Community Corner

Florida Year In Review 2018: Parkland, Michael, FIU Collapse

A year that began with such promise, 2018 brought tears and sorrow to many Floridians. But 2018 also brought out the best of Florida.

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Paul Scicchitano, Patch StaffVerified Patch Staff Badge

MIAMI, FL — A year that began with such promise, 2018 brought tears and sorrow to many Floridians — first with the unimaginable horror of Parkland on Valentine's Day, a few weeks later with the FIU bridge collapse and this fall with the devastation that smacked Mexico Beach and other parts of the Panhandle in the cruel winds of Hurricane Michael.

But 2018 also brought out the best of Floridians. The 17 lives of students and faculty taken by an emotionally disturbed gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School gave way to a nationwide movement led by the brave survivors who touched millions of Americans and sparked countless initiatives across the country to make schools safer.

The people who lost homes in Florida's Panhandle to the fierce winds of Hurricane Michael were met by first responders from across the state and convoys of trucks filled with diapers, canned goods, batteries and generators from people whom they had never met.

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If nothing else, Florida's endless general election in November brought some much-needed comic relief to a difficult year as friends and relatives across America couldn't resist regaling us with memories of the hanging chad debacle and unsolicited comparisons to elections in the developing world.

Looking back, Floridians may not be better because of 2018, but we are stronger.

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We found stories that brought smiles to Floridians in 2018 as well as those that brought tears. Here are some of Patch's most memorable articles from Florida over the past year:

SOUTH FLORIDA AND STATEWIDE

CENTRAL AND NORTH FLORIDA

Seventeen Parkland students took turns at a podium equipped with crates to raise up some of the younger speakers at a March For Our Lives rally in the weeks following the Valentines's Day attack. Photo by Paul Scicchitano.

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