Hello everyone. I am back, a little weary but safe and sound.
That damned hurricane hit me dead center after all the meandering that it had previously done. By
the time it got to me in central Florida it had lost some of its strength. We got 115 MPH winds that wreaked havoc with trees, roofs, and mobile homes. We were lucky because some of the Islands like Saint Martins got 180 steady and 215 in gusts. Those places are nearly totally not even there anymore.
I had boarded up all my windows, reinforced doors, and removed everything that could move from my yard. I took my 16 foot sailboat off the trailer, placed it on the ground and filled it with water. We had been freezing plastic containers of water for several days. The purpose was to keep a few perishables for a day or two. Electric power went off early in the storm. Millions of residents were without electricity. At my house, we managed the night with handheld flashlights, candles, and some solar powered landscape lights from our yard.
The electric utilities companies throughout the states have an arrangement that is enormously helpful. Nine thousand electrical linemen came from all over the nation to help put our grid back together.
Sure enough the internet was down. It just came back this afternoon. Electricity came back late yesterday afternoon. Whew. We are all happy as a clam to have our air conditioners working again. That's not all. With electric hot water heaters there were cold showers for a few days. Our electric kitchen range and microwave oven was useless so we used the small gas fired bar b que to heat soup or whatever was at hand.
In the aftermath the sound of chain saws is driving me nuts. Thousands of trees are down all over town. Just down the street a large oak tree was uprooted and fell on the cab of a nearly new Ford F150. It is a total loss. Even the wheels were bent. I lost part of a large oak in my backyard. It fell on a concrete wall and damaged the wall. We had only a few deaths locally. One of them a seven year old little girl . The single mom had a small generator running inside the house. Carbon Monoxide from the engines exhaust is deadly. Almost everyone who could get their hands on a generator did so. Almost everyone knows that it is not to be used indoors. Unfortunately not that Mom who is recovering in the hospital.
Three days before the storm the supply of bottled water was gone, No way you could buy a sheet of plywood, Every generator in Florida was sold out. Gasoline was impossible to get except for a few stations where waiting lines would be a quarter mile long. With all that and a lot more we did alright. We will live to see another day.
Thank you much for thinking about me during the dangerous weather event.
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