back of a GMC Sonoma, and I left but I always was back. I always knew that I would end up on the farm because the farm is where my heart was.
One day, I knew there was a new horse trainer at the farm that my mom had training the horses, working the horses, and riding the horses. I knew she was doing lessons and all that. We knew of each other but we hadn’t met. We were both in our own relationships. I went there one day and I saw her riding a horse in the arena and I looked at my mom and I said, “Who’s that?” And she said, “That is– you don’t have a chance.”
Scott
Not very encouraging.
Ber
I was like, “Hold my beer.” And the rest is history.
Scott
Dade City is pretty rural.
Ber
Yes.
Scott
What is your business there? You’re on a farm, but you have a lot of horses. What do you do there?
Ber
We do lessons and trail rides. Pretty much, you can come and you can do an hour lesson, which I really encourage the lessons because it’s such a learning experience. We are also not one of those horse farms that you walk on and you feel poor. We are a family-owned and operated 20-acre little farm. When you book a lesson, it is a one-on-one experience. You’re not going to just go, “Here’s a horse, get on it.” You’re going to learn how to, “Hey, this is a horse. This is how you walk around the horse. This is how you move around the horse. This is how you communicate around the horse. These are the safety things. Even though our horses are fat and lazy and safe, we still always teach safety because they are a large animal and this is how you brush the horse. This is how you saddle the horse. This is a saddle. This is a stirrup.” People don’t know. And the trail rides… who doesn’t love going on a trail ride and sitting on a horse and just being around horses? It’s a good day.
Scott
You have a bunch of animals on site. Can you just list what animals do you have at your place?
Ber
Oh man. Well, we have goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, dogs, cats, and then one parrot. Oh, and cows. I forgot.
Scott
Oh, you got cows too. Okay. You have said that you are the place where the door is always open, whether to people and/or creatures. What does that look like? I mean, are you a rescue?
Ber
I wish we could be a rescue.
Scott
But you have rescued animals.
Ber
Oh, we rescue all the time. I have had everything from raccoons to hawks to– the one thing I haven’t had that love is just to find a baby possum. I feel like everybody has that dream just to find a baby possum.
Scott
Those are wonderful animals.
Ber
Find a baby… If anybody out there has one, I’ll take– (giggle) no, but in all honesty, yes, we actually do foster through Paw Print Hearts of Tampa occasionally. We have probably gone through 10 rounds of foster. It’s hard sometimes because you want to foster fail because these puppies are just so awesome, but it’s really enjoyable to be able to give them the building blocks that they need to be able to stay in their forever home because there are so many dogs and cats out there that can’t find their forever home and we are that step – we are that link between taking an animal that’s been malnourished, that has been neglected, who’s been traumatized and has probably has PTSD – that gives them the foundation or the building blocks to be able to have a successful life and a forever home.
We don’t make money off of doing it. I mean, we have fostered many kittens, cats. We have a foster cat now that we’re taking care of only because their person is off to college and they can’t have them currently, so we’re holding the cat for them. We just made room in our house to have this cat because we want these animals to be with their people.
Scott
So your life kind of revolves around caring for animals, but also the people that are local to you there – we’re going to talk about that part too. But let’s get into the event that this is all about – Hurricane Milton. As everyone knows, it was headed right across the Gulf of Mexico directly for our area. I’ll say “Our” because I live about an hour from you, but it was headed straight for the Tampa Bay area. I understand that your house is not in a flood zone, so people tend to come to your place to ride out the storm, right? You don’t evacuate.
Ber
Always, 100%. We are the house that everybody comes to and hunkers down, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Even after the experience that we’ve all gone through, we’ll all do it again also because we’re trauma-bonded. So there’s that.
Scott
And it’s not just people coming, but everyone brings their animals too, of course.
Ber
Everybody. It’s a house full of people and animals during the storm because we have enough cages. People donate dog crates to us – that’s one thing that’s nice. So we have enough area in our house. The house is large enough to house everybody during something like that.
Scott
Milton was coming across and it was going to be a nighttime landfall. Who was at your house that night? How many people?
Ber
Typically, it’s the same group that we have done many hurricanes together. The group that was here at the time would be myself, my wife, Stacy, my mom, Kathy, my niece, Sierra, my best friend, Melissa, best friend, Delaney, best friend, Chase. And then we actually had an extra at the time, which was my mom’s friend, Rachel. Oh, and then our best friend, Melissa had her daughter, Violet, with her. So it was a house full. And then animals.
Scott
It was like a party night, right?
Ber
Yes, that’s typically what it turns into, but not this time.
Scott
When did you start seeing the effects of the storm?
Ber
We had trees falling as early as 6 PM.
Scott
When that started happening, were you thinking this storm might be a little different than previous ones that we’ve experienced?
Ber
I did, but I also was holding out hope that those were just bad trees because they were out in the pasture. We were on the porch, which was really crazy because the wind was not– I mean, it’s 6 PM. I’m sure everybody who went through Milton remembers that, at 6 PM, the winds weren’t that bad yet, so I didn’t quite take it as a complete sign that the storm was going to be as horrible as it was because it was a group of three trees that had grown together. Now they were oak trees. They were very big. Those three trees that went at 6 PM are what took out our round pen.
Scott
And your place is pretty well inland. Normally, you’d think, when a storm comes ashore, the beachfront properties and all that take the biggest hit and then the storm slows down some as it travels over land, but it was still pretty serious by the time it got to you.
Ber
Our area was devastated. Even now the water’s just sitting out here Withlacoochee is still underwater. Ridge Manor is still underwater. I mean, those people out here have lost everything. My neighbors– I just talked to my neighbor across the street actually the other day and I was asking Michelle how’s her house because they got water in the house. Insurance hasn’t even given them anything yet. The house– they’ve had to rip up flooring, wall, everything, and I’m just so sad because these are people that I have lived around a long time and just to know that they had to go through that–
Scott
And as we record this, the storm was, like, three months ago.
Ber
Yeah. Yes. October night.
Scott
How many trees did you lose overall?
Ber
- We lost the most trees in our area. Our little 20-acre lot. It’s unbelievable.
Scott
All right, so let’s talk about that night. It was 11.30 at night. Milton is coming through. Did you still have electricity?
Ber
No, power was out.
Scott
So you’re using candles and flashlights?
Ber
Yes. And glow sticks, because it’s a party.
Scott
Yeah. Just take us through what happened. You were in bed with your dog. Just take us through minute by minute what happened.
Ber
Everybody else was still awake. I was tired. I decided to lay down. I had probably been asleep for an hour but in kind of a light sleep because all we could hear was trees cracking around us. When the power’s out, you know how the house kind of goes quiet because you don’t hear the humming of the electricity anymore and you can hear everything? We’re just hearing trees fall around us all over, some in the distance, some closer, etc. So I’m in our bedroom and our master bedroom is on the west side of the house. I’m in bed. Our master bedroom is also on the bottom floor, not the top, and our house is a two-story house.
Scott
Okay, and the hurricane is coming from the west.
Ber
Yes, and it’s coming from the west. I went in, I laid down, and everybody was kind of in the living room, in the kitchen. I had our dogs, Raven, our German Shepherd, and Belle, our Husky, in the bed with me because I just wanted the comfort. All of a sudden, I heard the crash and I heard the tree hit the house and it was like a big loud boom and a scrape as it, like, fell down the west side of the house. So it hit the top portion of the house at our side. I jumped up because I was in a panic. Of course, when you get woken up in such a scare, your adrenaline is pumping and you’re already on the edge. So I went and ran into the kitchen and living room and I heard, I’m almost positive it was my niece, Sierra. I hear her saying, “It hit the house! It hit the house!” So I run into the living room and I look at everybody, but I’m so frantic and I’m like, “I need to go look.” As a homeowner, in my head, I’m like, “I need to see the damage.”
Scott
Couldn’t you look out the window first?
Ber
I looked out the window and all I saw was leaves.
Scott
Oh, leaves. Okay.
Ber
Yes. So I went back into the bedroom and I looked out our window that was on the west side of the house and it was just leaves. All I saw was tree. So I know that the tree’s there, but I’m worried. Is there a hole in the roof? So many things were going through my mind and I’m still freaking out because I just awoke in such a panic, so my adrenaline is really pumping. So I grabbed my white hoodie, still hilarious to me that I put a white hoodie on because Lord, the horror show that it looked like in the aftermath.
Scott
Well, this was your favorite hoodie, but why was it your favorite?
Ber
I’ve had a hoodie for a long time. I have no idea. It just was one of those hoodies that fits you right in all the places. The arms fit right. The length was perfect. The size was perfect. The very slight kind of marble design on it was perfect. The skull on it was perfect. It was just my favorite hoodie. So I put it on. I come out back out of the bedroom and I think I’m talking to myself almost. I’m like, “I just need to go see it.” And of course, My wife, Stacy, who to this day – listen to your wives, guys – just makes that note. I should have listened to her, but I am in such a panic with the adrenaline pumping that I’m not thinking clearly and I’m like, “I just need to see the damage.”
Scott
She didn’t want you to go out.
Ber
Of course not. It’s 11.30 at night. Milton was hitting. I have tunnel vision at this moment. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was woken up because I was woken up in such a fright that I just wasn’t thinking clearly and my instinct was I needed to see the damage of the house.
Scott
Have you ever gone outside during any previous hurricanes?
Ber
Oh, Stacy’s going to kill me for saying this. She’s told me so many times. She’s like, “Quit telling people you go outside in hurricanes.” I’m born and raised in Florida. When I was in high school, we had those four hurricanes that hit back to back to back. Me and my brothers were outside riding four-wheelers. Yes, the answer is yes. Now, I will say this was a totally different monster. Milton was unlike anything that the Tampa Bay area has ever seen because, as we all know, the Tampa Bay area had never had a direct hit in over a hundred years.
Scott
Yeah, I think 1921 was the last one, right?
Ber
Yes. Even though I’m in Pasco County now, I’m a Hillsborough County girl – runs in my blood – everybody was proud of that. So this was definitely a completely different animal.
Scott
So you were determined to go check things and Stacy didn’t want you to.
Ber
Yes. And I should have listened to her because I went out– so we have a sunroom, like a front porch kind of windows and everything. When you walk out our front door, you enter the sunroom. Our power is out, so it is pitch black outside. We have a big spotlight because we have large property. So, of course, we have a spotlight so that, most of the time, we just stand on the porch and we can just spotlight cows, pigs, goats, and horses to just see where they’re at.
Scott
When you say spotlight, you’re talking about a handheld flashlight that’s really bright.
Ber
Yeah, it’s a floodlight thing. It’s really bright and goes a long distance. I walked out the front door, entered the sunroom, and as I was about to walk out of the screen door of the sunroom, that’s when Stacy was telling me not to go and I was like, “I just want to see the damage.” And I’m pretty sure that, at that moment, when I went out the door, she went to reach for me and grab my locks.
Scott
Cause you have dreadlocks.
Ber
Yes, I have dreadlocks. Stacy was behind me telling me not to go outside and I was saying, “I just want to see the damage.” And as she reached for me, she was trying to grab my locks cause she was going to pull me back in. My locks, my hair– I’ve been growing my locks for 14 years. I have had dreadlocks for a very long time. I honestly couldn’t even tell you what it’s like to run a brush through my hair because I’ve had them for so long. It’s just who I am. Anybody who knows me just knows I’m the redhead with dreads and my locks were past, I would say, my butt. She went to reach for them and she missed. To this day, she keeps saying, “I should have just grabbed a handful of them so I would have been able to pull you back in.”
As soon as she missed me, the door to the sunroom slammed in her face and my wife, Stacy, will tell you something like, “No, you can’t go out there too because she’s going to need you.” I took a step off the sunroom and I looked to the west. So I looked to my left, turned on the spotlight, and I was shining it on the tree that was on the house. It’s raining and the wind– so I’m squinting my eyes in the darkness and I’m looking at it and, all of a sudden I’m under a tree, I’m under another tree.
Multiple people have asked me, “Didn’t you hear the tree crack and didn’t you have time to move?” The problem is that our area in Dade City was completely demolished. We had many tornadoes. If you look at the map of the tornadoes from the storm, it’s just bing-bing-bing-bing tornadoes everywhere. The tree didn’t crack. The tree was ripped and thrown at me. So it happened so fast that there was no time. It was a split second.
Scott
And you were in the dark too.
Ber
And I was in the dark, so obviously I did not see it. It was like a rip. I actually heard the tree get ripped and I was already underneath it as soon as I heard the rip because it was the tornado through the tree. I mean, did I know there was a tornado? Of course not. Because again, no power pitch black and my adrenaline was pumping because I was still freaked out that I was awoken in such a fright. So that is why I went to look. Of course, I still feel stupid, but all things happen.
Scott
What did you feel when it hit you? Where did it hit you?
Ber
My adrenaline was pumping so hard from being awoken that I didn’t feel it. I just all of a sudden knew that I was hit by a tree. I didn’t feel the injury immediately. How I knew I was injured is– I’m going to have to close my eyes to picture it. I was standing there and next thing I know, I was under the tree and, kind of like a white flash, I knew it knocked me but it didn’t knock me out because I didn’t go unconscious. It was like a big white flash in my eyes and, all of a sudden, I’m like, “Okay, you were hit by a tree. You’re under a tree. You need to get out of here. You need to get out of here now before anything else happens.” I felt like I could hear voices, but it was very muffled, so I started yelling for help and I went to push myself out of the tree and my left arm was gone. So I then realized, “Okay, I’m messed up. I messed up big time because the left arm was just jello.”
As I went to push myself out, I started hearing voices clearly and I could hear my wife, Stacy, my best friend, Melissa, and then our handyman, Charles. Oh, Charles. Oh my gosh. Charles is our handyman and he lives on the property with us. We have a travel trailer on the property that he stays in. He wasn’t initially with us during the beginning of the storm but, as the storm started picking up around 8 o’clock, we were texting him and we were like, “Charles, you should really come out of the trailer and into the house.” So he did. So Charles was with us too. So I started hearing– I could hear Melissa. I could hear Stacy. I could hear Charles. I could hear them ripping through the tree. I started reaching behind me and above me with my right arm – because my left arm is completely jello – and as I was reaching, all of a sudden, with my right arm, I could feel another arm, and I could feel Charles’s arm, and we locked forearms. I grabbed his forearm, he grabbed my forearm, and I pulled, and he pulled, and they got me out of the tree.
At this moment, Stacy goes and gets under my right arm because my left arm is just dangling and she’s kind of helping me hobble in the house. Here’s where that white hoodie comes into play because now I am covered in blood in my favorite white hoodie. I did not know the extent but when Melissa opened the front door to the house, the first person standing there was my niece, Sierra, who was pregnant and she saw me first. When the door opened and she looked at me, she screamed. She screamed out of just fear of seeing me and the mangled mess that I was.
During these storms, every time we hunker down with all of our friends, we always blow up an air mattress and put it in the living room, usually because we will all hang out in the living room and you’ll have people laying on the air mattress, people laying on the couch, the dogs with us, everything like that. Thankfully, the air mattress is there because they brought me inside and they put me on the air mattress. I’m just laying there and I’m looking up at the ceiling and I’m like, “Okay, you are messed up. You did it good this time.” I will say this is probably the hardest part of that night – just waiting. It wasn’t easy.
Scott
Well, somebody must have dialed 911.
Ber
Yes. So Sierra, my niece, immediately– either Sierra or Melissa because I remember Melissa and Sierra, but I’m almost positive it was Sierra initially because she was on the phone most of the time calling 911. First 911 call goes out and, of course, Pasco County is down. Anything over, I’m pretty sure it’s 40 or 45 miles per hour, rigs don’t go out. So they’re down and they’re like, “There’s no way for us to get to you. But when the winds die down, we’ll get to you.” So of course, my mom, Kathy, my wife, Stacy, everybody is kind of at this point freaking out because they’re looking at me and I can’t see what I look like, but they can see what I look like. They are thinking I’m going to die.
Scott
I would guess that you could kind of tell how bad it was by seeing the looks on their faces as they saw you
Ber
When you see… (Silence) Sorry. Seeing your mom and your wife cry looking at you is not easy. It definitely was surreal. It almost felt like witnessing your own funeral. It’s definitely an experience that I can’t say I’m happy that I had but it’s definitely an experience a lot of people will not get to experience, I will say that, and living through it, too, is quite the accomplishment. It was hard. It was really hard to see everybody so distraught and just praying. Like, whatever you pray to, it was hard.
Scott
Does anyone in the group have any kind of first aid or medical experience?
Ber
My mom is a retired nurse.
Scott
Okay, well, that was kind of handy.
Ber
Yes. So they got me inside, they put me on the air mattress and I immediately– and I also have first responder training myself, so I immediately knew certain steps to take. Delaney was like, “Do you want me to take off your wedding ring?” And I was like, “Get everything off that left arm right now – watch, rings.” I mean, as soon as I hit that air mattress, I was like, “Pull off my rings because it’s going to start swelling and then they’re going to have to cut my wedding ring off.” It had already started swelling. It took her a second to get all the rings and watches off. That was the very first thing that we did.
I also felt hot. As soon as I laid down, I was super hot. I had that hoodie on that was covered in blood and I told my mom, I said, “Cut it.” So they cut the right arm of the hoodie vertically up to expose the right arm, and then they cut the torso of the hoodie, so right down the middle, but we left the left arm of the hoodie on obviously to keep that left arm covered. Then, my mom placed a tourniquet on the upper forearm, upper part of my left arm. So the tourniquet is what I would say also helped save my life because I probably would have bled out
Scott
You were also bleeding from your head, right?
Ber
Yes, I didn’t really know the extent of the damage on my head, but Delaney, our best friend of over 10 years, went to the head of the air mattress and applied pressure to my head. Between her and my wife, they both took turns throughout the night keeping pressure on my head. When I say pressure, it’s just not like keeping the flap closed. You have to apply pressure. So it’s a decent amount of pressure that you’re holding. That’s why they kept switching off – because of the amount of time that I ended up laying there.
Scott
And head wounds always bleed more heavily anyway.
Ber
Yes, I could feel, once they kind of put the pressure on my head, “Okay, so I have a head wound. I definitely can tell that the arm is not just broken, but it’s an open break. I can tell it’s a compound fracture. It’s not good.”
Scott
And for people that don’t know, a compound fracture means that the bone is exposed or coming through the skin.
Ber
Yes. I was laying there and I heard my niece on the phone. She’s calling 911 and telling them what’s going on, and we still hear trees cracking outside. There are still trees falling. The wind was picking up and the trees are still falling at this point in time. The whole situation changed from our usual hangout to things just got really bad. As I was laying there, I remember my mom and I don’t know how much time has passed. That’s the other crazy thing is. To me, it seemed like it had only been a few hours and then paramedics showed up. I didn’t realize that I was there for 8 hours waiting for help to arrive because time was just nothing to me. I was in a state of shock. Because I was laying there so long, I did start to feel the pain and I knew that this arm was bad.
My mom was there and I remember, at one point, I looked at my mom and I said, “Mom, I’m scared because I kept getting cold.” It’s one of those things that people tell you when people pass, that everybody always worries “I really hope that they heard me say goodbye”, and I now know for a fact that is true because, when I was laying there, I couldn’t really feel for a while. My eyes kept closing and I kept getting cold, but I could hear everything. I could hear everybody talking. I could hear people. My mom and my wife kept going to the other room to talk because they didn’t want to scare me. Stacy pulled my mom into the other room and was like, “Is she going to be okay?” And my mom was like, “Doesn’t look good.” I didn’t know there was a moment. 2024 was not a good– it wasn’t an easy year for us.
On July 21st, 2024, which is also my wife’s birthday, July 21st is my wife’s birthday, Stacy’s birthday, my dad passed away on her birthday. I remember we barely made it to the hospital to be able to say goodbye, and that’s part of the reason why I’m so hung up on the fact that I now know that he could hear me because I remember just repeatedly telling him, “I love you, daddy. It’s okay, but you can let go.” So, in July, my dad died. Then, three months later, not even two months later, I almost died. I remember my mom was sitting on the corner of the air mattress and I remember at one week I looked up and I felt like I could see my dad sitting– (sniffling)
Sorry. I felt like I could see him sitting there telling me this is not your time. I almost felt like he was rubbing my leg and it’s so surreal to me because part of me knows that this wasn’t this– some people have asked so many questions all the time – people at work, close friends and family. This wasn’t some act of karma. This wasn’t some act of anything. It’s just a really wild experience that I do believe everything happens for a reason, and I do believe that my dad saved me from actually having worse injuries than I did. I’m not saying my injuries weren’t severe because they were but, according to my doctors, I shouldn’t be alive.
So as I was laying there, I saw my dad and I looked to my mom and I said, “Mom, I’m scared.” And she said, “I’m scared too, baby.” It just felt like no time had passed. And I could hear my niece and Melissa keep calling 911. I’m pretty sure that 911 and the dispatchers in Pasco County thought they were going to come get a body. When my family kept calling and they realized that I’m still alive is when they realized they needed to get out here.
So the sun started coming up. We don’t know the extent of the damage in the area. I mean, our area was horrendously wrecked. TECO is our provider for our power out here. Of course, there were power lines down everywhere. I’m sure they had to coordinate with TECO to make sure that the power grid out here was completely shut down on the road that we live on, which is River Road. It leads directly to Green Swamp West, Withlacoochee Park. That’s another reason why we bought the property out here – because River Road dead ends into Green Swamp and Withlacoochee. With our property sitting maybe 0.6 miles from the park, we are 3 miles in the back and rural area. So of course, for an ambulance to get here, they had to have power tools, tractors, search and rescue.
My neighbors were out there because my family– I have a Messenger group on Facebook that I started with all of my neighbors and I think I started it with just a handful of neighbors, and it has now grown to 30 people in that messenger group. All the neighbors knew what was going on. By the time the sun was coming up, I could hear Stacy and Delaney, Chase, Sierra, Melissa, and my mom all talking and saying, so and so is outside. “Dusty’s outside trying– this person is outside trying– they’re all out there trying to make way for the ambulance to get through.”
Scott
And it was because trees were down, blocking the driveway?
Ber
Trees were down. There were trees down from the beginning of River Road, all the way to us. There were also trees on our driveway. Of course, the biggest oak tree that we have, which sat right on the corner, right by the front gate, was the last one to go down and it went down right over our front gate. Melissa, my best friend, when she hears this, she’s going to laugh because we had to wrangle that girl in– well, not me. I couldn’t do anything, but she was ready to start driving to go find help and we were like, “No, Melissa, you’re not leaving. We can’t have another one hurt too.” Melissa is a jump-in-action kind of girl. She will do anything for you, and that means risking her own life, and she will. She actually went outside and was on the phone telling them the kind of extent of what it looked like on our driveway, and our driveway is really long. Once you take a right onto the property, our house is not right there by the road. Our house sits probably like a hundred yards from the road. So it’s a really long driveway. And when I say front gate, I don’t mean the gate by the road. We don’t call that our front gate. We call the front gate, which is the gate that’s right here by the house that you would enter to get into the main part of the property that is our front gate and that is where the biggest oak tree went just right across it west to east, just went straight across it.
I started hearing chainsaws and we could hear chainsaws coming down the road. You can see the lights, but you can see the ambulance lights. It’s like them flashing, but it’s slow-moving because they’re having to cut through so many trees to get to us.
Scott
And finally, they get to you.
Ber
Yes. So eight hours. I did not realize that I had been there from 11.30 PM till 7.30 AM. Stacy actually asked me. I remember she’s like, “How long do you think you were laying there?” I had to think about it really hard, and I was like, “I don’t know. Like four hours?” And she’s like, “Babe, you were there for 8 hours.” I held on for that long. I remember there was a moment, yeah. It was like three times, I remember I got cold, and I was like, “Is this it?” And I remember closing my eyes and I thought to myself, “I understand now why they say death is peaceful because it would have been so easy to let the pain go because it did start hurting.” My arm and my head did start hurting. Towards the end, I was like, “I get it now. I totally get it. I understand why they say death is peaceful – because it was so relieving to just kind of feel like letting go.”
And then I remember when my dad. When I saw my dad for a split second, it wasn’t even like I saw his figure. It was like a shadow of a figure. And my dad was a tough guy. My dad raised a fighter and I just remember almost like his words, like, “All right, we’re not going out like this. You’re not going out like this. Man up.” I think I remember I kind of gave myself a little slap metaphorically and was like, “You’re not going out like this. You got this.” I toughened up and I’m not letting a tree take me out. So they got to me and I remember a couple of people crying in relief because I was still breathing.
I can see flashlights coming in and I know it’s the paramedics. I kept telling everybody, which is kind of funny, I was like, “Everybody, remember to tell them that I’m 285 pounds. I’m 5’9”. I’m allergic to penicillin and the Z-Pak.” And I kept repeating it to myself because these are things I’ve known. I’ve learned in my first responder training. I’m 285 pounds. I’m 59. I’m allergic to penicillin, Z-Pak. So as soon as the paramedics came in, they were looking around at the flashlights and at my mom, they’re looking at Stacy and Melissa and Sierra and Chase and Delaney. And then they turn the flashlights and they see me on the air mattress. I immediately look at them and it’s almost like this look of shock because I think my mom said, “She’s alert and oriented.” And one of them was like, “She’s alert and oriented? What?!” They were in disbelief. I opened my mouth and I said, “My name’s Amber Rocha, I’m 285 pounds. I’m 5’9” and I’m allergic to penicillin and Z-Pak.” They’re looking at me like they saw a ghost cause they knew what was going on. They knew that there was a person that had been hit by a tree but, like I said earlier, they probably thought they were coming to get a body, but here I am completely alert and oriented and I’m like, “All right, let’s go.”
Scott
Yeah. When the first 911 call had come in eight hours earlier, who knows what had changed in that time?
Ber
Yeah. The one thing that I also told them is, when they got to me, I said, before you touch me, you need to start a line and you better give me something because this is about to be bad. I knew the pain that I was about to feel because I knew they were about to move me. They started pumping me with ketamine and I’m pretty sure morphine. So they started pumping with it. Even with that, the drugs that they were giving me when they moved me, you can ask anybody that was in that house and they said they’ve never heard a scream like they heard that came out of me when they moved me. It was almost like a flash of light came into my eye. It was unbearable, even with the drugs that they were pumping into me.
Scott
But you stayed conscious the whole time. Usually, when you have a really bad pain like that, it just knocks you out but, no, you weren’t that fortunate, huh?
Ber
Nope. So they came in and they kind of put the board under me and it kind of clicked. So they’ll shove one-half of it under your left side and one-half under your right side and it will click in the middle and then they strap you in. So they lifted me and they got me on the gurney. I mean, I’m screaming at this point in time. Like, it’s unbelievably unbearable pain. My mom’s crying. Stacy’s crying. Everybody’s crying because they’re witnessing the amount of pain that I’m going through. I remember being in the ambulance and the two paramedics that were in the ambulance with me were two women and they were so nice they were so attentive.
I had a really good experience with Pasco County. I actually did reach out to Pasco County and thank them. Yeah, they were very nice being in the ambulance and just a lot of bright lights. I think I can recall them saying that they were taking me to Lakeland Regional because it was the closest trauma center that was open and that they could get to. I remember the ambulance doing some maneuvers to probably avoid fallen trees and stuff. After leaving the hospital and heading back home, there were so many trees down. I was like, “Man, that ambulance really did some driving to get me here.” Once at the hospital, I remember telling them, “Please don’t let them take my arm.” I just remember saying, “Please don’t let them take my arm.”
The first thing that they did, of course, was assess the situation. They went straight to the head wound. That was the very first thing that they attended. The plastic surgeon shot me up and numbed my head area and shaved the right half of my head, which goes into the very sad story of how I lost a lot of my locks. So I have half of my head shaved. They stitch me up. They, of course, did CT scans before they stitched me up to make sure that there was no damage to my brain or to my cranium and, lo and behold, surprise, I had no head injury. The tree scalped me. That is why I didn’t go unconscious. So certified hard-headed now is definitely a term that I can use. It did not crack my skull and I had no brain bleed. They have no idea how. So my injury to my head was a very large scalp, which I know you have the pictures of, and everybody will be able to take a gander at. It’s quite impressive, I want to say, crescent moon shaped flaps that they put back together.
Scott
Yeah. We will have pictures of those on the website.
Ber
I remember laying there and I remember talking to her and she’s stitching me up and people were coming in – doctors, nurses. They were coming in and they were like, “How’s it going?” I answered and they’re like, “She’s alert.” The people in the hospital were so shocked still. They’re like, “She’s awake. Like, how is she?” And the lady that’s stitching my head up, she’s doing great and we’re just sitting there talking like you would talk having coffee,
Scott
But had they looked at your arm at all yet?
Ber
No, they had not done that yet. They were doing the head first, but they had taken me to CT, so they knew the extent of it. I had to go through CT twice and I had to do CT with contrast, which was no fun, I definitely don’t like the contrast. When they put me through the CT machine, they had to figure out a way to kind of lift my left arm up onto my torso, and that was no fun. I screamed in the CT even with them still pumping me full of ketamine. They were having a hard time getting the scan that they needed, hence why I had to go through CT twice. I remember, at one point, one of the nurses or technicians in the CT room, the second time I went in – she wasn’t talking about me, I think she was talking about something else – she said, “They’re just going to rip it off.” And I shot up in the CT and I said, “They’re not going to rip my arm off. Are they?” And her face was so funny because her face just dropped and the other two people in the CT room looked at her like, “What did you just do? Why would you say that?” And she’s like, “No, no. They’re not going to rip your arm off. I was talking– I’m so sorry.” And I just laid back down. I was like, oh, okay.
Scott
What were they referring to though?
Ber
I don’t honestly know. I feel like maybe the hoodie.
Scott
Because you still had the left sleeve on.
Ber
Yeah, I still had the left sleeve on. So maybe they were talking about the hoodie, but she wasn’t referring to the arm. I, of course, was like, “They’re not going to rip my arm off, are they?”
Scott
That phrase just doesn’t sound like medical terminology, right? I mean, they would use the word amputate probably or something.
Ber
Yeah, but in my state, I was totally–
Scott
So it was pretty badly broken. I know, obviously, this has been a couple of months ago or three months ago now, but what’s the outlook for your arm now as far as healing?
Ber
So they said anywhere from eight months to a year to completely heal to have to even get back to any kind of percentage. I definitely will say that my left hand doesn’t feel like my own.
Scott
Can you elaborate on that? Does it feel numb or you just look at it and you can’t move it like you’re used to moving it?
Ber
The second. I go to pick something up and it’s not doing what I wanted to do. And as a bartender, somebody who works with their hands, it’s definitely frustrating. I’m a bartender. I live on a farm. We run a farm after the storm. After I got back from the hospital, we had a group come out here, a volunteer group and do tree work for us. The group that came and did tree work for us is called Connect Global, and it is run by Javier and Danielle Mendoza. They are an amazing couple. Truly, I can’t thank them enough at all for what they did because we are so used to being self-sufficient. I’m a big, strong, tough girl. I’m a farm girl. I’m a country girl. I build fences. I use chainsaws. I run tractors. I’m a farm girl. To not be able to go out and immediately start cleaning up my own property was really hard for me and, with so many trees down, that’s what you want to do is to get out there. That’s my initial instinct. But I am so thankful for Connect Global, for Danielle and Javier because, if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have gotten any sort of progress made in the way that we did. They run the company and they will, in time of need, show up with 30 or 40 volunteers and tractors.
My neighbor showed up. My cousin lives right up the road – my cousin Alicia – and she’s out there on her tractor. Kevin and Michelle, our neighbors, are on their tractor. My really good friend, Larry, who’s always done tree work for us, is out there with a chainsaw. All my friends from all over have showed up. We had a massive day of cleanup. I had just gotten out of the hospital. All I could do was sit and watch and cry because I was so thankful for everybody’s help because we had so much damage. Our goats and pigs– we didn’t leave our goats and pigs outside. When I say that, we hunker down with animals. We have so many dog crates. So the goats and pigs, we put them in dog crates on the back porch. We don’t leave them outside. They would have passed because there was a tree that fell because the goats and pig pen was right in front of our house. It’s right near the front and a tree landed vertically on the goat and pig pens. We never leave it out during a storm. Even during minor storms, we crate them up and the goats and pigs are with us and dogs and cats. So the house is full of animals when we have a storm
Scott
Animals are family too.
Ber
Oh, for sure, I especially love our pig. I would cry if anything ever happened to Vanya. We had everything with us and every gate got hit by a tree. I don’t know if the trees planned it, but every gate that we had to enter every pasture had a tree on it. We lost so many gates. We lost so much fencing. We lost so many panels for our round pen, and it’s so expensive. Those gates– if you go to roll king or tractor supply for one gate or one panel, you’re spending $200. A roll of horse fence is, like, $300 for 250 feet. It’s crazy.
Scott
Well, let’s talk about that. As far as the financial aspect of the damage, do you have health insurance to cover any of this?
Ber
I don’t. I’ve been a bartender. It’s funny because I went through fire academy and first responder, did it for a little bit and I didn’t like it actually. I didn’t like being at the station. It wasn’t a job for me per se, but I have loved bartending. There’s some people that are like, “Why do you bartend?” It’s because I really love it and I’m really good at it. I love creating. I’m not just a bartender. I’m a mixologist. I enjoy creating new recipes. I love seeing people’s faces when they are saying this is the best thing they’ve ever tasted in their life. Like I truly, deeply love bartending so much. I have grown with it. I’ve worked my way up to be the creator that I am, but it does not come with health insurance.
And the animals come before that. It’s hard. It’s really hard to choose – you or them – and we’ve constantly chosen them. They have to eat. They eat before we eat. And a roll of hay is not cheap. One bag of horse feed is almost $30, and we have, like, 10 to 12 horses. One bag of horse feed has 14 scoops of it. One horse gets two scoops a day – one in the morning and one at night. When you have that many animals– and I’m just talking horses. I’m not talking about the pigs, the goats, the cows, the dogs, the cats. I mean, all of it costs money, but we wouldn’t have it any other way because we choose the animals over ourselves every time.
Scott
I know that it’s obviously a financial hardship and you have set up or someone set up a GoFundMe on your behalf to help out with medical bills and home repair. I mean, it’s got to be a little bit overwhelming to see all that.
Ber
Yeah, it’s been really hard because I’ve been out of work, obviously, since the accident. I love working. I want to go back to work so badly. I’m so ready, but I listened to my doctors and I’ve listened to everybody around me and even a couple of the old country boys that I’ve met since we’ve moved out here. The big, tough, strong country boys– they literally looked at me and they said, “You better do the PT. We know that you’re big and strong and tough, but you better do the PT.”
Scott
Physical therapy.
Ber
Yes, physical therapy. And I have been and I’ve done it the right way and my doctor is very happy, but it’s still super hard because I don’t have insurance and I’m trying everything to get the financial aid at Lakeland Regional to make it a charity case, and I’m hoping to have some kind of response on that, and that would cover at least the medical portion but I’ve still been out of work so long that you’re barely scraping by just to feed these guys.
Scott
You still got bills to pay. Yeah.
Ber
Still have bills to pay. It’s not like the electricity is going to pay itself. got to have food on the table, got to pay waste management, insurance for vehicles, and everything. Being out of work has just been really tough more than anything. I will say that I’m definitely happy to be on Earthside.
One of the other hard parts is after leaving the hospital, coming home– there’s four ways that you can enter our little rural area out here. There is obviously the main road, River Road, and then there are three dirt roads, and you have Auden, Duck Lake, and Sumner Lake. Three out of the four ways to get to our area were either flooded or completely inaccessible because of trees. So the only way to get to the house was on Duck Lake, which was a dirt road. I remember coming from the hospital and my Mom and Stacy, my wife, and our best friend, Delaney telling me to just prepare myself to see everything. I remember when we started pulling onto the property, it had been a week since the accident. I had surgery. I was released from the hospital. I remember as soon as we pulled onto the property, I just lost it to see because they had been telling me like– they had told me in the hospital, “All the animals were okay.”
Of course, we have one horse. We have Billy. He is our old lesson horse. He’s in his thirties. I remember waking up from surgery and I looked at Stacy and I was like, “Billy?” because we were so worried that he wouldn’t make it because he’s an older horse. He’s retired. He’s our pastor ornament this time, but he’s been with us and he’s not going anywhere because, once we have an animal, if it’s our animal and we’re keeping it and we’re not just fostering it, that animal stays with us and will die with us, and he made it. I remember when we pulled onto the property, looking at the damage, I was so surprised. I was like, “How did Billy make it?” I didn’t even realize how bad it was. I just started crying because of seeing the damage firsthand, looking at something that was just once so beautiful and so many trees gone because, when we bought this property, what we fell in love with was the front pasture was just an oak grove – big, beautiful oak trees and just something out of like a southern movie. Like, it was just so beautiful and just to see it completely gone was heartbreaking.
Scott
Here’s a fun thing that made this conversation a little different.
I don’t usually get to meet my podcast guests in person. But in this case, I only live about an hour from Ber, so I proposed an idea on a Sunday afternoon – why don’t I come over for a visit and see your farm? And she said, yeah come on over! So I met her, and she showed me all around the farm, and I got to show some love to her dogs, cows, and horses – and I especially loved her pigs.
You’ll find some pictures of that farm visit in the show notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/205, along with the link to her GoFundMe if you feel like helping out. Also, if you want to, you can see graphic pictures of Ber’s injuries. But you’ll have to scroll all the way to the bottom of that page. I put them way down at the end because some people will find them too graphic.
Ber is a really interesting woman. As she mentioned, she’s a tough farm girl. And she also has her emotional side. But on top of those things, she’s fun and quirky. As an example of that, she had a list of questions for her surgeon, and I asked her to read a few of them for me –
Ber
Do you like animals? Have you ever fed a giraffe? Well, why not? Are you living your dream? I wanted to be a mermaid, and I am. If you could be any mystical creature, what would you be? To me, you are a mystical creature. In the old days, you would have been a wizard. Hufflepuff? We’ll sort that out later. Gryffindor! Can I get my CT scans? Did you ever find pictures of my arm? My birthday is December 8th. I’m typing this on December 6th. Thank you for making that happen. I’m also typing this partially with my left hand. My future self thanks the past, present, and future you. Is my arm shorter? My elbow feels like half is missing. It is. Am I allowed to drive? I’ve been driving. Are you a sunrise or a sunset person? What’s your favorite food? Are you a Porthos, Athos, Eremis, or D’Artagnan? How much of your mental health depends on your recovery? I knew that. I was just testing you. My fingers feel tight in the morning – ice or heating pad? I do both, but immensely enjoy the heating pad. I’ve been around trees lately. I’m weary of them. Something’s up. Is it normal for the hands and fingers to slightly swell after a full day of working? Not your department, but my head is still tender. Is my skin reattaching to my scalp?
Scott
And she had more questions, but you get the idea. Okay, a couple other things –
Raw Audio 47 is now live. The Raw Audio episodes include actual 911 audio and the stories that go with them, and they’re available to anyone who supports the show. When you sign up, you immediately have 47 episodes to binge – and new ones are created regularly. In this episode:
An accidental shooting –
Male 1
There’s a girl. The girl got shot.
Male 2
She got shot? (in the background)
911 Operator
She got shot? Did you see anything?
Scott
A car going in the wrong direction –
Female 1
I’m coming up 29 and I’m coming back towards Foster’s and I just ran a car just coming down the wrong lane.
911 Operator
Okay, are you going towards Foster’s?
Female 1
Yeah, but I’m turning around so I can catch up with this guy.
Scott
And, a woman is at home when someone breaks into her home –
911 Operator
Okay, do you believe that somebody’s in your house right now?
Female 2
Yeah.
Scott
You get immediate access to this episode and the 46 previous Raw Audio episodes, when you sign up to support the podcast. And you can try it free! On an iPhone, just go to the WhatWasThatLike feed and click on Try Free. On Android, just go to WhatWasThatLike.com/plus.
And I got this message from Audrey. She was not able to call it in, but she asked me to read it for her:
Hi Scott! My name is Audrey and I love your podcast! I just moved to Brazil which in and of itself is unusual since I am American. I have just started listening to your podcast and let me say I find it incredibly comforting to listen to stories about unusual things that happen in other peoples lives. Keep up the amazing work!!
Thanks for that Audrey! And if you want to hear your comments about the show on a future episode, you can call the Podcast Voice Mail line anytime night or day, at 727-386-9468.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And now, we’re about to hear this week’s Listener Story. This is how every What Was That Like episode ends – with a short story, like 5-10 minutes, sent in by a listener just like you. I’d love to play YOUR story on a future episode. Just record it on your phone, in a quiet environment, and email it to Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.
This week’s story is about the drama of making food for an office potluck.
Stay safe, and I’ll see you next time.
(Listener story)
Hi Scott. This story is for anyone who shares an understanding of the pressure of a potluck when casseroles and dips are on the line. Imagine being known for a specific dish that you receive compliments on every time you bring it to the office. It’s like a dopamine hit. You’re proud. You’ve stayed up all night following your recipe, making sure you don’t alter your ingredients just so it tastes exactly the same each and every time. It’s like going for a medal that you’re never going to win. Just the sounds of people saying yum and asking for your recipe after they’ve taken a scoop is like giving the ultimate present to your loved one on their birthday. You gleam with delight, seeing the joy in their eyes. You know the way to their heart is through their stomach. Everyone has waited for this day during the work week. People are casually strolling past the break room, nonchalantly picking at snacks before it’s even lunchtime. But what if someone signed up to bring your signature dish? Do you still make the same thing? Do you go with something else? Do you just buy something from the store? What do you do now?
My story takes place many years ago when I was working in an office where we would have the occasional potluck. The same people would bring the same thing in over and over again. These co-workers were quite serious about their dishes. When that sign-up sheet hit the first desk, you better believe everyone was ready with their pens to put their names and signature creations down. There are two types of people in the office – those who love to cook and bring a meal and those who want nothing to do with cooking. They’re the ones that bring the soda, or the cookies, or the plates and utensils from the grocery store.
I was the girl who would rather bring something store-bought. I had dogs at the time and I never wanted to take a chance of being that person who was talked about if a hair was found, kind of like the fellow in another department whose wife would make cookies for him to bring in. This was the same person who would talk about their cat who liked to sit on the warm silverware after it was done in the dishwasher. Legend has it that if you broke a cookie apart and held it up to the light, you could see the remnants of their cat along with the chocolate chips.
This particular potluck, my best friend decided to create some office shenanigans and bring a dish that another woman was notorious for bringing in – strawberry pretzel salad. She was quite aware of the severity of what she was doing. I remember her telling me she was going to shake things up a bit. My jaw hit my desk when she gave me the signup sheet and I saw her name with that delicious sweet treat next to it. I was a little scared to hand it off to the next person. I knew what was coming. When that sign-up sheet made its way around to the next row, the gasps and whispers that ensued were riveting. It was on. From that moment, this was no longer a potluck. This was now Crock Pot Wars. I’ll never remember what the original maker of that strawberry pretzel salad brought in its place that time, but what I can tell you is my best friend never made it again.
