(apparently we'll be 'thrashed-again' - Jeanne is on her way!)
Introduction:
UPDATE: 23:30 (EDT / almost midnite) - on Wednesday, 22 September... - check out our new lady-friend, Ms. Jeanne who may come a calling on Saturday night / Sunday morning the 25th-26th - http://www.nhc.noaa.gov - click on 'Maps and Charts' under Hurricane Jeanne
Notice to Browsers / Viewers - this web-page, though "approved by Management (Ms. May Wong) is still a 'work in progress' and Mr. Bill may change / add to it over the next week or so as we 'finalize' our repairs and yard-clean-up...
This web-site covers both our 'September activities' as well as some things about Hurricane Frances - from about 1 September til about 12 September, including preparations for the Hurricane, evacuation, time at Mom & Chuck's (in Jacksonville, Florida - about 240 miles from Stuart), return, and etc. etc. etc.
May's first hurricane run away (Preparations, Evacuation, Return, Cleanup), Edition #1 - Ms. May came-up-with the time-line and the raw-text; Mr. Bill edited and put in the pictures...
Wed/ Sept. 1
In the Armory Art Center, we have to move everything that was able to fly-around outside, indoors, including the whole 40 cubic foot brick kiln, brick by brick by brick. (Yes, we have to take it apart first) plus a lot of other miscellany had to be moved inside the building.
When I got home, Mr. Billy had boarded up all the windows (see below for more hurricane shutter pictures)
and all I have to do is move everything that was on the porch to indoors into the living room.
More hurricane shutter pictures - some of the shutters are not 'entirely' finished (that is they are not painted and have 'hand-hold-holes') in them...
of:
Thursday / September 2, 2004
Decided we should go north to Jacksonville but we couldn't find Tigger, who was hiding in a kitchen cabinet. So, we didn't leave until 6:40am. There' was already some traffic on I-95, but then it got worse the further north we go, so a normally 3 1/2 hour trip become 5 1/2 hours, since a lot of people from Orlando try to get out too and their path was I-4 east to I-95 north at Daytona; so from Daytona, north to Jacksonville a LOT OF TRAFFIC (but it was to get much worse), we've been lucky, lucky, luck through this whole episode.
We went to the boat yard with Step-Dad-Chuck to make sure their big (34 foot / two-engine) boat he has there is well protected from wind and rain. We rig-up a big plastic sheet to shed the rain if the roof blows-off the boat-yard-area where his boat is being worked-on (to replace (drinking) water and fuel tanks). The rest of the day we read and stare at Hurricane Frances path forecast on TV.
Friday / September 3, 2004
Read/ Stare at the Hurricane Frances path forecast on TV, and it's going to hit some where between Vero beach and Palm beach, which means Stuart, where we live (are we nervous? concerned? apprehensive? - (poor Mr. Bill is about to have a nervous break-down, Ms. May is the rational one? - it's our frist hurricane together - everything we own is in the house in Stuart, (not that we own much?) but at least we have each other and our two-cats safe in Jacksonville!)).
Saturday / September 4, 2004
Read/ Stare at the Hurricane Frances path forecast on TV, and it landed in; BINGO!; Stuart, where we live. In fact, it landed in Sewell's Point, which is where our last home was located, and where we sold the house at 8 Perriwinkle back in November of last year - (thanks goodness, since now it's ground-floor was just barely under water, and the guy who was renting it didn't put-up the hurricane shutters and just left his grand-piano on the ground-floor to fend for itself (we'll update you on this issue as soon as we find out?)
SO - when it "hits" it's a 'graphical thing' - here's the link to N.O.A.A.'s / N.H.C. (National Hurricane Center) archive for the Frances graphics... - there's a couple of things here that are VERY VERY both informative / educational as well as 'entertaining' about how the Frances 'path' develops, is forecast, and changes - try it, you'll like it: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2004/FRANCES_graphics.shtml try clicking on where it says 'Watch / Warn 5-day and give their web a few seconds to download the 'images' in the 'loop' to your computer - you will be very impressed!!!!
Sunday / September 5, 2004
Read/ Stare at all the Hurricane damage on TV again, again, and again...... Until Mom and Dad lost power, but they do have a LPG powered generator to support the refrigerator, lights, TV, but no AC, no cooking indoor, but Dad has an outdoor gas grill. Guy next-door (west of) to Mom & Chuck had a big cypress tree fall on his dock,
so Mr. Bill takes Chuck's newly serviced (Japanese 'Shindaiwa') chain-saw to help him remove most of the tree. Mr. Bruce (Grob) - next-door-neighbor also has a Poulan-16" chain-saw... But Mr. Bruce puts down his Poulan Chain-saw, on the dock, and a gust of wind came along and blew his chain-saw into the river. At least he knows right where it went into the river and he can retrieve it and get it rebuilt.
Monday / September 6, 2004
Read/ Try to get hold of friends in the Stuart (home) area, see whether it's time to go back, but no luck, the cell-phones / e-mail / land-line phones all fail us...
Tuesday / September 7, 2004
Left at 5:20 a.m. hoping we would beat (most of) the traffic and we did, but we had not figger in the gas factor...... It's very hard to find gas along I-95, they're either no gas or no electricity. Finally we found that to get away from the highway to get gas didn't seem to be too much trouble in "Titusville". When we (finally) get home we see a LOT of yard-damage but NO house damage and only a Little Tiny bit of roof-shingles gone off the shop-studio-roof! So, we're so fortunate that the house is still in tact, no damage at all, except the screened-in-porch-screen was pretty much 'trashed' - (but Mr. Bill re-stapled all that over a couple of days and with $4.95 of new screen it's not 'good as new' but it's certainly serviceable...
the home / house roof was not damaged at all - (new roof / shingles in February of this year, and they didn't come off at all...)
However, our shop/studio lost 'a few' shingles - which Mr. Bill will fix / repair / replace at some time in the near future, with spares for the main-house...
we found almost all of the screen on the 'screened-in-porch' flapping in the breeze, the cat, however, was NOT flapping in the breeze - she'd been with us in Jacksonville, and was sort of 'Ho-Hum' about all the yard-damage, though she and Ms. Tigger did their best to 'supervise' the re-construction of the yard & etc...
We found a new ceiling fan design - thanks to Hurricane Frances. We've asked our Friends (and computer conslutee) at "Oak Forest Products" if we can patent this design - no response yet?
Clean up the yard (some)
Bill sawing the tree by the road (click for larger) and then the 'sleeping' bamboo, which we ressurected!
Bill borrowed this MUCH REQUIRED TOOL from step-Dad Chuck in Jacksonville, - it's certainly been very very useful!!!!
Until we got / get our power-back-on (to pump water) we are showering in the rain and/or with rain-water (see elsewhere for our rain-water-collection-technology(very impressive in it's "high-tech" approach...;
(Mr. Bill has to, though, first 'rinse-off' in the Jacuzzi).
a picture of the Jacuzzi with a 'little bit cleaner' water: - (than the bill-Jacuzzi-Bath picture below...
Next door had a very noisy generator which he need to keep running to keep his newly bought $200 beef fresh in his freezer...
Wednesday / September 8, 2004
No power / No water/ No phone/ No McDonalds for breakfast! Clean up the yard, shower in the rain, collect as much rain water as we could. Cook with camp strove.
We went 'Sea-Dooing' to look at "South Indian River Drive" (or what's left of it - much of this road has literally fallen-into the Indian River (and we were going to buy a house on this road?) - Anyway - the SeaDoo runs TERRIFIC, and we stopped-by the US Sailing Center on the way-home; and 3 people were out kiteboarding with BIG BIG kites!... Go to bed when it's dark, which is about 8. The noisy generator is choking every once a while; very hard to sleep, hot, etc. etc. etc.
For the second day in a row we collect all the rain-water we can during the afternoon's storm. We use this for showering, toilet-flushing, and other such 'non-potable' uses... - We'd saved (luckily) about 5-7 gallons of "RO water" (Reverse Osmosis) before the storm - so we had all these 1/2 gallon bottles full of RO water - a god-send for drinking water - but then we also got some water from the "EOC" (Emergency Operations Center) which was set-up in the parking-lot behind K-Mart and Home Depot...
Thursday / September 9, 2004
No power / No water/ yes phone (LOTS of static - (Lady in Bell-South truck says static will eventually go away))... / No McDonald's for breakfast! (UGH)
Clean out the yard, shower in the rain, collect as much rain water as we could. Cook with camp stove. Go to bed when it's dark, which is about 8. Next door noisy generator quit, he find a much nicer one. But then the bugs are out., we are sleeping on the cool tile floor til 23:20 when the power comes back on
Yipppeee, now we can... Hot shower! email! lights! Air Conditioning! (NO BUGs!!!)
Friday / September 10, 2004
"Pike Electric" came this morning to fix the 3/16" solid-copper conductor laying in the yard that could have zapped us all to kingdom come - assuming that FPL had energized the circuit (they didn't)... Mr. Bill had called them several times - they ignored him - Pike Power guys / crew were not only excellent, friendly, qualified, helpful (they took-out my 'ookie-tree' over the well-pump!) but they also were educational - not bad for a 'free-service'! - After they Re-Energized the circuits - everyone else on Great Pocket Trail had power, also...
well-pump with tree in difficult to remove configuration well-pump with no-tree (notice stump at bottom of picture)
Tonite we also innvited a couple who still don't have power to sleep over, they really appreciated the air-conditioning and the warm shower! Ms. Mai is originally from Vietnam, was a computer gurette before marriage to Mr. Harvey, who works for Smith Barney here in Stuart...
Saturday / September 11, 2004
Today was a 'lazy-day' Mr. Bill didn't 'start (yard) work' til after 8:30 (Because Harvey and Mai were here), and we did a lot... Ms. May went with Harvey & Mai to the Breedlove's house (they live about 3-4 houses to the East on Great Pocket Trail) - the Breedloves are Orchid Lovers (like Mr. Harvey and Ms. May is an aspiring Orchid Lover...) -
The 'bonus-(yard)-trash' pick-up guys came about 09:30 - and they picked-up the HUGE yard-trash-pile I'd created, plus all the other 'yard-debris' on the street. I've now got a similarly large pile of yard-debris waiting for another pick-up (maybe the end of next week?)
that's about the end of the "Hurricane Frances Report" - more to come, later... - me
We'll 'assume' that there will be more September activities, and that there will be other 'things of monumental importance' to report-on later, but at this point (Saturday evening, (late) 11 September, 2004) there's not much news but Hurricane Frances... (and up-coming Hurricane Ivan.
last updated: Wednesday lateevening, 22Sep04; revID: 1u
UPDATE: 23:30 (EDT / almost midnite) - on Wednesday, 22 September... - check out our new lady-friend, Ms. Jeanne who may come a calling on Saturday night / Sunday morning the 25th-26th - http://www.nhc.noaa.gov - click on 'Maps and Charts' under Hurricane Jeanne
Notice to Browsers / Viewers - this web-page, though "approved by Management (Ms. May Wong) is still a 'work in progress' and Mr. Bill may change / add to it over the next week or so as we 'finalize' our repairs and yard-clean-up...
This web-site covers both our 'September activities' as well as some things about Hurricane Frances - from about 1 September til about 12 September, including preparations for the Hurricane, evacuation, time at Mom & Chuck's (in Jacksonville, Florida - about 240 miles from Stuart), return, and etc. etc. etc.
May's first hurricane run away (Preparations, Evacuation, Return, Cleanup), Edition #1 - Ms. May came-up-with the time-line and the raw-text; Mr. Bill edited and put in the pictures...
Wed/ Sept. 1
In the Armory Art Center, we have to move everything that was able to fly-around outside, indoors, including the whole 40 cubic foot brick kiln, brick by brick by brick. (Yes, we have to take it apart first) plus a lot of other miscellany had to be moved inside the building.
When I got home, Mr. Billy had boarded up all the windows (see below for more hurricane shutter pictures)
and all I have to do is move everything that was on the porch to indoors into the living room.
More hurricane shutter pictures - some of the shutters are not 'entirely' finished (that is they are not painted and have 'hand-hold-holes') in them...
of:
- West end of house
- East end of house
- North Side
- shop-studio-picture(s):
- SE corner
- SW corner
- East side
- North side (very (VERY) Boring!)
Thursday / September 2, 2004
Decided we should go north to Jacksonville but we couldn't find Tigger, who was hiding in a kitchen cabinet. So, we didn't leave until 6:40am. There' was already some traffic on I-95, but then it got worse the further north we go, so a normally 3 1/2 hour trip become 5 1/2 hours, since a lot of people from Orlando try to get out too and their path was I-4 east to I-95 north at Daytona; so from Daytona, north to Jacksonville a LOT OF TRAFFIC (but it was to get much worse), we've been lucky, lucky, luck through this whole episode.
We went to the boat yard with Step-Dad-Chuck to make sure their big (34 foot / two-engine) boat he has there is well protected from wind and rain. We rig-up a big plastic sheet to shed the rain if the roof blows-off the boat-yard-area where his boat is being worked-on (to replace (drinking) water and fuel tanks). The rest of the day we read and stare at Hurricane Frances path forecast on TV.
Friday / September 3, 2004
Read/ Stare at the Hurricane Frances path forecast on TV, and it's going to hit some where between Vero beach and Palm beach, which means Stuart, where we live (are we nervous? concerned? apprehensive? - (poor Mr. Bill is about to have a nervous break-down, Ms. May is the rational one? - it's our frist hurricane together - everything we own is in the house in Stuart, (not that we own much?) but at least we have each other and our two-cats safe in Jacksonville!)).
Saturday / September 4, 2004
Read/ Stare at the Hurricane Frances path forecast on TV, and it landed in; BINGO!; Stuart, where we live. In fact, it landed in Sewell's Point, which is where our last home was located, and where we sold the house at 8 Perriwinkle back in November of last year - (thanks goodness, since now it's ground-floor was just barely under water, and the guy who was renting it didn't put-up the hurricane shutters and just left his grand-piano on the ground-floor to fend for itself (we'll update you on this issue as soon as we find out?)
SO - when it "hits" it's a 'graphical thing' - here's the link to N.O.A.A.'s / N.H.C. (National Hurricane Center) archive for the Frances graphics... - there's a couple of things here that are VERY VERY both informative / educational as well as 'entertaining' about how the Frances 'path' develops, is forecast, and changes - try it, you'll like it: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2004/FRANCES_graphics.shtml try clicking on where it says 'Watch / Warn 5-day and give their web a few seconds to download the 'images' in the 'loop' to your computer - you will be very impressed!!!!
Sunday / September 5, 2004
Read/ Stare at all the Hurricane damage on TV again, again, and again...... Until Mom and Dad lost power, but they do have a LPG powered generator to support the refrigerator, lights, TV, but no AC, no cooking indoor, but Dad has an outdoor gas grill. Guy next-door (west of) to Mom & Chuck had a big cypress tree fall on his dock,
so Mr. Bill takes Chuck's newly serviced (Japanese 'Shindaiwa') chain-saw to help him remove most of the tree. Mr. Bruce (Grob) - next-door-neighbor also has a Poulan-16" chain-saw... But Mr. Bruce puts down his Poulan Chain-saw, on the dock, and a gust of wind came along and blew his chain-saw into the river. At least he knows right where it went into the river and he can retrieve it and get it rebuilt.
Monday / September 6, 2004
Read/ Try to get hold of friends in the Stuart (home) area, see whether it's time to go back, but no luck, the cell-phones / e-mail / land-line phones all fail us...
Tuesday / September 7, 2004
Left at 5:20 a.m. hoping we would beat (most of) the traffic and we did, but we had not figger in the gas factor...... It's very hard to find gas along I-95, they're either no gas or no electricity. Finally we found that to get away from the highway to get gas didn't seem to be too much trouble in "Titusville". When we (finally) get home we see a LOT of yard-damage but NO house damage and only a Little Tiny bit of roof-shingles gone off the shop-studio-roof! So, we're so fortunate that the house is still in tact, no damage at all, except the screened-in-porch-screen was pretty much 'trashed' - (but Mr. Bill re-stapled all that over a couple of days and with $4.95 of new screen it's not 'good as new' but it's certainly serviceable...
the home / house roof was not damaged at all - (new roof / shingles in February of this year, and they didn't come off at all...)
However, our shop/studio lost 'a few' shingles - which Mr. Bill will fix / repair / replace at some time in the near future, with spares for the main-house...
we found almost all of the screen on the 'screened-in-porch' flapping in the breeze, the cat, however, was NOT flapping in the breeze - she'd been with us in Jacksonville, and was sort of 'Ho-Hum' about all the yard-damage, though she and Ms. Tigger did their best to 'supervise' the re-construction of the yard & etc...
We found a new ceiling fan design - thanks to Hurricane Frances. We've asked our Friends (and computer conslutee) at "Oak Forest Products" if we can patent this design - no response yet?
Clean up the yard (some)
Bill sawing the tree by the road (click for larger) and then the 'sleeping' bamboo, which we ressurected!
Bill borrowed this MUCH REQUIRED TOOL from step-Dad Chuck in Jacksonville, - it's certainly been very very useful!!!!
Until we got / get our power-back-on (to pump water) we are showering in the rain and/or with rain-water (see elsewhere for our rain-water-collection-technology(very impressive in it's "high-tech" approach...;
(Mr. Bill has to, though, first 'rinse-off' in the Jacuzzi).
a picture of the Jacuzzi with a 'little bit cleaner' water: - (than the bill-Jacuzzi-Bath picture below...
Next door had a very noisy generator which he need to keep running to keep his newly bought $200 beef fresh in his freezer...
Wednesday / September 8, 2004
No power / No water/ No phone/ No McDonalds for breakfast! Clean up the yard, shower in the rain, collect as much rain water as we could. Cook with camp strove.
We went 'Sea-Dooing' to look at "South Indian River Drive" (or what's left of it - much of this road has literally fallen-into the Indian River (and we were going to buy a house on this road?) - Anyway - the SeaDoo runs TERRIFIC, and we stopped-by the US Sailing Center on the way-home; and 3 people were out kiteboarding with BIG BIG kites!... Go to bed when it's dark, which is about 8. The noisy generator is choking every once a while; very hard to sleep, hot, etc. etc. etc.
For the second day in a row we collect all the rain-water we can during the afternoon's storm. We use this for showering, toilet-flushing, and other such 'non-potable' uses... - We'd saved (luckily) about 5-7 gallons of "RO water" (Reverse Osmosis) before the storm - so we had all these 1/2 gallon bottles full of RO water - a god-send for drinking water - but then we also got some water from the "EOC" (Emergency Operations Center) which was set-up in the parking-lot behind K-Mart and Home Depot...
Thursday / September 9, 2004
No power / No water/ yes phone (LOTS of static - (Lady in Bell-South truck says static will eventually go away))... / No McDonald's for breakfast! (UGH)
Clean out the yard, shower in the rain, collect as much rain water as we could. Cook with camp stove. Go to bed when it's dark, which is about 8. Next door noisy generator quit, he find a much nicer one. But then the bugs are out., we are sleeping on the cool tile floor til 23:20 when the power comes back on
Yipppeee, now we can... Hot shower! email! lights! Air Conditioning! (NO BUGs!!!)
Friday / September 10, 2004
"Pike Electric" came this morning to fix the 3/16" solid-copper conductor laying in the yard that could have zapped us all to kingdom come - assuming that FPL had energized the circuit (they didn't)... Mr. Bill had called them several times - they ignored him - Pike Power guys / crew were not only excellent, friendly, qualified, helpful (they took-out my 'ookie-tree' over the well-pump!) but they also were educational - not bad for a 'free-service'! - After they Re-Energized the circuits - everyone else on Great Pocket Trail had power, also...
well-pump with tree in difficult to remove configuration well-pump with no-tree (notice stump at bottom of picture)
Tonite we also innvited a couple who still don't have power to sleep over, they really appreciated the air-conditioning and the warm shower! Ms. Mai is originally from Vietnam, was a computer gurette before marriage to Mr. Harvey, who works for Smith Barney here in Stuart...
Saturday / September 11, 2004
Today was a 'lazy-day' Mr. Bill didn't 'start (yard) work' til after 8:30 (Because Harvey and Mai were here), and we did a lot... Ms. May went with Harvey & Mai to the Breedlove's house (they live about 3-4 houses to the East on Great Pocket Trail) - the Breedloves are Orchid Lovers (like Mr. Harvey and Ms. May is an aspiring Orchid Lover...) -
The 'bonus-(yard)-trash' pick-up guys came about 09:30 - and they picked-up the HUGE yard-trash-pile I'd created, plus all the other 'yard-debris' on the street. I've now got a similarly large pile of yard-debris waiting for another pick-up (maybe the end of next week?)
that's about the end of the "Hurricane Frances Report" - more to come, later... - me
We'll 'assume' that there will be more September activities, and that there will be other 'things of monumental importance' to report-on later, but at this point (Saturday evening, (late) 11 September, 2004) there's not much news but Hurricane Frances... (and up-coming Hurricane Ivan.
last updated: Wednesday lateevening, 22Sep04; revID: 1u