Life is finally beginning to feel back to normal after Irma turned our week upside down. It was definitely a crazy, frightening time, but we are so blessed that it wasn't even worse.
We knew that Irma was heading our way. We saw the destruction she was leaving as she pounded the Caribbean, Cuba, and the Florida Keys. We knew that gas was in high demand and saw the food and water vanishing from the grocery stores before our very eyes. The stores were rationing water, one case per adult...forget the kids. Our family kept calling to check on us, some urging us to evacuate. The lines on the interstate were long. It was taking abnormally long hours to leave the state, and with gas in short supply, we decided that evacuating far away was not optional. Instead, we would have to stock up as best we could and try to ride it out.
The closer Irma came, the more we wondered if we were making the right decision, but we just did not envision ourselves riding it out on the side of the road without gas or shelter and with two little kids. A friend of our family said if we needed to evacuate, we could come to stay with them. Although they lived just ten minutes away, their house was out of the flood zone, while ours was in zone b.
By Saturday morning, it was apparent that all of flood zone a was under mandatory evacuation. We are just over the border of zone a but into zone b. Our friends seemed to think that we should all meet up and evacuate to one of the shelters together. We got ourselves together, and had previously made a few sand/water bags and placed them around our door and the garage. We headed out to our friends' house with food and clothing for the next three days. When we got there, it became clear that we were not heading to another shelter, but would ride it out at their house, which was solid and made from bricks.
We were glued to the news, watching as if our lives depended on it. We watched Irma wobble and turn ever so slightly away from us, then toward us for a direct hit. At what seemed like the last possible minute, Irma turned again meaning we would not take a direct hit after all. By this time, she was downgraded to a category 1. We breathed a sigh of relief.
Around 8:45 Sunday night, the power went out. We turned the lanterns on and got the emergency radio up and running so we could stay informed. Later that night, we got a few hours of sleep. At some point around 5 AM Monday morning, I could hear the sound of the hurricane. It was terrifying. I tried to look out the window, but being in the country without any lights, I could hardly make anything out. I could definitely hear the moaning of the wind. I noticed that my husband wasn't in bed anymore, so I went to the living room where I found him, asleep on the floor listening to the radio. After that, I really didn't get much sleep. I listened to the radio and tried to get some more sleep.
As soon as it was light, we went outside to look around. It was still a bit windy, but the hurricane force winds were gone. The house was fine. Some of the trees had broken limbs or branches, but none had done any damage to our house. We decided that we should try to get home. So we packed things up and headed out as soon as we could, with the promise that we would be back to help with yard clean up.
The entire driveway and front yard of the place we stayed looked like this after Irma got through.
Trees were down in many places including one up the street that snapped on a power line and caused our hosts to lose power right before the storm.
This is the view we had coming back into our neighborhood. (The road out of our neighborhood.)
One of the roads in the neighborhood. We decided to park and walk to our house because we weren't sure how deep the water was or if our road was flooded.
A tree and mailbox battling it out. This was the worst damage we saw to property in our neighborhood.
Power lines were down near our house and some stoplights weren't working, but our house had never lost power!
There were some fallen trees, but none I saw had damaged any houses in our area. This one fell on a power line and was in the road, blocking part of our lane.
One cool thing I heard and saw on the news was how a lot of water had gone out of the bays and away from the shoreline, revealing the seabed. That happened ahead of the storm surge and actually ended up protecting us from flooding! The news man even likened it to Moses and the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, calling it Biblical!
After everything was settled on Monday afternoon, extreme exhaustion and muscle soreness was setting in. I guess we were more stressed out about the whole Irma thing than even we had known! It was so nice to sleep, once again, in our comfy bed knowing that, for us, everything had worked out.
We waited until Wednesday to try to get some food at the store. When we arrived, we were shocked at what we saw. The store had very little. The refrigerator cases were all completely empty. No eggs, milk, cheese, salad, meat, etc.
Empty freezer cases
1/2 of the produce section was gone and had lots of empty cases.
Empty freezers and bread section
All gone!!
As we drove on the interstate we saw a gas tanker with police escort.
Lots of power trucks
More power trucks and we also saw a bunch of moving vans and RV's
Generators and semis bringing in suplies
Service trucks
We even saw 8 trucks carrying loads of power poles...and that was in just about 2 miles of driving! That road was like a parking lot with people heading back in from evacuating the state.
Things are slowly returning to normal again. The roads are not as filled, Storm shutters are coming down, sandbags are disappearing from around people's houses. The grocery stores are getting more and more food in stock, and today, I was even able to get a loaf of bread after more than a week of trying to accomplish that impossible task! Life is good.
