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Sunset, Saturday September 9th, two nights before Irma passed over us.
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Edward began taking stock of our hurricane supplies and making a list of all the things we would need to do before the storm got to us. Each item depended on her track, the predictive models and that seat of pants experience of having lived in a hurricane prone region for the last 30 years, or in Edward's case almost his whole life.
We made the decision early in the week we were staying. Irma was targeting Florida’s east coast, we didn’t expect too bad a storm over here on the Gulf-side of the peninsula. The worst of the weather would be in the right front quadrant, in this case to the NE of the storm. We would be to the NW, were the winds would be north to south, a good direction for us.
We didn’t feel rushed. Tuesday evening, we went out for gas and filled the Rav’s tank. We decided not to take the gas jugs. That decision turned fateful, as gas supplies in this area quickly ran out. But by Thursday, it didn’t look like we were going to get any more before the storm got to us. I speculated that it was a combination of the refineries in Texas being off-line from the impact of Hurricane Harvey two weeks earlier, and the news reports from St Thomas beginning to get through. People were taking this storm very seriously. That was both the good news and the bad.
As the week progressed things looked grimmer. With each day, the track nudged further westward until Irma was pointed solidly at us. Edward has a mantra: if the storm is pointed at you 5-days out you’re probably fine. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it doesn't matter. Edward’s list grew larger. He kept adding things that needed to be done, assigning a day for the decision to execute, or stand down, for each one. But there was no standing down. Irma was as determined to pay us a visit as we were to be ready for her.
Irma Comin’!
This time of year, we let the stock in our freezers get low. Should we get a storm, we wouldn't have that much to lose if the power was out for an extended period of time. We keep a stock of empty juice bottles in the garage rather than buying bottled water or special containers. The smaller 1.5 liter bottles are a perfect size to freeze, giving us both ice, and later, water. We started freezing those bottles, two at a time, on Tuesday. It takes about 24 hours to freeze a 1.5 jug of water. The ice maker was already going. That takes about 48 hours to make a 2 gallon ziplock bag of ice cubes.
In 2004 when Ivan set his sights on us, we bought plywood for the windows. Ivan was the third storm of four that would threaten Florida that year. I'd been to a number of hurricane conferences and seen many of the products available for protection from wind driven debris. One product, PlyLox, seemed perfect for us. They required no drilling when installing the boards. It wasn’t until Jeanne threatened the state 2 weeks later that we measured the sills, cut our boards, and covered the windows. We stored those boards in the garage in anticipation of future storms. In 2008 we had new windows installed, windows that were rated for hurricane force winds. Two years ago we considered getting rid of that plywood. But no, we thought, if we get a Category Three storm we'll likely put them up. They'd be extra protection for the windows themselves, while the strength of the widows were what would protect the house. Irma was looking more and more like she was going to make us very glad we still had those boards.
On Friday morning I took the gas jugs with me on my way to work. There was a chance there would be gas available. The first place I stopped had signs taped to their pumps, but people seemed to be getting gas. Instead of saying they were out, the signs read they only had “regular". Works for me. I filled the two 5.5 gallon jugs after topping off the Rav’s tank. Now we had extra gas.
"We’re Screwed"
On Saturday morning the models could not have been worse. Irma was staying stubbornly pointed right at us. The predicted track would place the storm directly over us at 2:00 am Monday morning. She was expected to swing a little westward and thus stay strong over the Gulf, before making landfall just south of us. A landfall which would not weaken her much before getting here. Winds were expected to be between 130–155 mph.
By Saturday afternoon we are almost ready. We were finished, save the last few boards and the sliding glass door. We still weren't sure what we were going to do there, we had a few ideas, but nothing definitive. We filled the three liter juice bottles and we set them on the counter to wait for the storm. We’d photographed the house, inside and out, and laid out each account statement so we would have pictures with all the important numbers if we needed them after the storm. The computers had already been back up and shut down, with the hard drives in ziplocks in a Go-Bag. I even went through my jewelry box, picking out those pieces I didn't want to live without. We got out all the flashlights, lanterns and batteries and set them were we could get to them easily. All of the outside furniture and plants had been moved into the garage. Edward had the cooler set out and ready to be stocked before we lost power. There wasn’t much more to do.
Mike called about mid afternoon. He wanted to let us know he was still several hours away from finishing his preparations, but he'd be over later that night, as his evacuation zone was required to be out by that evening.
We had two options for what it do next. Nap or go help. It really wasn't a question, and we descended on Mike and Julie with work cloths on and work gloves in hand. We didn't even warn them we were coming, we just showed up. They were working on covering their front windows. The rest of the house already had metal shutters installed. Mike was cutting 3/4 inch plywood with a small circular saw that wasn't quite up to the task. So I went back to the house to get our saw, while Edward and Mike finished up the master bath window. Julie moved inside to finish packing what she needed to go stay with her mother. It didn’t take too much longer to cover the last windows, and from a piece of Mike's scrap shutter track we found the solution for our sliding glass doors. When Mike arrived that night, he helped us get the doors covered. We were done and about a ready as we could be.
With the house secure on Sunday there wasn't much to do but wait. We cooked the last of our eggs for breakfast and about noon we made a spaghetti dinner. We figured we'd loose power about 6:00 pm so eating early was a better plan. I walked the neighborhood mid-afternoon in a light rain. Irma had already made landfall at Marco Island as a Category Three storm. It was breezy, but the storm was still several hundred miles south. The world was eerily quite, save a few brave souls venturing out, or finishing preparations.
The lights began to flicker around 8:00 pm. Edward turned the AC off about 9-9:30 pm after having turned it down earlier in the day. At one point we were betting on when we would loose power. Our friends on Facebook even got in the game. We all made sure that everything had a place. No point in trying to find that important item you'd misplaced in the dark. The lights finally went out at 11:30 pm. I remember many, many times in the past as lights go out, being plunged into complete darkness, our eyes used to bright lights. We all had flash lights at hand, but as I looked up, I could see Mike and Edward do the same, each lit by their device of choice.
From there the wind only got stronger. We have four large oaks in front, seven pines, and various smaller varieties in the rest of the yard. We couldn't seen them bend with the wind. We couldn't see anything. But there was one big difference in this storm. We had cellular contact with the rest of the world. We watched the radar, checked the models, and texted our very own hurricane expert during the night. We could track the eye of the storm as she moved northward. Irma had stayed inland after landfall, but she was still strong and dangerous.
It was during the height of the storm that Mara decided to make an appearance. She had been under the bed the entire day. At about midnight she came out, settling on the table between the three of us. A little while later she wandered over to the sliding glass doors and wanted to be let out on the porch, as if nothing much more then a summer thunderstorm was raging outside.
By 1:00 am the eye of the storm was nearly due east of us. She was weaker than the early Sunday morning predictions had estimated she’d be when she got here. She was a weak Category Two, or strong Category One. We debated the location of her eye, and I thought we were getting some of the eye wall winds. But most of the rain was out in front of the storm, making the exact center hard to pinpoint. The strong winds still were coming in bursts, but Edward was considering giving up and going to bed when came the text from across town. "Big tree in front uprooted and landed on the garage - came through roof". Everyone was ok, including their neighbor, whose house also took it worse than their garage. Amazingly, they still had lights. We were all wide awake again and we were going to be up for a while longer.
We finally gave up around 2-2:30 am. We all slept in our cloths that night, in case we needed to get up in a hurry.
Daybreak
Dawn was about an hour away when we got up. We went out the garage door and inspected the yard. There were tons of tiny branches down, but only a few big ones. We could see there was no damage to, and no branches on, the roof. All our trees were upright. It was breezy with a light rain. The worst of the storm had passed.
We went back inside and got something to eat while it started to get light. We took down the shutters on the front door and then went for a walk. That's when we saw the tree down about 200 ft south of us, a 50 ft sycamore lying on its side. It had fallen away from the house and the cars had been parked away from the driveway. The only thing it hit was the road.
We checked Heather and Trent's house then walked down to the front of the neighborhood to check on the roads. People were already out and driving even though the curfew had not yet been lifted. Many people were out checking their property. Most called greetings and asked if everything was OK. Most folks had come through just fine. Mike’s house was fine too, only having lost a few shingles and having a small tree blow over.
In the end, we came through the storm without any damage. We spent two mornings cleaning up the yard and an afternoon cutting up the small tree that blew over in Mike's yard. We were only without power for 4.5 days. Others in the county got their power back 7 or 10 days later. We didn't loose food, thanks to Mike's loan of the generator after his power was restored.
Others were not as lucky, like our friend with the crushed garage, or my colleague with a branch through her roof.
Edward did more work than I did both in prep and cleanup. He also got to sit at home after the storm with no AC, tending the generator. He deserves a medal for that. I went back to work on Wednesday, where there was power and AC.
Things could have been much worse. A few days after the storm we drove through the park behind the house. Park personnel were clearing a section of the trail of debris. As we drove by, we noticed several large pine trees had been snapped off 6-12 feet above the ground. The only thing that does that are severe straight-line winds, or a tornado. Those could have been our trees. That could have been our yard. They could have landed on our roof.
Irma is a storm that will go into the history books. She was one of three Category Four or stronger storms to make landfall in the US and its territories in the same year, something that’s never happened before. As we watched Irma approach we couldn’t help be think back to another 2004 hurricane. Charley had moved into the Gulf as a Category Two storm before explosively intensifying to a Category Four in just three hours. Charley was also headed right for us. Fortunately for us, he turned inland sooner than predicted, sparing the Tampa Bay area. In hind site, we were not prepared for Charley. Had he stayed on his predicted course we would have had significant damage. Irma's deviation from her predicted track was subtler, but had a greater effect. By making landfall in Marco Island, rather than Port Charlotte or Madeira Beach, she weakened enough to take away some of her punch. By passing east of us we also avoided some of the heaviest rain and strongest winds. And while we considered ourselves ready for Irma, there is no telling what would have been different if she had maintained full strength out over the Gulf before getting here. To say we we lucky is a bit of on understatement. Yet lucky we were. Things could have been much, much worse.
I don’t think we’ll forget Irma anytime soon. It had been 11 days from the time we started preparing for her arrival to the time we were finished cleaning up and our power was restored. But we weren’t done yet. Edward and I spent the next week accessing what we did right and what could use improvement. Neither of us felt we were unprepared, nor did we feel caught off guard. Even so we decided that now, while we were thinking about it, was a good time to update a few supplies and replace some that failed in order to be ready for the next one, which may not have been long in coming. Maria was already following closely in Irma's tracks and we wanted to be ready in case she, too, determined that Florida was the hot spot to be in the Summer of ’17.
