Hurricanes suck.
Where I live (in NW Florida), we got hit REALLY hard last year with Hurricane Ivan. I personally didn't have any damage but I was without power for almost 9 days. Thankfully, at the time, the temperatures were in the 70's, so it wasn't too bad. But the panhandle of Florida was still severely damaged even now from Ivan. Honestly, a hit from another powerful hurricane is the last thing we need around here. People are still living in FEMA trailers or still have significant damage that hasn't been repaired yet.
Not as much luck this time around with Dennis...
While I sustained no damage to my house or my shed, three sides of my fence are fucked. This is not good when you have four fairly large dogs. But I'm ahead of the the whole "fun" part of my Hurricane story. Allow me to rewind.
I spent Friday preparing my office for the impending storm; getting servers off of the floor; showing people how to secure their PC's; making contingency plans for data backup; standard stuff like that. I had rehearsal Friday night, so I was trying to get everything squared away as quickly as possible so I could get to practice on time (it's a 60 mile round-trip for me).
I get to the bassist's house and he's putting up plywood and doing all of the normal prep work that we've gotten used to doing around here. None of the other guys are there yet, so I start helping him finish up and he has a lot of spare plywood, which he gives me so I can do the same for my place. By the time we get finished, it's obvious that Friday night is just not a good night for us to practice, because everyone needs to get things secured. We call everyone and tell 'em don't bother; we'll figure out our next practice after this shit is over.
The next morning (Saturday), I get up, go to Home Depot to buy some 2x4's, get home and start getting wood up over my windows. My dad calls and asks if I could come give him some help doing the same. "Sure, if you can help me finish mine up..." So he comes over and helps me, then I return the favor (while drinking a fair amount of his beer...). On the way home I made a final stop for necessary supplies; beer, smokes, beer, beer, beer, bread, cheetos, and beer. I get home and finish getting all "possible projectile" items put away, and pulling out all of the flashlights, radios, etc that we might need.
The storm starts rolling in around noon on Sunday. The wind is really picking up and the rain is getting pretty bad. The only window not completely covered is the sliding glass door on the back, so I could let the dogs out and grab a smoke from time to time (I don't smoke in my house). We lose power around 1:30, and about 15 minutes later the full force (125mph) winds are pummeling my area. Trees are bending over; the tin roof on my shed is vibrating like the wind is just trying to get enough of a handhold to peel it right off. Then we hear a God-awful wrenching, crashing sound as we see my neighbor's Steel carport come flying through the air into the trees between our back yards. If not for those trees, it would've sure taken out my shed (and my generator, and gasoline, and a bunch of other stuff). Pretty awesome thing to see actually; it was tossed around like a cardboard box in the breeze.
The wind died off a little about 10 minutes later. So I thought "This is the eye. I've got a few minutes to give a quick look outside and have a cigarette". Besides, with the wood up, I have no idea what the front yard looks like, and that's where the strongest winds were hitting. I go around the side of the house and notice that a big Oak tree in my neighbor's yard on the other side is down on his house. At first I thought it was just laying on the house, but as I cleared the corner, it was obviously MUCH worse. The tree had completely flattened one whole corner of his house; it was the living room area where he and his wife had been riding out the storm.
"Oh shit..." I thought. These folks are in their late 70's and not in the best of health anyway. I scramble up the pile of debris trying see if I can find them. Through the wreckage and the tree branches I can see them huddling in the kitchen on the back of the house. I yell to them to stay put and I will be right there. I run back around to the fence gate between our houses, but another tree has tilted over making the gate impossible to open. I run back to my shed, grab some tools and partially disassemble the gate so I can get it off and get through. But they have some pretty overgrown azalea bushes blocking the way (they never used that gate anyway. Normally they enter/exit the back yard from the gate on the other side of the house. That is unfortunately buried under a 30' Oak tree now). So I run back to my shed to get some hand-held hedge clippers and frantically cut away the foliage so there is a path. I finally get through and rush around the back of the house and get them out and over to my place.
This all happened in about 3 minutes.
Needless to say, they were pretty shaken up. The older fellow had heard the tree hit, snatched up his wife mere seconds before the tree came all the way through the house. The chair she was in was under the tree. Understandably, I cracked open a beer as soon as I sat down; I was pretty wound up at this point too. That beer didn't survive long in my hands at all. It seemed only fitting that a second beer followed soon afterwards in celebration.
About 5 minutes later, the winds started up again, although nowhere near as badly as before and after about 15 minutes, it was pretty much over.
That's the most excitement I've EVER had during a hurricane and frankly, if that never happens again, it wouldn't be too soon.
Then the real fun started; 3 days with no power, a couple of fans, and temperatures in the upper 80's (with a heat index nearing 100 degrees). Miserable...
I'll probably never evacuate; You are always safer in a house than you are in a vehicle during a storm. And with all of the construction in the area, evacuation routes are inadequate at best. I got lucky again. I just hope my luck holds up in case there's another one of these fuckers.
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