Notes on Surviving a Hurricane

by Michael Shaw June 2012

Hurricane season is upon us once again, so I decided to take the notes I made after hurricane Wilma struck us in 2005 while living Ft Lauderdale and compile them into the following post:

On Oct 24, 2005 hurricane Wilma came through South Florida around 6AM with sustained wind speeds in Broward County of around 89 mph. It was considered a category (cat) 3 storm when it made landfall just south of Naples, weakening to a strong cat 1 or weak cat 2 when it left through Palm Beach Co. The storm came from the Gulf and made a southeast track across Miami, Broward and Palm Beach counties. There were 3.2 million people without power in Miami, Broward and Palm Beach after the storm went through. The track of the storm followed almost exactly the track forecasted by the hurricane center. Most of the damage was downed trees and power lines, but not a significant amount of structure damage.

We suffered some landscape damage and almost lost our Macadamia Nut tree in the back yard, but most of the damage in the area was to the vegetation. A few people lost the roofs of their house, but mostly everybody’s roof just lost shingles if it was older than 5 years. People didn’t want their roofs to leak, so they protected the roof with blue tarps. This became a popular image on every street and became the calling card for hurricanes since. There wasn’t much rain during the storm and no flooding, because it moved extremely fast and was gone into the Atlantic in about 6 hours.

We didn’t board up, even though the storm was a cat 3. I expected it to miss us and go farther north and diminish in intensity, but it didn’t and practically went right over us. I had to hold a sliding glass door in place for fear it would have blown out, because it was bowing in and out and it wouldn’t take much for it to pop off the bottom track. This was a late season storm and a lot of us S. Floridians were caught off guard. I later learned what actually happen: the storm intensified in strength when it went over the warm waters of the Everglades. Nobody realized this would happen at the time, they all thought that because it was over land, it would lose strength.

The key to surviving after a hurricane is to prepare before the hurricane, because afterwards, it’s too late.

Before a hurricane you should:

                        gather all of your supplies together in a central location

turn the refrigerators and freezers temperature to coldest

have flashlights candles or lanterns ready

store plenty of drinking water for 3-5 days

                        keep a couple of frozen chickens in the freezer

make and store plenty of ice in the freezer during hurricane season

have plenty of food in easy open cans (tuna fish, pb&j, bread)

get paper plates, cups, ect.

                        have plenty of cash on hand, 500+ dollars, in small denominations

                        fill up the gas tanks in your vehicles before the storm hits

                        have plenty of propane gas and flashlight batteries

                        have a jug of unadulterated (no perfume) bleach on hand

                              

I’ll explain the reason for some of this, when I tell you next what happens after a hurricane hits.

It was still daylight after the storm hit, so we ventured out to assess the damage. This could be a dangerous situation in the dark, but I could see and knew that there were no downed power lines. The power had gone out during the storm, so we began our damage control.  We didn’t open the refrigerator or freezer for several hours unless we absolutely had to. The items in the fridge will keep for quite awhile, provided you don’t open it up.

We had an efficient solar and crank powered radio that charges in the sun, lasts a long time on a charge and a little TV that ran on batteries to find out what the general situation was in Broward County. The cable was out and cell phones didn’t work so we were lucky we had a land line phone (the old fashion kind without the answering machine) that worked to call relatives and let them know we were ok. News reports were saying that a big power line feeding the county had come down and that power would be out for an extended period of time. We got our lights, flashlights and lanterns ready because night was coming and you have to see to go to the bathroom. It gets dark at night when the whole county is without power, very dark. You can use candles inside the house for light, but they can be dangerous. We have a camping lantern that uses LP gas canisters, it creates a lot of light and last a long time. I only used it out on the back patio. The canisters can also be used the camping stove we had for cooking and stored for the next years storm if needed. Just be sure not to use these items inside the house.

We were lucky because we had city water the whole time. The gas lines in the city were still working, so our gas water heater provided hot water for showers. A lot of places didn’t have water or had boil water alerts. You can use bleach to treat the water if you’re not able to boil it. If you use paper plates, they can be discarded so you don’t have to use your water to clean the dishes.  If you didn’t have water, then you’d have to get some pretty soon, so lines began to form after a couple of days at places that were giving out water. Lines also began to form for ice too. We had about 14 zip-lock freezer bags of ice in the freezer and a couple of frozen chickens. The chickens we had in the freezer remained frozen solid for 3 or 4 days. We eventually transferred these into a cooler and managed to get by for about 5 days with the ice we had. We had BBQ chicken on day 4, which was a nice treat.

Some people had generators they used to power their appliances, and after a couple of days you saw mile long lines waiting to get gas at the only stations (1 or 2 in Broward) that had generators to power the gas pumps. I’m not a big fan of generators, they’re expensive, noisy and can be dangerous. If you do have a generator, make sure to buy a carbon monoxide detector and use it, and keep the generator away from the house. I prefer to use solar panels to charge deep cycle marine batteries. Then I run an inverter off the batteries to run my ac equipment. This seems of work pretty good, as long as you don’t require a lot of power.

I did have one of the batteries fail during the course of this adventure, so I had to go out and buy another one. Which brings me to my last point, if you do manage to find a store that is open, they don’t have ATM machines, credit or debit card capability, so you better have some cash. If they do have a cash register, it’s better if you can supply them with the exact change. They may not be willing or able to accept bills larger than $20.

This isn’t the definitive guide to hurricane survival, it’s just my experience. When something like this happens, there are a lot of things you can do to be better prepared.  According to FEMA everyone should be able to survive 3 days before help arrives. This is because roads are blocked and power lines are down, and you need to sit tight until help can arrive.