Hurricanes are hard work.
We started preparing for Hurricane Irma on the Sunday, the day before Labor Day. We filled both cars with gas because we heard that the price of gas was going up due to Hurricane Harvey out in Texas. We were so uneasy, watching the footage of the damage and flooding and heartbreak of Houston after Hurricane Harvey. We didn't quite believe that Irma was going to make a visit to us on the west coast of Florida...most of the spaghetti models showed her heading due east towards Miami and up the Eastern coast. But we were still uneasy.
By Tuesday, the models were all over the place, and some showed Irma wobbling westward, so we began to prepare in earnest. Steve went online and ordered a generator, camp led lanterns, and filled our giant water containers with clean water for drinking. Well, the storm was brewing and generators and camp lanterns were hard to come by, so sadly, they would not arrive until after Irma. It was becoming pretty certain that Irma was still a Cat 5 and even if she only hit Miami and the Eastern coast, she was wider than the state of Florida, so we would still have some hurricane force winds to contend with. So I got up very early Tuesday morning and went to Walmart before sun-up and stocked up on non-perishable food items.....tuna pouches, pouches of Swenson Chicken Breast, tins of Spam, Cans of Chili, peanut butter, soda crackers.....stuff like that.
Wednesday evening, I made a trip to the Dollar General store to purchase instant coffee and see if I could find a loaf of bread. Nary a slice of bread nor a bottle of water could be found for purchase in all of Florida. I did manage to find some "Fried Green Tomato" potato chips that I bought for Steve, but he didn't like them. They were merely "okay" but didn't taste like fried green tomatoes in any kind of way.
By Thursday, our Hurricane Disaster Plan was in full-force. Work became a chaotic zoo....trying to track our 78 or so patients and make sure that each and every one had water, medications, a safe place to shelter, and a plan for post-storm electricity-outages for the oxygen and ventilator patients who would require generators to maintain safely. We made copies of every patient's medication profiles and copies of their plans of care.....along with hurricane safety instructions and lists of shelters and we sent out clinicians in every direction to deliver a hurricane folder to each patient. We manned the phones from the time we got to work until the time we left......calling and confirming the plans of each patient so we can find them if the worst of the storm does indeed hit our area. Being responsible for 78 patients and 20 or so staff members' safety is a heavy burden. We tried to think of every possible worst-case scenario and tried to come up with a contingency plan for each "what-if." It was completely exhausting.
By Friday, the threat was eminent.....we had 2 more days to batten down the hatches and the whole state took on a very strange atmosphere. Some of our clinicians had already evacuated, so I was out seeing patients in addition to my work in my office. The day was gloriously sunny, the sky was achingly cerulean blue with fluffy white clouds...the waters in the gulf and the bay were sparkling like millions of gleaming diamonds. We had a good gale sea breeze, but there was no other indication that a beast of a hurricane was headed our way. Except all the gas stations were completely out of gas.....all the tanks covered and closed. Many restaurants and stores boarded up early and closed shop so their employees could evacuate and escape. I made a quick stop at Walgreens for some medicine and some snacks and the lines were long. Sure, folks had already bought up all the bottled water, but people were buying up the ALCOHOL like crazy!!!
I stood in line behind a little lady who had at least 20 bottles of cheap wine in her shopping cart.....along with an assortment of chips and cookies and other junk foods. She said, "Girl! I'm ready for the apocalypse! I won't care what happens outside with all this wine!" And the air in the store was expectant and everyone was chatty and friendly with each other......offering advice and offering to help carry things, let folks with less items in front of them.....it was almost festive....like on Christmas Eve! I fully expected Tiny Tim to jump out and yell, "God Bless us, Everyone!" But that didn't happen. My friend DID overhear a near 80 year old man, standing in line to check-out at Publix.....he had a giant box of condoms and a couple bottles of wine and he announced (rather proudly) "I'm ready for the hurricane! I got my wine, my rubbers, and my weed! What more does a man possibly need?" Indeed. That's Florida for ya.
By Friday evening, we had our patients tucked in as well as we could manage and we had plans in place for everyone. I hurried home after a 10+ hour work-day, now able to turn my focus on getting my OWN home prepared for the storm. As I pulled in the driveway to my house, I saw Steve, already up on the ladder, fastening the first of the Kevlar coverings over the bottom windows of our house. My husband is honestly the hardest working man I know...he had also worked an entire work-day before coming home to tackle the physical labor at our house. He took a quick break so that we could go have some Friday night dinner.....but the only place we could find that was open was Tijuana Flats, which didn't hurt my feelings one little bit! Fully of lovely Mexican food, we came home and decided to get up early and finish our preparations in the morning, as we had until Sunday to get all buttoned up and we were both exhausted from our chaotic work weeks.
We watched as much as we could stomach of the news.......and I must say that there are a few phrases that have worn thin over the last week. I could go a very long, long time without ever hearing such terrifying poetic rhetoric as "Spaghetti Model" ....."Eye-Wall"...... "Cat 5"..... "Total Devastation"...."Irma" ....."Wind Sheer"..."Staring down the Barrel"......"Shelter in place" .... "Storm Surge"....."Costal Flooding" ..... "Hurricane Party"..... "Wipe off the map" .... "Batten Down the Hatches"...and my all-time unfavorite: "HUNKER DOWN." ugh. Just no more of this. My psyche can't take it. I had hurricane-fatigue by Friday night and the storm was still 48 hours out.
We got up at the Tramp-Stamp of Dawn on Saturday morning (which is a term my son coined to mean just a wee-bit earlier than the proverbial "Butt-Crack of Dawn") and I made a huge and hearty breakfast for Steve and a giant pot of steaming, magical coffee for me. We knew the day was not going to be a fun, relaxing weekend day. Steve was up and down the ladder all day.....hanging the Kevlar window coverings. From about 7am until about 10pm, we toiled. We sweated. We worried. We planned. My duties consisted of making baggies of water to put in the freezer that we could use to keep our food cold in the coolers for when we lost power, emptying the ice trays every time they were set with ice (for the same reason), preparing and baking foods we could eat during the power outage (such as muffins, brownies, etc...), brewing a big gallon jug of coffee so I could at least have cold coffee and not turn into a raging caffeine-deprived werewolf during the power-outage.....helping with the window coverings (okay-mostly holding the ladder and passing tools up to Steve, but I did fasten a few of the ones I could reach from the ground)...and last, but certainly not least....carrying every single item from our lanai into the house for safe-keeping during the expected high winds. Every pot of flowers, herbs, lime tree, fern.......every chair, table, lounger.....every pool item, every grill implement.....it was like a giant lanai clearance sale: EVERYTHING MUST GO!!! My living room and dining room looked like a jungle and someone said that all the extra lanai chairs in my dining room looked like I was ready for a baby shower! haha! I also cleaned out our kitchen pantry and made a "safe-place" in case the storm got REALLY bad....swept and Pine-Sol mopped the closet and put down cushions and quilts so we could be as comfortable as possible if we had to be in there for hours on end. I washed every stitch of clothing, towels, and linens we had.....because we had no idea how long we might be without power and we would need to have clean clothes to wear. It was a race against the clock to get it all done. By about 10pm, we still had a few things left to do.....but the storm wasn't supposed to hit until Sunday night....so we figured we had a few hours the next day to finish up. Church for Sunday morning was cancelled. Half the congregation was evacuated to other states...the other half were crazy like us....getting everything as ready as we could.
Sunday morning dawned pearl-gray with gusting winds and misting rain...but it was still hot as blazes and the humidity (and barometric pressure) were unrelenting. The first of the dreaded "outter bands" of Irma were sweeping over. The news was grim. Irma was still a Cat 5 and she was headed for a direct West-Coast of Florida hit. We were under the gun. This was NOT a drill.
We finished up the window coverings......grilled what foods we could to clear the freezer, for we had no idea how long our power would be out....and in the evening, we spent some much needed time resting. With the rest of humanity blocked out by the Kevlar window coverings....our world became tiny and cozy. The winds picked up and the rains got harder....but inside our little cocoon, we were safe, snug, and content. We grilled our supper and then Steve closed the last of the sliding glass doors with the Kevlar. It was official. We were bolted into our house with Kevlar over every opening save the Garage doors....but they are heavy-duty hurricane doors. They would be the only way out of our house until we unbolted the Kevlar. And then.....we waited.
We were a little anxious, not knowing what to expect, but we were never panicked or overly anxious. We had prepared as best we could and felt fairly safe. We had a plan if the storm got really bad, we would crawl into the back of the pantry. We weren't in any flood zones and our house is only 6 years old and was built to very exacting hurricane mitigation standards.
So, we waited. We watched some TV.....although reception was spotty because we don't have cable, we have an antennae and reception is iffy on a sunny day....and we even managed to watch a couple of episodes of "Call The Midwife" on Netflix before the power went out. We shared a bottle of wine and a giant bowl of popcorn and we snuggled up on the couch and the rains came down. Around 10pm, the storm made landfall as a Cat 3 about 3 hours south of us. The worst was expected for us around 2am. The winds picked up steadily throughout the night and right before midnight, we lost power. We lit our flashlights and candles and made our way upstairs. We felt safe enough to sleep upstairs in our bed.....and after the wine and the food.....we actually had no trouble falling asleep. We woke up several times during the night to hear the wind howling and howling and the rain beating against the Kevlar.....but nothing seemed amiss. We awakened about 5am and quickly got dressed. We waiting for daylight so we could see and then we opened the garage doors and stepped out to survey the damage.
To our (very happy) surprise, our bird-cage over the pool and lanai withstood the winds and we had zero structural damage to our house. My truck didn't fit into the garage...but it sustained no damage what so ever. We had 3 trees down in our yard (a small live-oak and 2 oleander trees) and our landscaping flowers/plants took a good beating.....but most everything else was still standing! We were amazed at God's provision and His sheltering hand over us!! The power was still out...so we transferred all perishable food items from the fridge and freezer to our coolers (we had them washed and at the ready beside the fridge for just such an exercise) and packed everything in with the giant baggies of frozen solid ice. Steve started removing the Kevlar from the windows and doors because without power, it was stifling hot in the house and the Kevlar blocked all of the breezes. There was a steady, cooling breeze blowing all day....but to take advantage of it, we had to get those window coverings off. We worked all day Monday, taking down the coverings and I took everything back OUT to the lanai that had been stored in the living room and dining room....all the plants, the furniture, the chairs, the gardening tools, sundial, lemon tree...cushions....everything. It was another unbearably hot and sweaty work-day. The pool was overflowing with about 6-8 additional inches of water....and the water was ice-cold....but after working like a mad-woman all afternoon, we got into the icy water and it felt heavenly and refreshing!!! Never had I appreciated jumping in cold water more!!
After we were finally cooled down and all the windows were open, we were able to sit out on the lanai under the shelter and enjoy the breezes. We still couldn't leave the house (nothing was open anyway......there were downed power lines everywhere...no one in the whole county had power).....so there was still an almost magical sense of being locked away from the world! Just the two of us (and Sophie, of course) and we sat together quietly and read, we talked, we laughed....and just thoroughly enjoyed being together without distractions of TV or homework or work or anything. If only we could bottle that magical essence (without the power outage and all the sweaty, back-breaking work part)! We felt extremely blessed, we were able to use our phones to access the internet and let family and friends know we were safe and we got the stunning news that Irma had lost a lot of steam, was only a Cat 1 when she came through our area and at the last minute, took a jig eastward to safe us from the worst of the destruction!! Talk about feeling humbled and so very, very thankful!! It could have been so much worse. The pictures of the damage in the Florida Keys were heart-breaking. We are soooo very blessed.
It took more than a week to find all of our evacuated patients. But our lives were quickly back into our usual routines. My heart aches for the folks less fortunate than us....and I am praying for them daily.
