Hurricanes

by Stephen Morrill

June 1 to September 30 is hurricane season in Florida. Hurricanes have happened in every month of the year but those are the big months, the months when Floridians watch each tropical wave coming off the west coast of Africa and ask themselves “Does that one have my roof’s name written on it?”

Locals pretty much know what to do if Mr. Big Wind shows up. Visitors living in hotels may have other needs and less experience. Let’s review:

— Stay on top of events. If there’s a storm somewhere out there that might interfere with your life, check at least several times a day on the storm track, any advisories being posted, or evacuation warnings. Hurricanes sometimes pull sudden left or right turns without signaling first. (Cynics note that it’s only in Florida that they don’t use turn signals. Hummm….)

— Think about evacuation routes, traffic, and time needed to accomplish this. There’s little point in leaving a concrete-block structure to go sit in a car in the middle of a hundred-mile-long traffic jam on some interstate. Sailors have an old saying that the time to reef the sail in a strong wind is when the thought first crosses your mind. In short, trust your instincts. If you fully intend to evacuate, do it as early as reasonable to beat the crowd. Florida civil authorities are wonderful about getting people moved—they really do know their jobs after all this experience—but Florida is a long, narrow peninsula with limited evacuation routes too.

— If you choose, for whatever reason, to hunker down and ride it out, prepare yourself for a few hours of excitement and a few days of disruption. First, once the storm arrives, stay indoors. Only idiot TV weathermen go outside where the air is filled with flying roof tiles. Your home or hotel room will lose electricity, phones—even cell phones, possibly water. Stock up on water, batteries, any medications, and food that requires no cooking or refrigeration, at least enough for a few days. Some streets may be blocked by downed trees or limbs (plus various wires too—and don’t even think about touching any wire laying on the ground) but those are usually cleared within a day or two.

— Please don’t have “hurricane parties.” You may need a clear head and quick reaction times. It rarely happens but sometimes a home or hotel loses a roof, or the windows blow in. When the windows go, the roof is often not far behind as a structure that loses integrity gets blown open from the inside out. Best place to be is in the bathroom, in a cast-iron tub, with a mattress pulled over you. I’m not kidding and tubs can take two adults in a Category 1-3 hurricane, and six to eight in a Cat-4 or Cat-5.

— After the storm, stay away from downed wires, watch your step among a lot of sharp things on the ground, and help everyone else. If there is a silver lining in the hurricane wall-cloud, it’s that it brings out the best in most people, and total strangers will do their best to help you and vice-versa.

But the good news for today is that all this warning may be unneeded. The National Weather Service says they expect the 2009 hurricane season to be a relatively light one. We can only hope.

- Steve Morrill has lived up to a week on his screened porch, eating cold Chef-Boy-R-Dee washed down with warm beer and waiting for electricity and a cleared street. Today, his evacuation plan is to leave early for Las Vegas where when you gamble you at least have a chance of winning.