Tag Archives: Plywood

Hurricane Irma, Personal Journal

Hurricane Irma: Who Needs Lights Anyway?

We just lost power.

We had a pretty good run as I followed many of my close neighbors over the last three hours, announcing their power loss.

Just when we thought we could be clear, and just while the whole family was enjoying reruns of “Frasier” on Netflix, buoooooom.

I think that’s the noise it made. Nothing. An eerie quiet. So we are breaking out the cards and the backgammon board.

I guess we will be going to sleep soon but the latest information tells us the most destructive (potentially) winds will arrive around 2 a.m. So we will be sleeping with one eye open, ready to gather the family and dive into our safe room (the master bedroom closet).

We laid down foam padding that I had stored and is coming in handy now if we have to spend any time on the floor of our closet.

Rain has been coming down steadily since early afternoon,  at times with loud winds and rain going horizontally. Trees have been stubbornly holding on to their branches so far.

That could change soon.

We still have wine. We are good.

Next update sometime early morning.
Gotta conserve power on the laptop and the phone’s hotspot.
Hurricane Irma, Personal Journal

Hurricane Irma: Of Battened Hatches and a Little Elbow Grease

The latest on the stormfront from Silvio LaFrossia as he awaits an unwelcome gust named Irma:

Completely battened down. Plywood on all windows.

A quick aside to those questioning the reasoning on plywood barricading homes when images from post-hurricane areas typically show total devastation of property. what can a thin sheet of plywood?

The plywood is not placed to keep the full fury of Mother Nature out. If she wants in, she will get in.

What the plywood is there for is to deflect Mother Nature’s minions in the shape of flying debris. These evil minions fly through the air, sometimes in less than full destructive hurricane wind speeds, finding uncovered windows, breaking in and thus allowing much of Mother Nature’s other henchmen, wind and rain, to enter the house and thoroughly destroy it from within.

Less than $300 worth of wood and some elbow grease can prevent a hurricane’s near-miss and outlier squall winds from totally ruining your home.

A final check of supplies found a bit of a dip in some essentials, bread, simple over the counter meds and wine. One quick trip to the local CVS fixed that.

I witnessed a local construction company’s unique way of securing its containers from becoming flying debris.

The latest track, emphatically relayed by the all day, all weather, news show had the center of the storm shifting out west a bit more than all the computer models and experts expected. These storms can be so fickle.

So the path out moves Orlando away from receiving the eye and strongest winds as it traveled up the peninsula. Now the storm will hug the west coast and threaten the coast from Fort Meyers all the way up to Tampa with its fiercest winds.

Hurricane Irma

Irma Checklist: Family, Plywood and Backyard Furniture

Silvio LaFrossia is sending bulletins about how he and his family in Florida are preparing for Irma’s arrival. Here’s his latest dispatch from late Thursday night:

  • Thursday was the last normal business day at work.  Our office will be open but employees were given the option to work from home if possible and allowed blackout hours to tend to some preparations for the storm. “Family first” was the motto from our CEO.

 

  •  I used the early evening to remove from the backyard older lawn furniture that went unused and was languishing under a tarp for so long. Rather than move it all into the garage, I put most of it out for trash pickup today.

 

  • I reviewed my plywood situation. I had some plywood sheets left from our previous home and hurricanes in 2004. Since then I have used some and am short to cover all my current windows. I hope to use the morning to hunt for some plywood at the stores and that they have restocked from earlier in the week.

 

  •  A large part of the anxiety my wife and I have is that our two oldest are at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Fla., north of us and closer to the Atlantic Coast. But Florida Gov. Rick Scott announced late Thursday that he was ordering the closure of all K-12 schools, colleges and universities on Friday and Monday after the storm hits. Having my immediate family together lifted our spirits.

 

  • I still have the anxiety of thinking about preparations and safety of my extended family — my wife’s mother and father who live just south of us in Kissimmee Fla. Also, my mother, father and youngest brother, who is disabled, live just west of us in Ocoee, Fla. I have the additional task of checking in on all of them before and after the storm.

Related:

Hurricane Irma: Forget Bottled Water. Getting Wine Is Tougher!

Bracing for Irma: Tales From the Florida Stormfront