And A Hurricane….

Can we just call call 2020 over yet? I’m sitting here typing in the dark, babysitting for my neighbor’s daughter. My husband is off trying to find gasoline to power our generator- he heard that there is some at a gas station about 10 miles from here, and rushed to fill up before they run out too.

I should start at the beginning, right? So last Friday (which seems like a million years ago at this point) my husband sent me a text with a tropical depression on it. I was with my mom, and showed it to her. It was heading in her direction, so I offered them shelter at my house. We were all watching- at that point, it was headed towards low-lying New Orleans. My parents live pretty close to there. And then it moved east, and east again. Monday my parents said they were coming as they were now in the crosshairs. They were halfway here when it shifted east again- the bullseye was now on our house. Fortunately, I live 60 miles inland and on a hill.

Hurricane Sally slowed to a crawl. She was supposed to arrive Monday late, as a category 1 but didn’t get here till Wednesday at dawn as a category 2. There is a world of difference in the damage produced by a category 2 storm versus a category 1 storm. I had anticipated guests for one or two days, not three or four. Of course by the time we knew, the stores were closed. The weather was too bad to do anything but eat and play board games. We did a lot of both.

Hurricanes are pretty big which means the bad weather and power outage preceeded her. We spent the night listening to the wind howl in the dark. Dawn revealed a mess of broken limbs littering the yard, we lost a few trees, though none of them landed on our house, and the trampoline has been reduced to bits of metal and plastic. We have a leak that only appears when the rain blows sideways, which of course it did, for HOURS. We finally figured out where the water is coming from, though we’ll be a long time getting it fixed. We’ll be last (rightfully so) in a long line of people with trees on their houses.

The damage in our town is pretty bad. There are trees down everywhere. A curfew has been imposed on the county to keep people off of the streets. We hear it will be more than a week before power is widely restored. One of the major power companies said there were 470,000 people without power, and we didn’t hear an estimate from the other.

We do have a medium sized generator, which is helpful. It cannot run our whole house, so we run one thing at a time. Coffee pot, then hot water heater, fridge and freezer, etc. Before you run something that pulls a lot of amps, (microwave, etc) you have to turn everything else off. No AC and no stove. Cooking is on the grill or in the microwave. Peanut butter and jelly is popular hurricane fare. Thankfully the weather will only get to 85 today, which is less hot than usual.

My parents, who lived in an area where the storm was expected to arrive were well prepared. The people who live where the hurricane actually showed up, were not. In case you’re not familiar with hurricane prediction, the weather service usually gives us an area called a cone (hundreds of miles wide) where they think the hurricane is most likely to come. This hurricane defied prediction, and the hurricane came ashore at a largely unprepared location that wasn’t even in the cone until the day before it arrived.

By the time the track shifted for the last time, it was too late to get ready. One of the important preparations is to get every boat out of the marinas in affected areas. This takes a lot of notice, as many boat owners don’t live locally. Big boats become floating wrecking balls in a storm. First they demolish the marinas, then they wreck houses and business. After they are done with destroying everything in their path, they end up blocking the road or become stranded in some other inacessable location like under (or in) someone’s house.

There is some hurricane damage at my office, but someone else is now tending to that. No power (and probably won’t be for days) so no work. There is nothing else to do here (that can be done without power) so I’m going to go help my mom and dad take down storm shutters etc. I’m also going to enjoy their A/C.

I’m grateful that we were prepared, and my husband can operate the generator and deal with the circuit switching that makes it possible to have electricity in parts of our house. I’m grateful we are all safe and didn’t have significant damage to our house- though we haven’t made it to the camp yet. I am glad that we were able to help neighbors and family in need, that I didn’t have a business to worry about, and I’m grateful to have somewhere to go. Still, I’m done with 2020. Can we just call it a year, and try again in 2021?

Update- the damage to the office is more significant than we thought. It’s closed until the floors, baseboards, and door can be replaced, and the roof repaired. It’s anyone’s guess when that will happen, since it seems that everyone in town needs some sort of repairs. The likelihood of me being done by Christmas is fading.