What I learned from Irma

The hurricane that is and not my husband’s aunt Irma.


As I watched the eye of the storm go over Naples and our community on CNN these are some of the lessons learned from my first hurricane since living in Florida.
  1. Get the hell out! Better safe than sorry. I wanted to stay, but Raphael talked me into leaving the Wednesday prior. Keep in mind though at that time all the models were still saying Irma was going to hit the East Coast of Florida, which brings me to my next lesson learned. 
  2. Models don’t mean shit and meteorologists can guess all they want, but mother nature doesn’t watch the news or take in account the European model vs. the American model, it is going to do what it wants to do. It also keeps changing. Although ... it seems the European model is more accurate than all the other spaghetti lines that were being drawn on the map of Florida. 
  3. Pack more. You can replace everything but your family and pets. However, since I was dragging my feet when I left, I only brought with us some of my finest pieces of jewelry and minimal clothes. I put our important documents in a ziplock, packed my boys’ clothes, blankets and that was it. I had time though, I should have planned for being gone more than just four days, which we were! Power was off for several days so we weren’t in a rush to head back, plus traffic and gas shortages kept us away longer than expected. Thus, I should have packed smarter, better and for non-Florida weather too. Duh! As we got further away from our home I’d think of something else that was important to me that I didn’t better protect. Like the photo album of my dad and sister, which I haven’t digitized yet. We had room in the van too. 
  4. Get gas! Fill even the car you’re not taking with gas, so when you get back you’ll have enough until supplies are replenished in your area. Fill up extra gas canisters with fuel too. It’s a shame we are still so dependent on the damn stuff, but we all are! 
  5. Charge your Kindle so you can have hundreds of books on one device and can still read once all the lights are off. Nothing like escapism. I read the entire Castles Ever After trilogy by Tessa Dare on a single charge with battery to spare. 
  6. Water is essential. Fill your tubs with water in case the water supply is turned off. We prepared for this but didn’t end up needing it. 
  7. Power up every battery pack and power brick ahead of time. Fortunately, we did this. Would totally recommend a Mophie case and Pocket Juice
  8. Leave at the right time. Although I’m glad we evacuated even before it became mandatory, I would have preferred to have left closer to the storm's actual date, because after the storm we still couldn't return for several days due to traffic and gas shortages. Leaving sooner was also more costly since it required additional days in a hotel. We also drove through the night instead of the day for less traffic, which seemed to help, plus that meant more time that our kids slept through our total 35hr journey and fewer "are we there yets?" 
  9. Keep your blessings to yourself. While I do indeed feel thankful that our house was only minimally affected, not everyone was so lucky. So does that make those that suffered more not blessed? You know what I mean? So keep social posts of celebration to a minimum and maybe leave God out of it. 
  10. Don't overpack your freezer or be better about eating frozen items.  I'm all about Publix BOGO's and freezing the other item. We even have an extra freezer in our garage. It made me ill having to throw it all away when we got back home since we were several days without power. 

Any other hurricane tips? 


 My boys appear here in this video I did about the evacuation:

 

2 comments

  1. Very good list from a newly minted Hurricane evacuation pro. I especially like the part about charging batteries ahead of time because you never know how long the power is going to be out and lithium ion battery packs hold a charge for a very long time when kept in a cool spot.

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  2. Such great tips and glad you guys were safe.

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