HURRICANE IRMA: BEFORE, DURING, AFTER, AND A REVIEW OF OUR HURRICANE PREP.

Hurricane Irma has come and gone. In her path, much of Florida lies broken, powerless, and flooded. 

You can get those details from the news.

This Pure Florida post is about what we did here at PFHQ.

We'll cover what worked, what was genius, what was last minute, and what could have been done better.

This is PFHQ. Built in 1989, she has weathered multiple tropical cyclones including the amazing season of 2004.

She sits in a clearing, that is maybe a half acre of open space. 

The rest of PFHQ's 10 acre square is mostly Oak and Pine forest... mostly Oaks.

The older oaks in this forest are approximately 80 years old based on a few storm casualties that I have cut up over the years.

During high wind events, the encircling forest of very tall oaks sway wildly, but in doing so, they are absorbing much of the wind energy.

The result is that while standing on the porch during tropical systems, you may feel only a brisk breeze.

I give these trees all the credit for the fact that PFHQ has never had as much as a knick from decades of storms.

 Mr. Majestyk, the giant live oak that sits in front of and over parts of PFHQ is my only tree worry, but so far, so good.

He is "danger close", but we love him.

HURRICANE TIP NUMBER 1:

STOCKPILE WATER IN EVERY CONTAINER AVAILABLE.

Spotlessly clean containers should be filled with clean water and labeled if you are hosting family, etc. No one should be bucket flushing a toilet with potable water. 

Also, make it clear to your fellow refugees what your rules are for dipping water out of said containers. 

I chose one stainless steel pot with a long handle to be the official dipper.

 As I write this, it is Wednesday, 13 August 2017.

The ice chest of clean water above is just now empty after I allowed myself the luxury of a soup pot full of gas stove heated water for the first "shower" since Saturday.

I still have a second ice chest filled with potable water and the 60 gallon barrel below is still untapped.

Every year, at the beginning of hurricane season, I clean and refresh this barrel of water. The barrel is food grade and the top has a rubber gasket that completely seals it from bugs, tree frogs, geckos, etc.

Before I screw down the top I toss in a cap full of Clorox bleach.

So, here I am days after the storm, still without power 

re-connection, but drinkable water is not a concern.

I watched people in Walmart before the storm, frantically shoving water jugs in their carts, and was glad that wasn't me.

HURRICANE TIP NUMBER 2:

HAVE 5 GALLON BUCKETS ON HAND FOR TOILET FLUSHING. PLACE ONE IN EACH BATHROOM.

Unlike in the city, when our power goes out, we lose our well pump, which means we lose our water supply.

 Above is a small sample of my non-potable water storage that I assembled before Irma's arrival. 

This is basically flush water, so no worries about water quality here.

HURRICANE TIP NUMBER 3:

HAVE A GOOD SET OF BATTERY POWERED TOOLS, ETC.

I am TOTALLY a Ryobi One+ system guy. Ryobi has over 50 devices that run on the same powerful, rapid charging batteries.

I only boarded my most vulnerable windows, but the job was a breeze with my Ryobi tools.

 Speaking of breezes...

After the hurricane passes and things calm down, Florida returns in all her hot, humid glory. 

Only, now you have no air-conditioning.

Get this!

This powerful fan has been a night-time sleep lifesaver!

A little thing like this can make all the difference.

I actually bought this a few years ago to take camping, but it has been worth it's weight in gold this week.

 Spend a little extra and get the hybrid model. That way you can run on the battery below or plug it in if you have a generator running.

I use it in the shop to blow dust from my saw out the door.

This is useful year-round, not just during a hurricane. 

This larger battery will power that fan on high all night.

Nuff said ... Ryobi Rules.

Our power went out around 9:30 am on the day of the storm. At the time it was barely breezy and the storm was hours away.

When it came on after a half hour or so, I decided to gamble.

All I needed was about 3-4 hours to cook the thawing frozen turkey in the ice chest. 

Worst case scenario, the power goes out and we grill the bird.

So I went for it and we had a complete meal of roast turkey, rice and gravy, and green beans. 

Plus brownies courtesy of Liz after she got home from managing evacuation shelters.

HURRICANE TIP NUMBER 4: When you are buying bags of ice pre-storm, consider buying a frozen turkey. Double bag it in garbage bags to prevent any chance of leaking in the ice chest. Then let the frozen turkey help keep things cold in the chest as it slowly thaws.

Refrigeration and food all in one package.

Rob, full of turkey dinner with Ollie.

Somehow, on the day before the arrival of Irma, Liz got word of a shipment of generators coming to Green's Outdoors in Trenton. She called, we discussed, ($799...ugh). We had never had long term power outages here, but ... this storm was still forecast to be a 3 as it went over... So we got it.

To Green's credit, their price was not storm inflated, but exactly the same on several online sites.

It is running right now as I write this, in the kitchen, sitting on an ice chest that now contains more liquid than solid water.

HURRICANE TIP NUMBER 5:

DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE STORM IS 24 HOURS AWAY TO LOOK FOR A GENERATOR...ALTHOUGH ONE COULD JUST DROP INTO YOUR LAP (the way mine did), YOU SHOULD NOT COUNT ON THIS HAPPENING.

HURRICANE TIP NUMBER 6:

YOU CAN'T HAVE ENOUGH LIGHT SOURCES!

(AND BATTERIES)

Headlamps are indispensable in my book. Also, get some of these tiny LED lights.

 They work forever it seems and are super bright for their size. 

Plus ...

They have a tiny magnet on the back so you can stick 'em all over the place like dark bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, etc.

I already had these in the house and they were so handy.

That's me, a little tired, but happy after firing up the

 Generac 5.0 generator.

The house is dark except for the kitchen which has become a command center of sorts. 

The generator is powering freezer, fridge, lamp, computer, Ryobi battery charger, coffee maker, and phone charger at the moment. 

It could do much more, but that is all that is needed currently.

Post hurricane season task:

 1. Buy tiny trailer kit from Harbor Freight.

 2. Build generator shed on trailer...thank you Pinterest.

3.Contact electrician to install a proper whole house outside generator plug.

That will get rid of this spaghetti mess.

Before the generator was unboxed and started, no one was allowed to open the fridge or freezer. Based on prior experiences, the power had never been off here for more than 24 hours. 

We were hoping that kept closed, these two devices could stay cold enough to save our food by the time power was restored.

Once the generator was turned on, normal access returned and the first thing I did was make a chef's salad. 

My body was craving something green after going without.

I pretty much inhaled that salad.

Gas lines...

Be nice.

Wait your turn.

Thank the cops who are dealing with thousands of frustrated drivers.

Trees...

Here's a tree just waiting to kill or injure someone.

The tree has split and very large limbs are propped up by limbs on the ground and the fork of a nearby tree.

I will study this one carefully before I ever start the saw. The basic plan is to slowly nibble away pieces until it settles to the ground.

If you just charge in with chainsaw roaring, you could be severely injured or worse.

Speaking of chainsaws, did you think to fill up the oil mixed chainsaw gas can and test run your saw before the storm?

Storm cleanup is unfun, hot, and tiresome. The excitement of the storm has passed, the power is still out, stores are closed, gas is hard to find, people may be grouchy.

It's a pisser for sure.

In the midst of all the temporary hardship and disruption, don't forget how lucky you are and what is really important.

A Guy With A JEEP And A Chainsaw ... And About 8 Elves PART 2 OF HURRICANE MATTHEW

So, where were we ... oh yes,... I was at Mom's in St. Augustine, the worst part of Hurricane Matthew had just passed and ... the phone rang.

It was my wife, Liz.

She, Emma, and Kyle were on their way south to Tampa. My daughter Katy's blood pressure was 210/114 and she was being admitted into the hospital.

The baby might have to come now ... 7 weeks early.

All my other hurricane plans, staying with Mom for the aftermath and cleanup, helping her get through days without power, helping her neighbors, ... ALL of that crashed to the ground around me.

I got myself together and broke the news to Mom, while apologizing profusely.

She said, "Go! Don't worry about me, Terry will come over."

Everything I had unpacked the day before, was packed up,  tossed into the JEEP, and I was off again.

The view driving out of Mom's neighborhood.

At I-95 and State Road 16, I hesitated.

I-95 traffic or CR-208?

208 is a country road through some pretty low, possibly flooded piney flatwoods.

I chose 208, the road less traveled, and that made all the difference.

The narrow 2-lane road west was clear with puddles and downed trees along the road, but none on it.

A few minutes and I was turning on to 13-A, and in no time I was at Molasses Junction. I continued on 13-A , driving past flooded farm fields that looked like vast shallow lakes.

The JEEP was making good time with nothing more challenging than some road ponding when I came to a bend in the road and the scene below.

Are you kidding me?

A good sized sweetgum tree, multi-trunked, long and lean, lay across the road blocking both lanes.

In my rush, I considered just going around it. I sure as hell did not want to backtrack.  This was a time sensitive mission to get to my daughter ASAP.

That option, going around it, turned out to be NOT an option ... even in a JEEP.

The guardrails that the tree rested on were there for a reason.

Almost directly beneath where the tree lay, a hurricane fueled creek was full and rushing to the nearby St. Johns River.

Crapowski!!!

And then ... it hit me.

In the back of the JEEP sat a Husky chainsaw, oil, and gas. The Husky had sat there all this time, patiently waiting to help in the post-Matthew cleanup.

I'm sure the poor thing thought it had missed its chance to help out, since I was rushing back so unexpectedly.

And yet, Sara N. Dippity had intervened and that Husky was exactly the thing to save the day at this moment.

I shut off the JEEP, got out, put on a pair of work gloves, fueled the Husky, and fired it up.

I began to cut the tree, working down from the smaller canopy branches on the right.

As I sawed in those first few minutes, my plan was to just clear one lane since time was of the essence here.

It was a big tree and I could be here an hour completely clearing it.

I could get through that way and so could other people if they just took turns.

And then ... through the branches, I saw a white van pull up on the other side of the tree. 

Without saying a word, two guys got out and started pulling branches off the road as I cut.

Yeah baby!

I gave them a thumbs up and kept cutting.

I was focused on my cutting as the Husky went through the wood like it was ... well wood. You thought I was going to say "butter", didn't you?

Ever use a chainsaw to cut butter?

Exactly, ... just know that this chainsaw rose to the occasion in high fashion.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw branches moving away to my right, but my two helpers were in plain view to my left.

I glanced behind me and two other cars had stopped to help.

One older guy and a handful of 20-somethings were grabbing branches as fast as I could cut them.

We smiled at each other, but no words were exchanged over the roar of the chainsaw.

I kept an eye on them, but they had the good sense to stay away from the saw zone until I moved on. As soon as I did, that branch went over the guard rail.

It was like a small swarm of ants dissecting a dead grasshopper that was too big to move intact.

"...work, work, work, work, work, work ..."

As I moved down the tree, where the diameter was increasing along with the weight of each piece, I began cutting shorter chunks that could be easily managed by my helper elves.

In 15-20 minutes, we had that entire roadway cleared.

It was a beautiful thing.

The view after our team effort.

After the last cut, I shut off the chainsaw, and we all spoke for the first time.

I thanked the van guys who hopped in their vehicle and drove off with a thumbs up.

The "kids" who had worked so hard were still there and I turned to them and said, "YOU GUYS WERE AWESOME!"

One of them, a redhead with a beard said, "Hey, we came around the corner and there was this guy with a JEEP and a chainsaw, so we had to help!"

With the way now open, we all went back to our vehicles and moved on.

I just couldn't stop smiling.

This simple event, a bunch of strangers helping each other fix one thing in a storm that broke so MANY things, things that will be broken for a long time to come, was just the positive energy I needed to ease the worry for my daughter and unborn grandchild.

I cruised past many downed trees blocking parts of the 2-lane farm roads before I hit Highway 207 with its 4 lanes heading west.

Some of those downed trees were off limits, leaning against power lines, but most were safe for cutting and I yearned to get out and cut them away, but I had to keep moving.

When I arrived home hours later, I unloaded the chainsaw and gas, and grabbed a few hours of sleep. 

Early the next morning, I headed south to St. Joseph's Womens Hospital in Tampa ... where my Katy waited in the Intensive Care part of the maternity unit...

Part Three:
TURN AROUND GO BACK, ... WAIT... COME BACK, ... BABY.

Going To Meet Hurricane Matthew

Wednesday

On Wednesday, October 5 (my anniversary) it was painfully obvious that not only was Hurricane Matthew going to impact St. Augustine, it was going to do so as a powerful 3-4 storm.

I was at work when the cone of uncertainty's newest change answered the question I had been pondering.
Will it miss St. Augustine ... and my Mom. Miss Charlotte the school secretary (and master of pretty much all things) urged me to hurry up and get over there when I let her know a sub would be needed..."You should go now."

Thursday

I dawdled a little on Thursday morning, but finally got the JEEP loaded with hurricane pre/post items and hit the road.

Let's see, miscellaneous hand tools, work gloves, chainsaw gas, 2-cycle oil for chainsaw, chainsaw bar oil, chainsaw, ryobi drill/driver set, large new tarp just in case a roof issue develops, boots, glocks, regular gas in a 2 gallon can for the JEEP if needed... anticipating shortages, old sneakers, headlamp and flashlight, batteries for same, protein bars, apples, jug of iced tea (unsweetened of course), clothes, etc...and then I left.

Leaving from my house (west coast) and driving to the east coast during the approach of a hurricane and the associated evacuation was interesting. 

The weather was already cloudy and  blustery... you really feel gusts in a Jeep.

By the time I got to Gainesville, signs of gas shortages were pretty common. Many stations had darkened pumps and yellow bags on pump handles.  If a station still had gas, crowds of cars were lined up waiting their turn. 
Some had police officers supervising the scene.
That gas scenario would replay in every town I passed through.

I was glad I had topped my tank off in Chiefland and planned to try to top it off again once it dropped to 3/4 full ... if I could find gas by then.

The 2 gallons in the back (about 40-50 miles in my 4 cylinder JEEP) gave me some comfort.

Gainesville was Gainesville of course, so traffic slowed there. As I left Gatorville, the flow of traffic changed to a pattern that would remain consistent for the rest of the voyage.

The opposing west bound lanes were stacked with cars all evacuating the east coast while my east bound lane was practically empty.

 Here's the view from the crest of the bridge in Palatka. 

The traffic flow seems a little unbalanced.

I'm about 35 miles from St. Augustine at this point.

Closing the hurricane shutters as the rain begins.

I arrived at Mom's around 2:30 pm. When I quizzed her about her supplies,it looked to me like she might need a few more nonperishable items for a post electricity world ... I was sure we would lose power at some point.

So, I dashed to the nearby Publix, hoping it would be open. Everything on the way out was shut down, but Publix came through.

Publix WAS open, but it was also empty of just the sort of items I was after. Long stretches of empty shelves were stark evidence that everyone else had wanted the same items.

Not a single jar of peanut butter or jelly could be found.

Just an observation, but the current "Just in Time" shipping strategy shows it's weakness in times of disaster.
Just sayin'.

The deli was stripped of any easy to transport prepared food like sandwiches and fried chicken.

In the bakery, I grabbed the last two french bread loaves.  My late to the party scavenging yielded some lunchmeat, some Belvita bars, apples, bananas,EXTRA toasty Cheezits, chips etc.

Back at the house, I started folding out the hurricane shutters and locking them down.

The shutters were added about 15 years ago after a bad storm. I remember at the time being amazed that my Dad would spring for such an investment after decades of just toughing it out during blows ...after all, this was a man who, with his buddy Buck Andreu, used a sheet and a bicycle during Hurricane Dora to sail down the street in front of our house.

Those shutters may sit there for years unused, but the ease of activation (compare to cutting and screwing in plywood), and the solid armoring up over the windows made them priceless. 

Mom's 1957 concrete block house, sensibly back from the ocean, with glass windows covered in metal shutters, was ready and felt a little like a fortress... a really dark fortress.

Thanks Dad.

With the house locked and loaded, Mom and I settled down for a sandwich as the winds began to howl.

At 11:30, about the time I went to bed, the wind was a constant howling noise punctuated by knocks and thuds as branches, pine cones, and the neighbors cats blew through the yard.

Friday Morning

In the morning, with the storm center still about 100 miles south, Mom's 60 foot tall 80 year old pines were swaying and swooshing constantly. I didn't really think these taproot anchored titans would fall, but IF they did, they would slice right through the roof.
This was not a gullywasher rain event, at least not in Mom's neighborhood. 
Matthew's rain continued with a steady, light fall that rarely varied all day.

Sometimes it was sideways in the gusts, but it was mostly set on medium flow I guess.

We never saw that thunderous big drop tropical downpour that I love so much.

Just as well, because the Atlantic would soon rise up and pour across the seawalls on both sides of the Bridge of Lions.

St. Augustine was about to get more water than it could handle. Marshland filled in decades ago and now hosting densely built neighborhoods were about to be reclaimed by the sea.

We didn't experience any flooding due to our location up-slope and  about a mile west of the nearest estuary, the San Sebastion River.

Around 10:00 am, the lights flickered during a strong gust, there was a loud bang, and the power went out.

It would not come on again for 3 days.

With the shuttered house now powerless and tomb-like, I suggested we set up two rocking chairs on the back porch and watch the storm as long as it was safe to do so.

Mom was totally game for that.

We spent the day that way, chatting over Cheezits, and ooh-ahhing at the powerful wind gusts like spectators at a Fourth of July fireworks show.

In case you're wondering, not once did we hear thunder or see lightning.

Around 12 noon, I heard a bird chirping so loud that I thought a nest had blown out of a tree and I went out searching for it in the blowing rain.

When I got back to the porch, soaked and windblown, I saw the singer ... a tiny tufted titmouse looking for the missing birdfeeders that should be hanging from the grapefruit tree.

(We took them down for storm prep.)

This bird was HANGRY!

So I dashed out with some bird seed on a tray and set it on the ground.

That's all it took and the missing squirrels and birds, all wet and bedraggled looking, came out of the bushes to feed.

Around 3 pm, the winds, which had been coming from the east all day, switched over to the west, and I knew the storm center was north of us and we would soon be out of the woods.

By five, we knew we had dodged the bullet with no damage to any structures. I was already anticipating the next day's yard cleanup work.

And then the phone rang...

Hermine, A Restaurant Called 83 WEST, and The Cedar Key Spirit

The JEEP view on the way out to Cedar Key the day after Hermine passed by. This is State Road 24 as it cuts through Cedar Key Scrub State Preserve.

Levy county is mostly flat, so much of the heavy rainfall had nowhere to go. We are mostly undeveloped also, so rainfall amounts that would be a disaster in much of Florida, caused much less damage here ... and unlike paved over Florida, it soaked into the ground and replenished local aquifers.

On the way out to Cedar Key, the perpendicular side roads that meet State Road 24 seemed more river than road.

Cedar Key and the nearby islands are relic sand dunes from a much larger and drier ice age Florida. They are mostly just high enough to be called islands with very little true "high ground".  The Cedar Key School is one of those "higher" (it's all relative...) sites, so folks brought their boats and trucks here to ride out the storm surge.

This was a common site after the storm. Trees, limbs, and also people's furnishings were lined up along most streets.

83 WEST ... this is the building that was front and center of the Weather Channel Cedar Key coverage during Hermine. The camera was located to the left of this picture near the boat ramp and streamed dramatic footage of 83 WEST and the rest of Dock Street as Hermine battered the town. 

At one point that evening, the remotely mounted Weather Channel camera was taken out by a piece of decking from 83 WEST, ... as if to say, "Enough! Enough of broadcasting our pain to the world!"

You might wonder, "What's it like to be a young, professionally trained chef whose first restaurant is gutted and battered by a hurricane just a few months after the grand opening?"

If you are Chef Jordan Keeton, the answer is not anger and depression, it's an all positive, let's get this mess cleaned up and get back to work cooking and serving great food.

(Personally ... I can't wait until they are serving pickle fries again.)

Disclaimer: Jordan's family and my family are very close, and we think of them as extended family, and once upon a time, Chef Jordan was just a kid in my science class at Bronson High, as were his sister and brother.

So there, you can filter for bias, but you would've seen the same attitude if you were there during the cleanup.

Everyone bustling around the poor battered building had that kind of attitude post-Hermine.

 In fact, that positive, "Let's fix this" attitude was everywhere on Cedar Key.

In the immediate aftermath, Chef Jordan had food that needed to be used, so we took home a giant chub of ground beef, bags of lettuce, fruit,some onions, cheese, buns, etc.

My wife Liz transformed these into many pans of Ziti, salad, garlic bread, and sweet cake ... which we took back to 83 WEST the next day to feed the helpers, and ANYONE who stopped by and needed a meal.

We fed over 60 people that day.

I was one of them and yes, it was delicious.

Hermine's storm surge and wind-whipped waves stripped away the deck planking and tossed valuable restaurant equipment into the Gulf.

When I first arrived on the day of the food, I was looking out a hole in the wall where glass windows had been while 2 guys with masks and snorkels felt around in the murk for sunken equipment. 

These 2 strangers, who described themselves as commercial divers, had arrived with mask and snorkels to help out.

I was peering over the shoulder of a teenaged helper, watching them, when one of the "divers" said to the teenager, "Hey, we need someone to carry stuff over to the seawall as we find it. Get your ass in the water."

The kid hesitated and I stepped up, "I'll do it".

Now, of all the jobs to be done that day, if this had been on some kind of list... I would have fought for it.

Somehow, leaving home with tools and chainsaw, it never occurred to me that recovering things from the water was a need. 

Duh.

So, I stepped out on to the stripped joists, and lowered myself down into the Gulf.

For the next few hours, as the "divers" found stuff,(with their feet mostly), I toted a wide variety of things over to the seawall, where I lifted them up to other helpers, like Raymond Hood.

In the picture above, the divers had found a trove of beer bottles that had been washed overboard.

Some things we recovered: beer, large table umbrellas from the deck tables, heavy umbrella anchors, tables, glass panes from the windows, a large commercial smoker, hurricane panels, kitchen scales, and other restauranty stuff.

For a moment during this watery work, after I had banged my shins about 20 times on old oyster-studded submerged pilings invisible in the murk,  ... just for a moment, I pondered the fact that this water, only a few days after the storm was probably flavored with a good dose of sewage overflow.

It's pretty common for sewage systems to be overloaded with water during this kind of storm.

So yeah ... after you're in it, wadda ya gonna do?

This ladder has a Raymond at both ends. 

How cool is that?

I'm at the distal end, and Raymond Hood is at the proximal end.

The ladders had been chained down during the storm and we were bringing them inside where they could be useful.

So there you have it, just a snapshot of things that were going on ... and are still going on all over Cedar Key as this amazingly close-knit community pulls together to heal from Hermine.