SPQR

A direct hit by Hurricane Jeanne wasn't that bad for me

So we've survived a second hurricane making landfall in our little town twice this month. There was clearly more wind this time, but not as many things fell down, because most everything that could fell down during Frances, which hit three weeks ago the the hour.

School was cancelled on Friday and will be cancelled again today (Mon). Sarah-Ginny and I spent Friday boarding up my folks' home. It was much easier this time, as the plywood and polycarbonate sheets were all pre cut and ready to go. We moved the adirondack chairs and potted plants, small boats and everything else into the garage, it was just as packed as last time with two 22' rowing shells, a 15' whitehall pulling boat, my 15' adirondack guideboat, and a little roto-molded kayak, as well as everything else we could fit in, like Monkey Jungle's sails and boom.

This is a photo from the paper of the Jensen Beach Community Center.

So my father flew in early Saturday to help secure everything and the four of us rode out the storm at our second story apartment. Again. This whole ordeal has been just like Frances.

The center of the eye hit us at about one or two am but the calm only lasted about an hour and a half, on account of Jeanne speed over ground. Frances' eye was something like seven hours. I heard on the radio that during the eye the local fire guys drove out and rescued many people stuck under bridges and things like that. I can see being caught off guard while driving by a tornado, but a hurricane?

A big corner chunk of my parents' screened pool enclosure was whipped and thrashed and collapsed during the storm and a couple of palm trees fell down or were twisted and are now pretty crooked. In the middle of each intersection there are smashed and mangled trafficlights, but not as many, even though this was a category 3 and Frances was a 2. Only some had been replaced after Frances. I'd guess that one in three roofs in town were damaged by Frances and had blue tarps on them from FEMA. All of the ones I saw briefly were shredded and flapping in the wind.

I've been told that Stuart city hall lost part of the roof, and the big hospital downtown, but I haven't seen too much as there is a martial law around the clock curfew in effect to separate the looters from everyone else. I did see that a wall on the top story of that big building on the Palm City side of the Palm City bridge fell off leaving a 10' x 60' gaping hole.

Despite this, there was plenty of traffic on the roads yesterday driving across town to my parents house yesterday, the day after the storm. Huge puddles everywhere. My car has no a/c so Sarah and I had the windows down while going slowly, very slowly, through a big puddle when some redneck, mullet and all, in one of those really tall raised pickup trucks goes blazing through the puddle, making a huge wake and soaked us. Grrr.

We went there because they have a barbeque so that we can cook something, and while we were adjusting Monkey Jungle's lines a little lamp inside the house came on. And then we heard a series of 'yahoo!'s from up and down the block. We had power! Less than 24 hours after it went out! Last time it was out 9 days. So we slept in air conditioning at my parents' last night. There is still no power in our apartment, just a cute little duck family who lives in our pond frantically looking for Ping- have you seen little Ping?, so we might be staying here a couple of days until it returns.

P.S. Ping died during the storm. I found his little soggy body on the sidewalk and buried him with pine needles.

Here we go again

The novelty of exiting weather wore off a long time ago. Everyone's already talking about cancelling school, and boarding and stocking up. Again.

Our Hurricane Frances Photos

You can see our Hurricane Frances Photos here.

Last night Sarah-Ginny and I went out rowing on a 'tour of destruction,' lots of smashed boats everywhere.

Covenant College Profs on 'ratemyprofessors.com'?

I have no idea how I stumbled on this but I am really surprised, though I shouldn't be.

I noticed that my uncle, Dr. Larry Mehne scored as a pretty difficult prof.

Who does this?

Update:
Holy smokes! I just discovered that my school is here! I'm glad that I'm not on it.

Hurricane Frances anecdotes

When I moved to Florida seven years ago, a number of people in California asked me how we could move to Florida, on account of the hurricanes. Once in Florida I heard, “How could someone live in California, they’ve got earthquakes!”

I’m sorry Floridians, but I don’t remember ever having to do six days of hard labor preparing for and cleaning up from an earthquake. In fact, the worst that an earthquake ever did to me was rattle me out of bed fifteen minutes before school started. An excellent auxiliary alarm clock.

So Frances has come and gone, leaving behind fallen trees, twisted traffic lights at eye level swinging between rows of cars, clear starry nights unobstructed by city lights, and air filled with the sound of generators. My neighbor’s World War II-era generator, specifically. The one that runs all night set to the decibel level labeled “Hiroshima”. You’ll find it just above “jumbo-jet”.

Power came on at our apartment just last night, and for my parents house, I’m sure that it won’t be for many days. My last post was the day before the eye passed over us here in Stuart, before electricity cut out. The worst of the hurricane came through in the middle of the night, and I happily slept through it on my bed, which had been moved away from the window.

In the morning we ventured outside to view the destruction and saw many trees down. The guy in the next apartment says that a bit of his roof came off and that water is getting in.

I didn’t realize that local officials issue curfews for this sort of thing, so for the first couple of says and the last six nights we haven’t been allowed outside.

I’ve determined that hurricanes are just a series of opportunities to sweat. Two days of sweat boarding up the house. Three days sweating sitting in a stuffy room watching trees fall and rain spray in through the tiny gap under the window. Three more days cleaning up my folks house. Dozens of palm fronds, hundreds of coconuts, someone else’s lumber that flew down the canal and washed up in the backyard, the neighbors twenty-foot mango tree that fell on our side of the fence, retying the boat for the eighth time, opening the garage, pulling out three row boats, a tiny blue kayak, a small green sailboat, and the Adirondack guideboat, as well as everything else that we had crammed in there. All rewarded with a long, sweaty air conditioning-free night.

And not a cool drink to be found.

The neighbor’s giant banyan tree was uprooted and pulled with it the other two poles on the cul-de-sac. So now the front yard is draped by a series of monstrous power and phone cables, so that only one side of the driveway can be used to add to the ever-growing pile of yard debris.

One of our palm trees has been nearly pulled out by the woman who my parents allow to keep her boat at the dock. She put out a bow and stern anchor in the middle of the canal, and tied a couple of lines to some of the palm trees. The anchors both spectacularly dragged in the wimpy canal muck, as did that of the man a couple of houses over who instructed her how to do it. I already mentioned how my dad and I strung her bow out across the canal, but the next day we had to do the same with her stern, as the wind had clocked to the other direction and it was banging against the dock.

At the anchorage there is a wrecked forty-foot handsome sloop, it’s keel spread across the sidewalk. The day before the eye, I saw the anchorage nearly full, perhaps one hundred boats tied to the moorings. The next day half of them were wrecked on the downwind shore, about half a mile away, city mooring balls still securely tied to their bows.

A church member has been sleeping at church for the last few days and we picked her up yesterday. Her home roof was leaking, but then, so was the church’s on account of the many missing shingles. I dragged the soggy front sign inside, leaving a trail of rotted plywood bits.

Sometime after being passed by the tenth Red Cross truck bearing the name “Disaster Relief” it occurred to me that this sort of thing isn’t just for Sub-Saharan Africa or central America. It’s weird to accept free ice from men in military uniforms. I appreciate the willingness of the National Guard to keep my chicken cold, but it’s unsettling for some reason, and I can’t put my finger on it.

Hurricanes are a pretty good social equalizer. Mobile homes (“a mobile home is a noble home”) and McMansions alike are boarded up with Home Depot plywood. For a few days, we are all poor. Sure, you are driving a new S-class, but you’re still behind the Escort in the ice line.

And then of course, their are the perks of surviving a large natural disaster. You get to see your corner store on CNN, but that warm fuzzy is tempered by the fact that Geraldo is also there. (Mustache trimmers, aisle 6!) The president and his brother the governor were in town yesterday, or at least they were from 11:30 to 11:57, but I only saw the fleeting undersides of their military helicopters as they posed for the cameras, making frowny-faces while looking down at our yards.

Dispatch from Frances

The eye is to pass over here in Stuart or very near us late tonight. In the mean time we've been having 100 mph+ winds (according to local news).

I'm looking out the window now at branches flying off the trees in our apartment complex and wondering why we haven't lost power yet.

My dad and I went back to my folks house this morning to re-tie the lines holding our boat Monkey Jungle in the middle of the canal. My folks allow a woman to keep her boat on one end of their dock and she left Thursday and poorly tied off her boat to some palm trees and anchored it in the muck in the middle of the canal. When my dad and I showed up, her boat was dragging and about to slam into ours.

So into a tiny kayak jumped dad and he somehow managed to get to the other side, where we tied a line to keep her boat fom coming free.

We drove around fallen traffic lights and tree trunks to check out the public anchorage and it is pretty gnarly.

The dinghy dock is thrashing and has separated from it's ramp. We saw a few boats, including a pretty Pearson Ariel crashing on the rocks.

The boardwalk is completely underwater, as the storm surge is maxing out about now. There is alot of water everywhere.

I've tried to post a couple of pictures, but I can't figure out how to resize them.

And the worst is yet to come!

Frances approaches

The high winds are begining and my father and I have finally boarded up their house. I haven't done anything but measure, cut and screw plywood for the last two long, long days. The pool has been lowered. My folks are planning to ride out the storm at our place and will sleep at our apartment tonight.

The hurricane force winds start sometime early tomorrow. We've decided not to leave town and head north, perhaps to Bo's folks in Ocala or maybe Chattanooga. The roads for hundreds of miles are gridlocked.

We've taken a couple of photos of our boat, Monkey Jungle, out back suspended in the middle of the canal or the odd sight of six boats crammed in the garage. I'll post them soon.

Wait-and-see

Well, this is a pretty ominous picture. See that last "H" labeled 8 AM Sat? That is the town of Stuart, Florida. That's where I live. Most everyone around is preparing to leave town or deciding which shelter to stay in.

I'm not too worried about the apartment that Sarah-Ginny and I live in. We've got pretty good insurance and we're on the second floor.

My folks house across town is on the water, perhaps eight feet above the water sounds about right. A fair storm surge could certainly destroy it. They've got huge sliding glass doors along the whole back of the house, so I'm not sure how we can protect them.

I'll have to take down the rowboats off of the rack.

The school at which I teach is closed tomorrow and Friday, and I'm going to board up the windows of a couple of people in my church tonight.

Or it could totally miss us and stay a fish storm.

But it doesn't seem likely.