I feel it’s time to record my lessons I learned from a hurricane
- Prepare for the aftermath, not so much the Hurricane. While Irma was a slow lasting hurricane (I was stuck in my place for 2 days due to high winds) which made it somewhat unusual. It was when Hurricane Irma left that drove me crazy. Monday, a clear sky, calm winds – all businesses closed. I was low on food, and could go nowhere to buy more. Grocery stores – closed. Restaurants – closed. Even convenience stores – closed. Hurricane Irma wasn’t the catastrophic storm they predicted, it left very little damage. But even with the little damage it left, I still felt stranded due to lack of preparedness.
- Prepare for no electricity and no internet for at least a week. If you cannot prepare for this scenario, you should GO. Imagine what you will eat and cook without a refrigerator and electric stove. I was lucky in this storm that I never really lost power, I still ran low on food due to lack of preparedness (I prepared for 2 days).
- The time to escape is before mandatory evacuations are issued. You really have to be ahead of the forecasts. When the forecasts are issued, and you join the ‘sheeple’ you will be stuck in gridlock traffic. In the case of Irma, the time to have fled would have been Monday.
- Surviving the winds and the storm surge of the Hurricane is not the hard part – the aftermath is. That’s why my first two points deal with the aftermath. But, still, you want to make sure you’re in a sturdy structure (big apartment towers or recently built structures help as they’re built to more stringent codes) and one higher than 30feet from sealevel. Anything else, just go.