It's hurricane season
It's now hurricane season officially. Although The Gulf Coast and Florida are assumed to be at the greatest risk when it comes to these storms, other people elsewhere on the east coast ignore them at their own peril. Though it's been a while; DC, New York, Boston, Charleston, Savannah and many more cities have been devastated by them in the past.
I actually have never had to deal with some thing of the scope and scale of a Hurricane Katrina or a Hurricane Andrew, the Category 1 storms I've made it through were awful enough. Though it pains me to quote him, then-governor Jeb Bush remarked in 2004 that "there's no such aspect as a minor storm."
In 2004, Florida got hit through 4, count number 'em, 4 named storms in a little greater than six weeks. Prior to 2004's season, I believed the conventional awareness that it's viable or even preferable to trip out low class storms. Newsflash, the traditional knowledge is a lie.
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| Tropical Storm Bonnie |
It started in August of that year, with a tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico. It smacked into Apalachicola on August 12th as Tropical Storm Bonnie. At that point though, folks here were busy panicking over Hurricane Charley. Hurricane Charley was due to arrive on August 13th and St. Pete Beach was the predicted landfall. That's less than five miles from where I'm sitting now. The county where I live started evacuations on the 11th and like a fool I stayed put. Everyone said that it was going to be a minor storm and so I decided to wait it out.
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| Hurricane Charlie |
I went to mattress on August 12th expecting a class two typhoon to reach the subsequent afternoon. I figured that I would lose electricity and that it would rain loads. When I awoke Friday morning, the Category 2 Charley had became a Category five typhoon over night time. We were nevertheless within the bull's eye at that point and due to the fact that I'd now not evacuated, the option to evacuate changed into gone. The bridges out of right here were closed down the night time earlier than.
I remember walking around and saying good bye to my earthly possessions that morning. I wasn't being hysterical or irrational. I knew that the sustained winds of a Category 5 storm would destroy my home and my neighborhood and that if I were going to survive the day I was going to have to think fast. Talk about a wake up call. My plan was to crawl into my bathtub and then pull a mattress over myself and hope for the best. I knew the windows would shatter and that the roof would probably blow off. I just hoped that the walls would hold. I remember resigning myself to the idea that I was going to have to start over from scratch if I made it through the storm.
At 11am that morning, Hurricane Charley took an unanticipated turn to the right as it tracked up the coast and it wiped Punta Gorda off the map instead of us. The storm passed us by about a 75 miles to the east and because it was such a compact storm, it barely even rained. It was the best let down I ever experienced.
I had a assembly the subsequent week in Fort Myers, just south of wherein Charley made landfall. 30 miles from wherein it got here ashore it appeared like a nuclear bomb had long past off. The trees, the light posts, the billboards, the whole lot that when stood upright become twisted and fallen over at the floor.
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| Hurricane Frances |
The season wasn't done with us yet. Less then a month later, Hurricane Frances ground ashore near Stuart and worked its way across the Florida peninsula. It grazed us as a tropical storm and everyone lost power for a few days. Two weeks after Frances, Hurricane Jeanne hit at Hutchinson Island , two miles away from Stuart. It followed almost the same path across Florida and hit us as a Category 1 storm. Jeanne knocked power for at least a week for a huge number of people. Trees came down, the wind whipped and the rain fell horizontally. Roof shingles and lawn furniture cartwheeled like tumbleweeds.
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| Hurricane Jeanne |
Having disregarded an evacuation order I must have regarded better than to ignore and having ridden out a Category 1 no one saw coming that 12 months was sufficient for me. I toyed very seriously with leaving my loved Florida after that.
All of our experiences in 2004 faded when in comparison with the horror display that was 2005's Katrina. I still get sick after I consider that one.
The point of all this? Mostly it's to urge anybody to take weather bulletins and evacuation orders seriously. Even if you're safely out of the storm area, odds are your region faces some other natural catastrophe. We preserve what are known as hurricane kits at the geared up and that kind of disaster preparedness is a good thing to keep in thoughts for everybody. The St. Pete Times' Hurricane guide this year lists what must move into the correct storm preparedness kit. To wit:
Food and drink
- Drinking water: 1 gallon per person per day.
- Nonperishable food supplies: Enough to see you through the first few days. A severe storm can interrupt delivery of fresh food to stores. You need to be ready to feed yourself until stores restock and reopen.
- Comfort foods to relieve stress (cookies, pastries).
- Toilet paper, paper towels, plates and napkins, plastic tableware and drinking cups, wet wipes, plastic wrap, trash bags.
- Two coolers: one for food, one for ice.
- Manual can opener.
- Flashlight and batteries for each person in your household.
- Light sticks.
- First aid kit with bandages, antiseptic, tape, compresses, pain reliever, antidiarrhea medication, antacid.
- Medications for routine illnesses such as colds.
- Liquid soap, hand sanitizer, wet wipes.
- Water purification kit.
- Two-week supply of vitamins, over-the-counter medications and prescription medicines.
- Fire extinguisher.
- Battery-powered clock.
- Infant necessities: medicine, diapers, formula, bottles, wipes.
- Supplies for the elderly or the ill: Depends undergarments, bed pads, medications, special foods.
- Pillows, blankets, sleeping bags or air mattresses.
- Folding chairs or cots.
- Extra clothing and shoes.
- Personal hygiene items: toothbrush, washcloth, deodorant, etc.
- Food and water.
- Earplugs. Shelters can be noisy, and someone sleeping near you may snore.
- Prescription medications in their original containers. Shelters are not hospitals and do not have access to drugs or medicine. Bring what you need.
- Books, handheld games, cards, toys, needlework, iPod.
- Cleaning supplies: mop, bucket, towels, disinfectant.
- Camera or camcorder to record property and document damage for insurance claims.
- Plastic trash bags.
- Cash. If the power goes out, ATMs will not work and credit card networks will be down.
- Ice.
- Paperwork: insurance policy, identification, home inventory, medical insurance card.
- Cell phone charger for your car. Also have a land-line phone (one that's wired to the wall, not wireless).
- A full tank of gas.
In the meantime, The St. Pete Times has the definitive hurricane guide again this year and you can find it here . And when a weather disaster's building, the best and least sensational source for updates is the National Hurricane Center's website . All they show are cold clear facts and in the panic that surrounds these storms, cold, clear facts are the road to salvation. So chin up, it's hurricane season!