Hurricane and evacuations (Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa: condos, townhouses, contractors)

[Scorpio60]

Does anyone know how the conditions are for 28 Avenue E., Palmetto?

Thanks!

[Miss Hepburn]

Many are checking in, I know, yikes...the temp cell towers are coming in today they said.

[Schuttzie]

Good to see you guys here! All is well in my area.

[JRR]

Originally Posted by HSAhealth

I see you are also a victim of the hyperbole as well. 12+ inches is forecast over a 5 day period, not all at one time. I am sure the weatherman left that detail out, just "12 INCHES OF RAIN, NEWS AT 11". From what I just read tonight is 1 to 2 inches, tomorrow a couple inches, friday a couple inches, etc. I just looked it up. It does adds up, but Orlando is built over a swamp anyways, sandy soil, we are used to heavy rain. Areas that are prone to flooding will flood, there is a flood watch, but it's not catastrophic as a whole. Orlando won't be underwater.
This is not the same as storm surge of course, which indeed can be devestating to the coast.

I guess that maybe the Orlando forecast was not so exaggerated after all.

[Atari2600]

Originally Posted by WRnative

I'm not surprised you didn't know this, given your general level of displayed ignorance. E.g., as noted in post 173 in the following thread, you've been more than simpatico with the handful of Big Lie Climate Change Deniers in this forum, who even deny the empirical reality of accelerating sea level rise. Apparently, you lack the intellectual fortitude to study and understand expert analysis and explanations.

Is this necessary?

[Atari2600]

Originally Posted by SanyBelle

This is a dumb question but do hurricanes always spin counterclockwise?

edited to add: I googled:

Fun fact, it's the same as when you flush a toilet... it depends on whether you're in the northern or southern hemisphere.

[Atari2600]

Originally Posted by MortonR

Little to no damage in the Lithia area from what I can tell. Lots of outages around us, but our utilities are underground so we never lost power. Lots of leaves and small branches on the ground, but otherwise all appears to be well.

Dodged another bullet. I keep wondering how many times we'll continue to get lucky?

RM

Same here RM, I'm in Lithia.



Homes did quite well, only a few downed trees and minimal flooding. In addition to power outages, I saw that it affected the pump stations. One of the more affluent neighborhoods (4500+ square foot homes) had a sewer overflowing in the street. Ugh, the smell was horrendous. But HCPL or whatever the acronym is, brought in generators to power the pump stations, so it was cleared out fairly quickly... but there was a lot of overflowing sewage on Friday morning.


I saw some stress cracks between the first and second floor of my home under my wrap-around front porch. Nothing at all I'm concerned about, and can easily fix with some caulk and paint.

[Atari2600]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

I was wrong! Somewhere I said our buildings are better built than Cuba or Haiti...NOW!!
I see 3 miles in from the ocean some homes are GONE!

BUT - one woman with her dog said they floated on their mattress with ONE foot of air left
at the ceiling!
Oh my goodness!

It really depends. The older homes are built really no different than they were in Cuba, since they were all literally built around the same time. But the newer homes generally survived. In the 50s, they started making the homes out of concrete, but generally CBS construction. I could turn this into a long e-mail, but the major changes didn't really take effect until the early 80s, and then again in the early 90s after Andrew. Things like roof tie-downs, or outward-opening windows, etc. Newer homes... at least those that support the Miami-Dade standard (which includes West Palm, Broward, etc.)... require impact windows and now poured concrete (not just CBS). And where you do still use CBS (for convenience) they need to be filled as well.



A lot of South West Florida still has higher standards, but not the same as Miami-Dade... which is the gold standard. If it hasn't already happened in the past couple of years, I would not be a bit surprised if we don't see counties on the west coast mandate the Miami-Dade standard to some degree, moving forward.

[sm0key]

Why are houses built so fragile and delicate compared to commercial structures? You see high-rises, business buildings, and commercial warehouse-type places surviving these storms all the time. And yet we continue to build houses out of toothpicks.

[Schuttzie]

Originally Posted by sm0key

Why are houses built so fragile and delicate compared to commercial structures? You see high-rises, business buildings, and commercial warehouse-type places surviving these storms all the time. And yet we continue to build houses out of toothpicks.

Good question! Shouldn't be allowed to build them like this.