Sat, 23 Oct 2004

Hurricane season

  I recently moved to Florida. I rented a truck and trailer and moved everything myself. When I reached Georgia I started to see truckloads of roofing material heading south. I knew Florida had been hit by three hurricanes in a matter of a few weeks. I had no idea just how bad things were.

  I reached my new home late in the afternoon on Friday. I began to unload some stuff from the truck. I was approached by my new neighbor from across the street. She said she would send her husband over to help me when he gets home from work. She also said her son was coming home from school for the weekend and she would send him over to help also. I thanked her and told her that I would not be unloading the whole truck that night. I was only getting what I needed to make it until the next day when my parents my brother and my sister came over to help.

 The next morning my help showed up and we began to unpack. The neighbors never did come over to help. It turns out that they spent the day preparing for another hurricane. They put plywood over the windows and picked up anything in the yard that could be blown around.

  We managed to get the truck unloaded pretty quickly. Quicker than I expected. My father suggested we drop off the truck at the rental center right away. I was so caught up thinking about getting settled that I wasn't even thinking about a hurricane coming. We dropped off the truck and I was thankful. The next day Hurricane Jeanne paid me a visit.

  This was all pretty exciting for me. I was making a change in my life by moving to a new home in a different state. I was also experiencing my first hurricane in a southern state. Living in the north I had seen some hurricanes but they tend to be pretty calm by the time the reach the north. When Jeanne came rolling though, she went to the north of me and the storm wasn't as bad as it could have been. It reminded me of the hurricanes up north.

 In the middle of the storm my doorbell rings. I was a bit surprised. I said the storm was not as bad as it could have been but it was still a hurricane. I went to the door and saw my father standing there. I let him in and asked what he was doing driving in a hurricane. He told me to ask my mother. It turns out that my mother was worried about me being home alone during the storm. I told him he could have just called me on my cell phone. That would not have been good enough for a worried mother living a mile away. I guess she didn't consider the danger of driving in a hurricane.

 Everything went fine and we had very little damage in the area. We didn't even lose power. There were many who were not so lucky.

 A few days ago my parents were going to Biloxi Mississippi. I tagged along for the ride. We made a side trip into a town called Milton. It is in the pan handle of Florida. That area was hit pretty hard by hurricane Ivan a few weeks back. I saw many houses that had tarps for a roof. The roofs were destroyed by the hurricanes and they still did not get paid by the insurance companies or they could not get a roofing company to come fix the roof yet. I also saw mounds of debris. The local ballfields were being used to pile up the trees and branches that were collected. The towns were grinding the stuff up. They could not keep up with the loads coming in and had to start burning the stuff. As we drove along the main road there were signs warning about the smoke. There was no smoke coming across the road when we went through but we could see mounds of stuff waiting to be removed or burned. I have never seen so much debris piled up. There was stuff along the roadsides and about three baseball fields filled up. I thought that was a lot considering it has been a few weeks since the storm.

  It is amazing to see a state that was hit by four hurricanes in about six weeks. This has been an unusual hurricane season and we hope it never gets repeated.

posted at: 13:25 | path: | permanent link to this entry