Hurricanes are a fact of life in Florida. The risks are fairly well understood, and for the most part, if you aren't buying coastal property, or property in a flood-prone area, you know what you're getting into. Another dimension to that comes in here in the most central, inland part of the state. The storms can seriously impact Orlando, but most of the time the result is plant debris and maybe some missing roof shingles. Charley is the only notable exception in the last few decades, and I remember flying in after and seeing the blue tarps on all of the roofs. But mostly, this is where people evacuate to, not evacuate from.
The storms have three destructive components, specifically storm surge, wind and rain. Obviously we don't have storm surge here. Wind is usually scary, but not a huge risk for anything built after 2002, when the building code was updated with more wind resistant requirements (ten years after Andrew). The rain, however, has a way of finding its way into your house in ways that are only apparent during a big storm. The wind can literally drive it up through the concrete block, or find problems with the stucco, or the moisture barriers. If it doesn't get in that way, it can flood around you and just start flowing in.
A lot of areas around us were seriously flooded, some of which don't typically see that happen. Everything close to us is, for the most part, carefully engineered because of all the new construction. There's a pond across the street that our house is six feet above, and a lake two blocks from us, as well as much of the surrounding terrain, is 10 feet lower. We're in a reasonably safe spot when it comes to flooding.
But the bigger thing is that we just don't expect storms to be that impactful in this area. There's a reason the theme parks are here and not on the coast. But while Disney reopened this morning, Universal did not because of the high water in their lagoons. That's how unusual this was. Some places got a year's worth of rain in one day. A few of my friends had some minor flooding, but fortunately nothing to the extent of making their homes uninhabitable. Some folks fared far worse, especially in Osceola County.
For us, things started getting real on Wednesday morning. The night before, I finally got the door weather stripping I ordered that day, to replace the one I ordered last Friday that got lost. For at least a year, I've noticed light coming in the crack of our front door because the stripping was deformed and not sealing. So around 1 p.m., I'm on a ladder replacing the stuff with the door open, as the wind is already picking up. Talk about last minute. But the new seal was super tight, and I was proud of myself since it seems like every other home maintenance thing I attempt is harder than it should be. Despite my enthusiasm for rum, there was no drinking. I also turned off the TV after an hour because the local idiots didn't provide anything of value, and the national sources didn't really have anything to show yet from the coast.
We never lost Internet connectivity, and didn't have to test the ability of the often unreliable battery to power the house. When the wind started to get serious in the evening, we did our best to drown it out with home improvement shows on Discovery+. When I tried to go to sleep in our bedroom, it was pointless. The covers for the bathroom vents were banging around, while the rain hitting the window was relentless, on top of the rumble and shaking of the house in general. I drifted in and out on the couch with headphones on, and I woke up every time I reached the end of a playlist. Then it got light enough to see the trees blowing around in the backyard, and I was up again.
At the end of the day, the only thing that we really lost was sleep. We had a little water come in through the bathroom vents, but nothing unmanageable. Our bigger concern was for my in-laws, who live in Punta Gorda, where the storm came ashore. They were a few miles north in Venice, watching a friend's home, but the only improvement in that position was not being in storm surge zone. Their house ended up being fine, but a lot of the area, especially the expensive parts, were under water. By now everyone has seen what's left of Fort Myers Beach, and it's not good. Much of the Sanibel Causeway is gone, cutting off the devastated island, and even a half-mile of the road before the tolls, leading to the hotel where we got married, is gone.
If I learned anything from therapy, it's that it's OK to be empathetic toward loss and suffering, without suffering yourself, and that's where I try to be about it all. (Sidebar: For all the things we can't change or control, we're already selective about it... see the average American concern over the war in Ukraine, famine in Africa or poverty in Afghanistan.) I'll hug my family and again be thankful for the birth lottery that put me where I am. Let's just hope that the disturbance off the coast of Africa doesn't become anything serious.
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