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As soon as we were within 24 hours of a cat 4 or 5, we would gather our important papers, book a flight/hotel to wherever the hell we could go, and that would be all there is to it.
i think id crap my pants, then probably get out of dodge, no clue where id go, being new to florida dont really know what t oexpect when to leave and when to stay it out lol
Definitely wouldn't stay if we were guaranteed to get a Cat 4 or 5. Surviving a 3 was bad, but not enough to hit the road.
Don't know if anyone remembers Floyd in 99, was supposed to hit WPB and north to Vero, was a Cat 4 with the potential of becoming a 5. We stayed. Luckily it skirted the coast. Back then it was just my husband and I, no kids. Would never stay now if Floyd was coming tomorrow. Not in a million years.
We were prepared...yeah right. We were the fools who duct taped their windows with "X" to make the glass shatter in whole shards. Really smart. But we didn't know back then. I don't have a problem with Cats 1-3, but if you can avoid it, don't get stuck in anything higher.
I'm not in Florida, but we were in Lake Charles, Louisiana when Hurricane Rita tore thru the town...our airport shut down, so flying out wasn't an option. I'd leave the area no matter what strength it was after seeing what it did to the town....thank god the power was OFF, or I can't think of how many fires or electrocutions there would have been from the sheer number of wires and knocked down utility poles.
I don't know how big the trees grow in Florida as compared to Louisiana, but you have a 50 foot tree fall on your roof (like ours did thru our neighbors roof), it's probably going to cave-in no matter what....no way am I going to be under it.
One thing that went fast was any sort of U-haul or trailer....if you don't have a large car or a pickup, my best advice is to do a test run, pre-load your car and see how much you actually can and can't fit. If you don't have a larger vehicle, and you're evacuating with kids(especially teenagers with long legs, like ours were), animals and what have you....there's not an awful lot of room left for much else.
As for gathering important papers, for some reason unless you have everything precious to you in ONE box, they can make themselves hard to find when you have one eye glued to the Weather Channel, you're trying to pack clothes and food for a few days, catch the cats, bring in anything from outside that might fly thru the air and about three dozen other things to get yourselves out of harms way, and secure your home.
You can make a lot of plans, and it's good to do that....but I can't stress enough what a test run would have done for us....taught all of my family for sure, we weren't as prepared as we thought we were.
Would we pack up and run?
I don't think so. We live inland and would shutter up, get in the safe room and pray. As evidenced in Houston by Rita, there was so much gridlock that it would not make sense. Cat 4 or 5 does not mean death as long as you take the precautions. I know a guy who rode out Andrew with a mattress over his head in a bathtub because he took no precaution whatsoever. So there is a pretty good chance I will live through it.
Would you batten down the hatches and ride out the storm?
Yes.
Would you stay around locally or would you flee FL?
Stay.
What would you take with you, what would you leave behind?
We have a pet bird. I keep a removable hard drive of all important photos and a folder full of papers. Most other things can be replaced.
Where would you go?
Atlanta, my college bud live there.
Having lived through Andrew as a 12 year old in Kendall (Miami) in a very sturdy concrete block home and after seeing firsthand what Mother Nature can do...LEAVE. Especially if you have children. Do you want your kids to experience a potentially life-threatening event that will impact them for the rest of their lives? I still get an adrenaline rush of fear during heavy thunderstorms with a lot of wind and rain. Forget it if there is a tornado warning. Going through Katrina and Wilma in Miami in '05 was an awful flashback experience that I do not ever want to go through again, even with hurricane shutters and all the hurricane straps and tie-downs added after the house had been rebuilt (I rode those out back in the home I had been in for Andrew because I did not trust the apartment I was living in).
Our house held up much better than most during Andrew, and we were on the northern edge of the eyewall. The hurricane was not the worst part of the experience, but rather the tornados that were spawned by the storm. Many people do not realize that many, many tornados occur within a hurricane of that magnitude, and you have NO IDEA where they are and when they form. Sometime in the middle of the storm, my sister heard something and asked my Dad if airplanes flew in the hurricane - not this one, it was not an airplane, not a frieght train. A tornado hit our house and the house next door, ripping off two tongue-and-grooved patio roofs that ran the length of the rear of the houses, took the roofs intact over our homes and the homes across the street and slammed them into the homes behind those. There were huge wooden beams from the patio roofs sticking like toothpicks out of the walls and roofs of the homes they slammed into. The entire back (east-facing) side of our house had a huge hole in the roof. We didn't know what had happened until after the storm, and we are very lucky the rest of the roof held. It was a truly scary experience. It continued to rain inside our house for a few days after the storm.
Please keep in mind that there is more to hurricanes than wind and rain when they get to be that strong. The aftermath is just as dangerous, tempers flare, no electricity, downed powerlines, looters, everything you once knew is changed in an instant and you can get lost in your own hometown. I am not trying to scare anyone, but people who have never experienced a storm like this really need to think very carefully about the decision they make. It is certainly not something to take lightly.
I hear what you are saying. Hurricanes are so unpredictable.
You can have a hurricane reach cat 4 or 5 only to fizzle out when it reaches shore. Realistically, you have to make the decision to leave well before 24 hours as it will be impossible to drive and fly.
I'm in a mobile home, so I have to evacuate. I'm also in Pasco County, and they refuse to offer a pet friendly shelter (I have a cat). So I monitor the NHC website rabidly during hurricane season and pay attention so I can make hotel reservations when needed. Last time I evacuated, the computer, personal papers, week worth of clothes/food/water went with me. Same thing will happen this year, along with the cat coming too. Not much else in my house matters.
I lived near Kendall during Hurricane Andrew and saw and lived first hand the devastation
We were not prepared (I am not sure anyone was). Before Andrew, people in Miami did not seem to take hurricanes seriously. I still remember being outside the afternoon before the hurricane hit...there was dead silence. It was so eerie...there were no animal noises. There were no birds, or insects, or nothing!
I was lucky in that Andrew did not hit my area as hard, however another thing people don't realize that post-hurricane is horrific. I was young, but would never stay with kids. There was no electricity, water, looters go crazy, no food, the roads are a mess, no phone, no cell phone, etc.
You don't know who lived or died, you don't know if you still have a job. Time stops and life stops.
It is just something I hope never happens in Florida again.
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