I have been a Floridian my entire life, so hurricanes are nothing new to me, but twenty years ago, I lived through The Four in '04, which drastically changed how I feel about hurricanes (I hate them now). Back then, Charley came in early August and did a lot of damage in South Florida. Then we got Frances on September 5th that did a number on the whole state, really, and the first one that did some damage to our area of North Central Florida. Ivan was next, making landfall two weeks later in the FL the peninsula. And exactly three weeks after Frances, Jeanne made landfall on September 25th.
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| The Four in '04 will never be forgotten Those Yellow and Cyan tracks messed me all up |
Frances did a lot of damage to my city, but it was Jeanne that took it to a whole new level of suck - the ground was so wet because all the prior storms, many of our gorgeous Oak trees just couldn't stand up against the winds that Jeanne brought with her, and they just toppled over, pulling their roots right out of the ground. An old story from the local paper said that they estimated almost half a million cubic yards of tree trunks and debris was collected after the storms.
I will never forget the sound of hearing a tree (that straddled both mine and my neighbor's backyard) ripping out of the ground and falling over... It was so loud and foreign to us that we thought a tornado was coming, and we clambered into the hallway with couch cushions over our head, awaiting the impending devastation. Instead we heard this massive thud at the same time the power went out. We stayed there for a few minutes until we felt it was safe (no noises, no train sounds) then climbed out and turned on flashlights. We didn't see anything out the front windows, and when I looked out the bedroom window to the backyard... all I saw was tree bark. No sky. No stars. No ground. Just tree bark. The next morning, when we could inspect the backyard during the daylight, we could see that this tree, probably bigger around than a minivan, fell from my neighbor's yard, across our backyard, with the canopy resting in my other neighbor's yard, tangled in power lines, missing everyone's homes by less than a foot.
Because of the tree canopy entwined with the power lines, our entire neighborhood was without power for almost a week. Florida in September is no joke with no AC! We slept in the living room with the windows open at night to keep cool, went to local restaurants and bookstores to keep cool in the day. We lost thousands of dollars worth of food in our fridge and freezers. And we learned a lot about Storm Preparedness.
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| Photo courtesy of The Gainesville Sun archives (Photo to show devastation - this isn't my yard) |
Anyway, the point of this little flashback is to say that I. Hate. Hurricanes. My PTSD is off the charts anytime one is coming our way. And lawd, Helene was a big one.
For the past few weeks, I'd been looking forward to attending a work conference in Orlando. My employer had paid for three nights' stay at the conference hotel. Hubby was gonna come along for a 'mini-vacation' - kind of a get away from all this bullshit we've been dealing with thing.
I had taken off September 25th since Hubby had a few doctor's appointments, so I wasn't checking my work email that day. I'd been watching the weather to see what Helene was going to do, but it wasn't on my radar yet as something to worry about. Blissfully unaware of a message in my inbox, stating that the conference had been cancelled. Made sense, of course, since it was a conference of Florida-specific attendees who would be more useful to their communities during a storm than attending a conference. But still... wah! You guys ruined my vacation! I can hear Weird Al's song Why Does This Always Happen to Me? playing in my head right now...
Before we left for his follow up with Dr. L, I got a text from work that said we'd be closed starting at noon on Wednesday, through the end of the day on Thursday. Okay. That's great, but that's not good... That means shit may be hitting the fan soon.
We went to his doctor's appointments, as planned, then came home and did storm prep, including:
- Charging all the things (laptops, phones, tablets, battery backups, etc)
- Filling multiple large containers with water and freezing (will keep freezers colder longer, if the power goes out)
- Putting all the batteries and flashlights in a centrally convenient place (the living room table)
- Washing the dishes (just in case the water goes out or a lift station goes offline after the storm)
And once all that was done, all I could do was be perpetually online. Wednesday night was okay; I tried to get as much sleep as possible because I knew that Thursday night was gonna suck.
On Thursday, my boss called me to check in on me, to let me know that the office would also be closed on Friday, and to tell me that the conference was cancelled. Again, I'm not mad that it was cancelled, I'm just bummed at the loss of a mini-vacation, basically on my employer's dime. I shared that info with Hubby and he agreed that it was a bummer, especially because he'd already put in, and been approved for, the time off! We kicked around the idea of going... somewhere... but never really solidified anything, and my mind wasn't in vacation mode at that point.
Dinner was okay - I could see the bushes moving a little more than they normally moved. Rain was harder. I spent all of dinner on my tablet reading X, trying to keep my mind off the incoming storm, but also staying up to date on what others are experiencing. Somehow that was really helpful. I took the tablet to bed a few hours later, turned on The Amazing Race (Season 1) and binge-watched with Hubby, to keep me distracted from the sounds happening outside. Wind was howling. Trees were creaking. Things were hitting the roof with hollow bonks. Every time the winds kicked up, I took a deep breath to calm down and prayed for it to be over. The cat - who is always aloof and very independent - came and curled up on our headboard, so we knew it had to be pretty bad! For hours, all I did was refresh X, play FreeCell solitaire, and cheer on the teams of the Amazing Race.
Thankfully, we never heard anything big topple over. We never lost power. We were safe and warm inside our comfy bed, and after the worst of it passed, around 2am, I felt like it was safe for me to fall asleep. Bless his heart, Hubby stayed up with me the entire night because he knew how much I hate storms! Both of us conked out in minutes, and slept in probably until 10am that morning!
When we got up Friday morning, we did a quick damage check outside, and everything looked good. We kept power all night, but at some point after 2am, we lost internet service (and it stayed out until Sunday night, because the provider had lost power at their facility). There were a handful of big-ish branches in the yard, lots of leaves and Spanish moss on the ground. A few big branches and large twigs on the roof. But our Old Girl survived to fight another fight... God bless concrete block houses built in the 1950s!
No internet meant that we didn't know much of what was going on in the world. I assumed that Helene just blew herself out by the time she got to the state line and all was well, so imagine my sadness and horror when I finally used some of my cell phone data and saw the devastation happening in western NC and eastern TN... All I could think was that this was going to be terrible for them, because they don't know how to prepare for storms like we do... they don't hit by hurricanes, so they don't stockpile, or keep extra food and batteries! I assumed there'd be pockets in the community that lost power, or needed to come together to feed neighbors, but the next time I used data to pull up X, I was horrified. Streets were gone. Entire cities were gone. People were gone. How in the world is Tennessee and North Carolina going to fix this? And where was the National Guard, or FEMA, or even the local cops? From what I could see for the few hours I was online, there was no one with any sort of official capacity helping these people.
My heart hurts for the people of Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina. If you feel that you can, please donate to Meredith O'Rourke's (Trump) GoFundMe for these hurricane victims, donate to Samaritan's Purse, or to any local church or charity in the area.
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