Notes from a hurricane survivor in Florida...
 

"WHAT I LEARNED FROM HURRICANES' CHARLEY, FRANCES, AND IVAN...

* Coffee and frozen pizzas can be made on a BBQ grill.
* No matter how many times you flick the switch, lights don't work
without electricity.
* Kids can survive 4 days or longer without a video game controller in
their hand.
* Cats are even more irritating without power.
* He who has the biggest generator wins.
* Women can actually survive without doing their hair--you just wish
they weren't around you.
* A new method of non-lethal torture - showers without hot water.
* There are a lot more stars in the sky than most people thought.
* TV is an addiction and the withdrawal symptoms are painful. One day at
a time, brother.
* A 7 lb bag of ice will chill 6-12 oz Budweiser's to a drinkable
temperature in 11 minutes, and still keep a 14-pound turkey frozen for 8
more hours.
* There are a lot of trees around here.
* Flood plan drawings on some mortgage documents were seriously wrong.
* Contrary to most Florida natives' beliefs, speed limit on roads
without traffic lights does not increase.
* Aluminum siding, while aesthetically pleasing, is definitely not
required.
* Just because you're over 21 doesn't mean you can stay out as late as
you want.
* Crickets can increase their volume to overcome the sound of 14
generators.
* People will get into a line that has already formed without having any
idea what the line is for.
* When required, a Chrysler 300M will float--doesn't steer well, but
floats just the same.
* Some things do keep the mailman from his appointed rounds.
* Telemarketers function no matter what the weather is doing.
* Cell phones work when land lines are down, but only as long as the
battery remains charged.
* 27 of your neighbors are fed from a different transformer than you,
and they are quick to point that out!
* Laundry hampers were not made to contain such a volume.
* If I had a store that sold only ice, chainsaws, gas, and
generators...I'd be rich.
* The price of a bag of ice rises 200% after a hurricane.
* Your water front property can quickly become someone else's fishing
hole.
* Tree service companies are under appreciated.
* I learned what happens when you make fun of another state's blackout.
* MATH 101: 30 days in month, minus 6 days without power equals 30%
higher electric bill ?????
* Drywall is a compound word, take away the "dry" part and it's
worthless.
* I can walk a lot farther than I thought."


~ A. Survivor.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at that...

very sad indeed. good they could find humor in all of it. some of the pictures coming out of these storms are just amazing. it boggles my mind how they could even begin to clean the mess up.

i like these two..the first one as it is something positive they experienced in the midst of crap central..and the second one as it made me smile

I think I can back him up on about 90% of those :(

:(

I'm moving to the mountains.

FL is now trashed.

Center of the US.

:glugglug to you man, I raise my glass. Best wishes on reconstruction and I mean that

To who? To me? I don't live in Florida nor did I write the piece. I just delivered it.

Someone sent it to me. :glugglug

That was a great read. Where I live, we don't get anything. No flooding, no hurricanes, tornados earthquakes etc. We did however go without electricty for a few days during that huge black out a year ago. I learned that I too could do just about anything on a BBQ. I also had a lot of fun being in survival mode. Neighbors sat outside and chatted to each other, we chased our kids around the dark streets....we were all just a little disappointed when we got our electricity back.

purely poetic :thumbsup and that is coming from a survivor.

This was in the Miami Herald yesterday. A survivor's story from a Panama City (long but a good read)

Don Butler should be dead. He had made his peace with God. He had phoned his wife and told her goodbye.

But then his animal survival instincts kicked in and he fought 120-mph winds, a 20-foot tidal surge and cutting rain to live another day.

Although the waterfront town house where he spent the most trying six hours of his life didn't make it, he and his dog, Zeus, did. Theirs is a classic tale of human and canine survival.

Unlike the vast majority of waterfront residents in Navarre, a small coastal town in the path of Hurricane Ivan, Butler decided to ride out the storm in his wood-frame house 100 feet from the bay.

''I had given up,'' Butler said Friday afternoon as he wandered awestruck around the shell of what was his home. ``I knew I was dead. I woke up this morning like I was in somebody else's skin. I couldn't believe I was alive.''

To prepare for Ivan, Butler covered the windows of his town house with aluminum hurricane shutters, thinking it would be enough. His wife and daughter had fled to a friend's house in Jacksonville.

And then Butler made perhaps the worst decision of his 41 years. He decided to stay home and ride out the hurricane.

He stretched out on his living-room couch, watching his wide-screen television. By 2 a.m. Thursday, Butler had nodded off. Power went out suddenly, and he awoke to a gurgling sound. He reached down and felt inch-deep water in his living room.

His backup plan -- to grab his already packed bag and Zeus and run out the front door to his truck -- collapsed the moment he tried to open the front door. The pressure of water rushing into the house prevented him from opening it. He grabbed Zeus and retreated upstairs.

By the time he reached the steps, water was three feet deep in his living room. The house was pitch-black, save for what light came from the flashlight in his hand.

Once upstairs, he shone the light on the staircase and watched as the sea water consumed each step until there were only three steps between the water and him.

'It didn't rise up gradually, it was just like `Boom!,' like a damn sledgehammer,'' he said.

He called his wife on his cellphone.

'He was screaming at the top of his lungs and then, `The water is rising. I have nowhere to go', '' Butler's wife, Beth, said Friday. ``I was crying, he was crying. My husband is a very macho man. For him to be in such an emotional state, I knew this could be it.''

Butler lay down on his bed, hoping it would act as a boat if the room flooded. Water, debris and his floating refrigerator pounded against the first-floor ceiling, making the floor beneath Butler shimmy.

The back and side walls downstairs collapsed. Gulf waters were now flowing freely through his living room. He knew he couldn't stay. He called 911, but they told him they couldn't risk a rescue attempt.

''It was insane. My whole house was rocking with the waves,'' he said. ``I called the people that were important to me and told them goodbye.''

Beth Butler felt helpless.

''I never thought I would see him again,'' she said. ``He told me he loved me, loved our daughters, and that he was going to try to get out. It was about 5 a.m.. He said if I didn't hear from him in an hour, something was wrong. He didn't call me back until 10. It was the most uneasy five hours my daughter and I have ever experienced.''

Butler led Zeus to his daughter's bedroom, opened the window and saw a miracle. His neighbor's boat had crashed into his garage.

He climbed out of the window with his dog, walked to the edge of his garage roof and jumped onto the boat with Zeus.

From there, Butler walked to the back of the boat, where the water was a bit more shallow, and lowered himself, his dog and his bag into the brown water. Floating debris pounded them from all sides. Hoping he wouldn't step on a dead body, he swam and waded up the street until he pulled himself out of the water. The wind was still whipping furiously, thrashing his skin with rain and sand.

He reached Highway 98 and flagged down a passing vehicle. The driver gave him a ride to his wife's nearby beauty salon.

''I went through every range of emotion, and the last one was anger,'' Beth Butler said. ``It was the stupidest move of his entire life for him to stay there.''

On Friday, Butler said he would never spend another night in a waterfront property during a hurricane.

His wife, who said her husband is an adrenaline junkie who climbs a 300-foot tower several times a week as part of his job as an Air Force engineer, won't let him stay behind again.

''You know, I've always hated the name Ivan,'' Butler joked Friday. ``It's a commie name.''

Scoreman... I read that, and all the while couldn't help thinking "what a fucking retard this guy is".

Unreal.

I've never lived in Florida or even stayed there for more than a few nights at a stretch, but even I know enough to get the fuck out of the way of killer hurricane as big as Ivan. Christ people, get a ripe fucking clue already. You "ride out the storm at home" types aren't superhumans, you are LUCKY. Lucky to be alive.

Btw, last I heard the death toll from Ivan was around the 110 person mark. I know for certain that it is over 100.

It is a good read. My wife kinda pooh poohs the whole storm thing while I get agitated like a hornets nest when a big storm approaches. I made her read that just so she can get an idea of what people deal with on storm surge. Now I need to find a survivors story on wind storm effects to show her....

<------2 houses in his family were completely destroyed in Andrew and he has complete respect for approaching hurricanes nowadays.

Great read. I agree with all of them. The stars Thursday night were a surreal sight. Felt good to be alive.

We had our friends over a few nights before Charley-which was projected to hit land about 15 miles from my house-to talk to them about evacuating. Our friends are mostly younger kids, 18-24 or so, and they still have that "I'm invincible and nothing bad will happen to me" kind of attitude. We sat them down and explained what really happend, and showed them pics online of prior hurricanes and their damage so they would take it seriously. Thankfully, the two subsequent hurricanes evoked a more sobered reaction in them. It isn't anything to fuck around with. There are forces out there much more powerful than anything we fathom in our day-to-day life, and people forget that.