We are getting cautionary essays about hurricane season being upon us and as we haven't had a storm hit the islands for several lovely years I have no doubt this subject will have to be revisited before the end of November. Some people in town look forward to hurricane parties where drink flows liberally and stories get taller as the winds get stronger. However I have survived a few storms in Key West and I have found that being prepared helps, especially when we manage one more hurricane-free summer and preparations were not needed at all.
Let me say straight up that if there is any need visitors get evacuated first and this year the people in charge have announced they will be cautious and thoughtful before they order an evacuation. In the past they tended to evacuate tourists at the first sign of a distant storm to the detriment of local business. The chances of a vacation being interrupted are remote but it can happen. Prices are lower in summer for a reason and a vacation in the tropics in hurricane season requires a certain level of maturity and flexibility in a traveler. Just like if you come in winter and meet the rain and gray of a two day cold front there's no point in getting mad. Shit happens but a hurricane is no threat to a visitor's safety.
Everyone has their own plan and my wife and I have developed our response to the threat. For what it's worth she gets the dog in the car and evacuates the minute schools are closed (high season for storms is in September when schools are back in session). She leaves immediately before Highway One gets clogged and lines form at gas stations and she takes a "vacation" with friends on the mainland. I don't get to evacuate as mine is a reserved occupation so I close up the house and wait to be ordered in to work where we get locked down for the duration of the storm, and if you think sleeping in a police station with one's colleagues is a breeze you have another think coming. There's nothing quite like stepping out of the shower into the men's locker room where the SWAT team is getting a last minute briefing. "Uh, good morning!" one says brightly clutching the towel closer. Boarding school was never quite so...well armed? 
People wonder how one copes with an annual storm season and it is a nuisance but when one considers that hurricanes give plenty of warning and loss of life in a storm is a rarity in Key West
we have to feel sorry for the people living through and dying in tornadoes and flooding Up North while cold winter rains fall on people out west in June and so on and so forth. Living in the Keys it's hard not to notice the power of nature up close and personal, so one tends to be more preared mentally for the possibility of disaster. The millions who live in the unprepared suburbs of the big cities like Miami and Fort Lauderdale are likely to suffer a lot more during the soggy power-free aftermath of a hurricane. People in the Keys really pull together when faced with a destructive hurricane, if history is any guide.
Hurricanes bring out a lot of braggadocio in people and the pseudo toughs sneer at those of us making preparations but I have always found talk is cheap. Sensible precautions are...sensible. Storms are unpredictable and they generate tornadoes within them that create unpredictable damage and your home may survive one and not the other. There is an element of luck that supersedes preparation. I just know that I feel better locked in at work knowing my wife and dog are safe and I have done what I can to look after our home. And that is how a fussy middle aged worrier prepares for hurricane season. Getting drunk rarely enters into it for me.
Let me say straight up that if there is any need visitors get evacuated first and this year the people in charge have announced they will be cautious and thoughtful before they order an evacuation. In the past they tended to evacuate tourists at the first sign of a distant storm to the detriment of local business. The chances of a vacation being interrupted are remote but it can happen. Prices are lower in summer for a reason and a vacation in the tropics in hurricane season requires a certain level of maturity and flexibility in a traveler. Just like if you come in winter and meet the rain and gray of a two day cold front there's no point in getting mad. Shit happens but a hurricane is no threat to a visitor's safety.Everyone has their own plan and my wife and I have developed our response to the threat. For what it's worth she gets the dog in the car and evacuates the minute schools are closed (high season for storms is in September when schools are back in session). She leaves immediately before Highway One gets clogged and lines form at gas stations and she takes a "vacation" with friends on the mainland. I don't get to evacuate as mine is a reserved occupation so I close up the house and wait to be ordered in to work where we get locked down for the duration of the storm, and if you think sleeping in a police station with one's colleagues is a breeze you have another think coming. There's nothing quite like stepping out of the shower into the men's locker room where the SWAT team is getting a last minute briefing. "Uh, good morning!" one says brightly clutching the towel closer. Boarding school was never quite so...well armed? People wonder how one copes with an annual storm season and it is a nuisance but when one considers that hurricanes give plenty of warning and loss of life in a storm is a rarity in Key Westwe have to feel sorry for the people living through and dying in tornadoes and flooding Up North while cold winter rains fall on people out west in June and so on and so forth. Living in the Keys it's hard not to notice the power of nature up close and personal, so one tends to be more preared mentally for the possibility of disaster. The millions who live in the unprepared suburbs of the big cities like Miami and Fort Lauderdale are likely to suffer a lot more during the soggy power-free aftermath of a hurricane. People in the Keys really pull together when faced with a destructive hurricane, if history is any guide.
Hurricanes bring out a lot of braggadocio in people and the pseudo toughs sneer at those of us making preparations but I have always found talk is cheap. Sensible precautions are...sensible. Storms are unpredictable and they generate tornadoes within them that create unpredictable damage and your home may survive one and not the other. There is an element of luck that supersedes preparation. I just know that I feel better locked in at work knowing my wife and dog are safe and I have done what I can to look after our home. And that is how a fussy middle aged worrier prepares for hurricane season. Getting drunk rarely enters into it for me.
1 comment:
Dear Sir:
Leslie and I used to vacation quite a bit on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We especially liked Corova Beach, where there are no roads and you must use a 4WD to get to the house, eight miles up the beach. We were evacuated for a hurricane during the second week of our last vacation there, only to learn that standard way out was already eaten away by thepounding surf. The evacuation route took us out through an extremly narrow psart of the beach, where a wave broke over the hood of the truck.
It was by amd large the most thrilling trip of my life. Here's to a hurricane-free season for anyone in the risk area.
Fondest regards,
Jack/reep
Twisted Roads
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