Assessing the Damage

We woke up Monday morning and cautiously walked outside.  Unbelievably, more trees had fallen in the night.  Those “weaker” winds were the final blow for many trees and power lines.  I’m afraid to think of what stronger winds would have done.  At this point, we had no power, and no cell reception.  We were no longer receiving updates from anyone, so we had no idea what the storm was doing, who was affected, or anything.  All we knew was our current reality.  Large, mature trees came crashing to the ground that night, blocking roads, falling on roofs, and destroying electric poles.  95% of our county was without power.  In fact, we would find out later that nearly 1/3 of Florida was without power.  Millions of people had little no access to outside information, and many were blocked in their homes or neighborhoods. There were well over 100 water line breaks around the county as well. 

We took a brief assessment of our property, and found that sure enough, our home had survived the backside as well.  We still were not even missing a single shingle.  All of our trees that fell, fell away from our home.  

My van, although littered with leaves and sticks, was untouched by the large branches that I felt certain would fall upon it.  Our lives were spared, and so was our property.  We lost more of our trees, but that was ok…they were just trees. 

  The yard was full of debris, and we thought it would take weeks to get cleaned up, but that was small compared to what others were facing that morning.  We hopped in the car to check on some others.

Remarkably, our street flooding was gone too.  We drove back to my parent’s house, where a large pine tree fell across the road, blocking it off, and onto their electrical wires.  

We found a way around it through some driveways and saw power poles snapped in two and dangling in the air.  My parents have 2 ½ acres with tons of pine trees and other plants as well.  It was flooded and lots of trees and limbs were down.  It was to be expected.  But, their home was safe as well.

We drove through a near by neighborhood and check on some friends houses as well. It was the same scene over and over….huge, beautiful trees, fallen across roads, leaning on homes, blocking driveways, etc.  There was no denying that a powerful storm blew through the day before.  However, we also saw homes that appeared to be pretty well in tact.  We did not see roofs blown off, or trees smashed through the homes (although that did happen in some areas).  We saw pool cages blown apart or smashed by trees, but the houses seems to be in fairly good condition.

Next stop was to check on the shop.  Driving through town was messy and tricky.  Since there was no power, none of the stop lights worked.  The lights dangled from their wires, or were smashed on the ground. 

  Trees lay across main roadways, and rain was still drizzling through the air.  We continued to see downed power lines, and poles snapped in half.

The shop was in good condition.  A bit of water got in through the windows and the floors were a little wet, but there was no damage to the equipment or offices beyond that.  We did find a main water break just outside one of the office locations.

We continued driving through town and had to check on the pier.  Surprisingly, it was still standing, although we have now heard that it did incur damage and will need to be fixed. 

From here on out…I have no idea what happened on what days…so we’ll go with a synopsis of what I do remember.

Once home, you kind of just wander around, wondering what to do first.  After seeing the town such a mess, and your home a mess…it’s hard to know where to start.  I think I spent the rest of the day wandering, and trying to take it all in. 

The kids had a photo shoot on their climbing tree that feel (well, half of it fell). 

I remember standing in the back yard, holding a rake, and wanting to cry.  How were we going to cut up these trees?  Do I have to bundle the limbs?  I don’t have enough trash cans.  This will take weeks.  We don’t even have a chainsaw.  What about everyone else?  Didn’t we stay to help?  Maybe we should find someone to help and leave our stuff for another time.  What should we do?  Maybe a nap would be a good place to start? 

I just had so many questions, and no answers.  I felt overwhelmed, and uncertain of how to process everything we had seen and experienced.

I heard Jeremy around the corner, battling with a generator and chainsaw we were borrowing, neither worked.  He left to get something from a friend, and a few minutes later I heard a chainsaw and then a whole team of people walked into my yard.  It was our neighbor and their friends!  In less than 2 hours, they had cut up our large downed trees and helped us drag the branches to the side of the road.  It was welcome relief, and helped me to clear my head. 

Our friends, Dan, Shanine, and their cute daughter Selah, stopped by to check in on us and help us get the generator running.  Dan and Jeremy spent hours cleaning and rebuilding the carburetor, while us girls hung out.  I made them a fancy dinner on the grill.  Just kidding, it wasn't fancy, but it was good.  I was already thankful for that pre-cooked meat I had!

The absolute worst part of, to me, or hurricane recovery living, was the lack of AC at night.We had a generator, but it only worked for a few hours before it gave in.  We knew the days would be hot, there was no surprise there.  But, the nights…oh the nights were absolutely miserable.  I don’t think I can fully explain what it feels like to lay in bed, without a breeze or a faint whisper of movements and sweat through your sheets.  It was at night when I struggled the most.  I would have mini panic attacks, and fear that I could only take one more breath in life.  The heat was so heavy, and the stillness was so overwhelming, that I truly thought I may suffocate.  Those first few nights, there was no relief.  No breeze.  No sleep.  It was truly awful. 

Once the dawn broke, I couldn’t wait to get outside and breathe again.  Looking back, I should have just take a pillow to the back patio and slept out there.  I think it was a bit cooler than in the house (which was probably easily in the 90s), and there may have been a breeze to catch as well.  But, for some reason, you just feel paralyzed, waiting for the night to be over. 

Day three began.  Our yard was mostly cleaned up...now, we were hoping to find ways to help and serve others.  However, we quickly realized we were not prepared with the right tools.  This is where we saw the Lord, yet again, move in unexpected ways...

The Raging Storm- Hurricane Irma

Although Irma would not make landfall until Sunday, September 10^th, she was so large, that we started feeling the effects of her outer bands on Saturday afternoon.  Nothing crazy, just some heavy rains and gusty winds.  We ran a few errands that morning and spent the early afternoon hours making sure we were as secure as possible.  We were able to park the truck in the garage and then park my van sideways in front of the garage.  A lot of thought went into this…and we felt this was the best way to secure our vehicles.  The truck holds twice as much gas as my van, which may be needed after the storm, and we figured we may want to use the truck to haul supplies…so, if a vehicle got totaled, it should be my van.

By 4:30 on Saturday afternoon, we were locked in.  Hannah filled the fridge to the brim with waters and Gatorades (we read that the fridge stays colder the fuller it is…I believe it).  We made dinner, put the kids to bed, and Jeremy and I watched the last three episodes of The Office.  We had been watching it all summer and wanted to finish it before we lost power and internet.  Then, we went to bed…and had a wonderful night’s sleep.  In fact, we all slept in, even though the weather was getting progressively worse, but the shutters kept the house wonderfully dark.

Since we still had power, I made a big breakfast and cooked all the bacon (which I took from my friend’s fridge the day before).  Then, I don’t really remember what we did.  I think I nervously walked around the house, we turned the TV on our local news station (NBC -2 is the BEST during a hurricane.  Senior Chief Meteorologist Robert Van Winkle is my “go to” guy on hurricane days.), and just putzed around the house I guess.  We probably went outside and took a little walk…in fact, yes…we did do that. 

The weather adventurers came to check on us.  

We even had visitors in the earlier afternoon.  My mom and dad took a little walk to check in on us and give a live weather update.  It was a fun distraction.

As lunch time approached, Jeremy encouraged me to cook one more thing, so I made some pasta.  As soon as it was finished, we lost power.  I consider that a gift from God 😊  That pasta was our dinner that night.

When the power went out, things got real.  Let’s be honest, I was nervous.  How can you not be?  We now had no idea where the hurricane was going, but we also knew it didn’t matter because it was so big.  No matter what, we would see hurricane force winds.  Jeremy saw my anxiety, but was trying to keep the atmosphere light and fun so the kids wouldn’t feed off my nervousness.  He is great at that.

We decided to make up our “hunker down” corner because we knew it would get bad in about two hours.  So, we laid two large pieces of paper out on the table to make our prayer and praise wall.  We wrote scripture reminding us not to be afraid and to trust the Lord, and prayer requests for friends and family who were facing the storm in all different ways.  The kids enjoyed being part of this.  Then, we spent time praying through each scripture and each request presented.  This was such a beautiful time of prayer and growth for our family.  It set the tone for the next few hours and helped us to focus on The One True God and not ourselves.

We then made up our corner with a mattress in the corner, lots of blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals.  Around 3:30 we moved into our ‘hunker down’ corner because the winds were picking up.  This could have been the scariest part of the storm, but it was filled with more peace and trust than I could have ever expected.  I had our radio set to listen to our local meteorologist who was giving minute by minute updates of the storms path, wind, etc.  It was on very low, and very close to my ear, so no one else really heard it except me.  Nicole had her ipad charged and she had some praise music on it.  So, we spent the next hour and half singing praise and praying through the eye wall, the most intense winds and rain of the storm.  During much of the time, we were louder than the wind, and a peace came over our family and our room.

I won’t lie, it was still intense.  We kept hearing something hitting the roof and rolling from one side of the house to the other.  Your mind goes wild as to what that could be.  There were times when the wind would howl, and I would grab Jeremy’s hand.  But, everyone remained calm.  Jeremy was a physical rock our family could lean upon, and God was our fortress in whom we could hide and seek protection.  It really was a faith building activity for our family.  It was beautiful, and I am so happy we all experienced it together.

Mr. VanWinkle’s play by play of the hurricane was spot on.  We knew the eye wall was moving through and there were just a few minutes left before we were in the eye.  And we heard it.  We heard the last howl, and then it quickly calmed.  Jeremy started venturing out of the room to get where we could hear better.  We all snuck (in the dark) to the front door, where Jeremy carefully opened it and looked outside.  We could see, to the north of us the black sky where the eyewall was, and the lighter grey of the eye.  There was still a slight breeze, but we began to venture out.

We were shocked.  The roads were gone.  It was under at least a foot of water.  Our yard was flooded up past the sidewalk, and our street was flooded to about halfway up our driveway.  As the seconds turned to minutes, the wind died down even more until it was a perfect stillness.  It was calm.  No, it was dead.  There was not even the slightest breeze.  It was unreal. 

 

Family selfie in the eye

Jeremy is standing in the middle of the street.

Some sort of concrete decoration ended up in our yard.  

We weren’t the only one venturing out.  Our neighbors all came out and caught a glimpse of the rubble that was left behind the fury of the north eye wall.  We all wandered into the streets, taking pictures and checking on one another.  We had no idea how big the eye was at this point…but guessed we had about 30 minutes.  We did not leave our yard, because we knew that at any moment the winds could pick back up again, so we were safe.  But, seriously…..you can’t NOT go outside when you are in the eye of a storm….especially if you know the eye is rather large, which it was. 

We did a quick preview of our property and found that several large trees had ripped in half and fallen….but all had fallen away from our home.  Our yard was filled with debris and water, but our house was in tact. 

 

Knowing this was where all that noise was coming from gave me some peace.  It was a scary noise!

We were finally able to get eyes on what was rolling around on our roof, and it wasn’t a giant tree like I had imagined, it was two (large) branches, but they were not causing any damage.  Our roof was in tact, not a shingle lost.  My van had not been struck by any branches.  We had survived the first half of the storm with almost no damage to our property, just our trees.

So- we enjoyed the next few minutes.  We enjoyed the stillness.  We took photons.  We breathed in the moment.  It is surreal to stand in the same place that moments ago was experiencing 130-140mph winds.  Now, there was nothing.  Knowing that our home was withstanding the storm well, and that our neighbors and ourselves were safe allowed us to enjoy this reprieve. 

A bit later, the breeze began to pick up and went back to our front porch and watched the back half of the storm move in.  We were well protected from this of the storm while sitting on our porch, in fact, we could not feel the wind at all, just see it move through the trees.  Once the winds picked back up to hurricane force, we went inside and had dinner.  Remember that pasta I had cooked a few hours earlier?  Well, we had that with rotisserie chicken.  It tasted wonderful. 

As we ate, we heard on the radio that the back half of the storm was breaking up.  The winds were not as strong, and the rain bands were falling apart.  I can not adequately describe the sense of relief that came over Jeremy and I.  All of those days leading up to the storm, despite our attempts to continually lay our fears down at the throne of God, were wearing on us.  There was stress and anxiety and the last two hours was incredibly tense.  All at once, we were able to relax.  We laughed.  We ate.  We played games.  We let our guards down, at least a bit.  After dinner, we decided to sit on the front porch until dark and watch the storm. 

 

This is the highest Nathan has ever gotten in that tree ;)

Night fell and we let the kids sleep in their ‘hunker down’ spots with us.  The power was off, and the shutters were still up, so we could only crack the windows a bit.  In all honesty, I didn’t sleep well that night.  Although some anxiety had released after the eye, I was very aware that we were still in the middle of a hurricane.  The wind howled that night.  I heard it more because the window was cracked a bit and the house was quiet.  The branches on the roof rolled occasionally.  Rest did not come as easily as it had the night before.  But we were safe.  We were together.  And we were home.

The morning proved that my uneasiness that night was not without need.  Many more trees fell during the second half, even though it was not as strong.  We woke up the next morning, and our neighborhood looked drastically different.  But again…we were safe.  We were together.  And we were home. 

Now it was time to assess and to work. 

Pre- Hurricane Irma

Hurricane Irma spun up in the Atlantic Ocean sometime in late August or early September.  It grew to be a beast of a storm, shattering meteorological records, including sustaining category 5 strength with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph, and gusts upwards of 215 mph for 33 hours.  I mean…that is CRAZY!!!  The storm grew to be a monstrous 400 miles wide, which means whatever land it came in contact with would be eaten for dinner.  Just completely covered.  It was scary.

10 days from landfall, the prediction was that it would hit the west coast of Florida.  This struck up fear and panic for many in the state, but we remained pretty calm.  Generally, when you are in the bulls-eye that far out, it’s a safe place to be.  The hurricane models are not terribly reliable 10 days out.  As expected, the models waivered a bit over the next week, to the east of Florida, out to sea, and back to Florida again.  We kept our eye on it, but also kept going with life too. 

We watched with horror as the hurricane, at maximum force swallowed up the tiny island of Barbuda, destroyed 95% of the tiny island and forcing the entire population to evacuate due to uninhabitable  conditions.  We prayed as Irma bore down on the Virgin Island and Puerto Rico, wreaking havoc and destroying the popular tourist destinations.  As Hurricane Irma made its sweep passed Puerto Rico, the models continued to show Florida as a landfall location, the debate was…. would it be the east coast, or the west coast? 



Believe it or not, this was an incredibly difficult question to answer.  Many people left, expecting to come home to nothing.  How do you drive away from your home, and believe it was the last time you would see it standing?  How do you stay, watching a ferocious storm set you in its path of destruction?

Preparations began.  Shutters went up.  Water flew off the shelves.  Gas stations ran out of gas.  Mass evacuations were called, on both sides of the state.  At the time, it was still a category 5 hurricane with a total wind field over 400 miles wide. It didn’t matter where it “landed”, all of Florida would feel lit.  6.5 million people evacuated!  This led to chaos on the roads, hotels booked up all the way to Atlanta, stations running out of gas.  It was crazy.  The big question was “Will you stay?” or “Will you go?” 

The only way to make a decision like this…is through prayer.  I was so scared, so conflicted.  I was afraid of driving, and having no where to go, and running out of gas.  I was afraid of staying and being wiped off the face of the planet (because that was how everyone made you feel if you were crazy enough to stay).  I knew it would be far worse to weather the storm in unfamiliar locations than in our own home.  And… Florida is just a hundred miles wide, an early turn meant it would miss us, a late turn meant it would miss us.  A few miles really made a big difference.  I digress. 

 

The only way to make a decisions like this…is through prayer (had to start where I left off 😉 )  So, Jeremy and I spent time talking and praying together.  We made the decision to stay.  We learned that our roof was up to the latest hurricane standards.  Our home is cement block. We had hurricane shutters and the ability to make provisions.  We felt that our home could withstand a powerful storm.  We were not in an area with potential storm surge. My parents are just three blocks away, and they were staying.  Our kids are not babies and are easy to care for, we thought they were mature enough to handle it.  We have a business here and wanted to keep an eye on it.  We wanted to be helpers.  We wanted to be available to lend a hand, or a shoulder to those in need.  We felt like God wanted us to stay.  So, we stayed.

 Once the decision was made, the next few days became easier.  Despite friends and family trying to talk us out of it, we knew that we were doing exactly what we ought to do.  We worked hard to secure our home, have supplies to provide for our family, and looked in on friends.  We had plenty of time to work and prepare.

We went to friends homes and put plywood over their windows and doors when they didn’t have time to do it before they left.  We emptied friends refrigerators and freezers. We made sandbags to put in front of the shop doors.  We prayed over the homes we worked on.  We worked together as a family and focused on others and not ourselves.  The kids were amazing!  We had found a groove and knew we were doing exactly what we needed to do.

That doesn’t mean there weren't difficult times. I certainly broke down a few times, afraid of what was to come.  Questioned whether we were doing the right thing.  The hardest time was when we were at a friend’s home that would certainly be flooded if the storm surge happened as they were forecasting.  This home, with just a few hundred feet of mangroves between it and the water, would almost certainly be underwater the next day.  I called my friend and couldn’t hold back my tears.  I asked her where her photos were, and moved her books to be on top of the table (thinking maybe, just maybe it would only be two feet or so of water and I could save them…and not 15 feet like they forecasted).  It was awful!  It was one the hardest things I have ever done.  I prayed over their home and their family.  As we closed their door, with their most precious “things” in our car, I was nearly certain that we would be the last ones in that house before it was condemned.  Yes, I have a flair for drama and an overactive imagination. 

Staying was hard.  People told us that were were selfish and cared too much about our “stuff” and not enough about our children.  Talk about “mommy-guilt”.  Ugh…it was the worst!  We had to just block those comments out of our minds and remember why we were here.  God’s grace is sufficient for the day, not all the made up things in my mind and the minds of others.  So, we had to stick with the “here and now” and trust God to fulfill His promises. 

As I laid my head down on Saturday night, the night before the storm, I felt peace.  We had done what was right and best for our family….even if others thought differently.  We had peace in our decision, and it was the best night sleep I would have in two weeks.  God knew we would need our strength, and was kind to give us a peaceful night.