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Come Hell Or High Water- Our Hurricane Irma Experience!

Come Hell Or High Water- Our Hurricane Irma Experience!

A storm story

Wow, What a time Plugins4Automate has had! As many might have seen, P4A has been out of contact for the last two weeks. It all started out as a mini vacation for our three year old granddaughter. Over the Labor Day weekend we had stayed at a Disney Resort to take our granddaughter on her very first trip to Disney World in Orlando Florida. We had a wonderful time but around day 3 we were getting calls from family members that Hurricane Irma was barreling down on Florida and we needed to get back to board up the house and prepare for a big blow. 

 

 

Now being a Native Floridian, hurricanes are nothing new to me. I have slept through 9 different hurricanes and tropical storms that have hit the central east coast of Florida over the last 45+ years. The wind and the rain can be pretty noisy and you have to pay attention to the tornado alarms but overall is not to hard to sleep through it all.

This hurricane Irma however was slight different, she was big and mean and taking a vertical path directly up the entire state. The wind fields stretched across the state from the west coast to the east coast putting the entire state in the crosshairs. The family knew this was not going to be the cake walk that some of our previous storms had been.

When it rains it pours

Hurricane Irma brought with it an amazing amount of rain, upwards of 15 inches over 24 hours. With that kind of water dropping on a flat surface like Florida things tend to flood. Our house / home office was not spared from the results of this type of rain coverage. Around 8pm the night the storm was upon us the waters started to rise. The water continued to rise until the doors started leaking around the jams. At this time the power was still on and the water was starting to rush in. In a mad panic the members of the household started gathering everything up off the floors trying to find higher ground for the important stuff.

It gets deep

The water final stopped at 10 inches inside the house. Anything on or near the floor is now wet and submerged or floating around the house freely. We are lucky to have a two story home where escape to the second floor allowed us to retreat to drier ground. The family collected all the clothes and other valuables from the lower home an hunkered down upstairs to wait out the rest of the storm. 

 

House Flooded

* Picture from second floor, can you see the outline of the swimming pool?

 

Power goes out

Ask anyone who has lived through a hurricane event what the worst part of it was? They won't mention anything during the storm was worst, what is the most heinous part of a Hurricane is the powerless aftermath. You are left with out power in the most humid and hot conditions. Wet debris is everywhere and the air is still, making for miserable and muggy clean up conditions. Anyone that has lived through this knows how it can really take the wind out of your sails. 

The Next Day 

Sun is up at 6:28 am but we have been up for hours waiting to get outside to see how well we fared the storm. At 6:30 we stand in total amazement to the amount of destruction our home and home office has suffered. The lower house is flooded 10 inches, both cars are flooded to the steering wheels, a 40 foot pine tree lays across one of the cars, a 40 foot pine tree has crushed the free standing garage and the yard is a total disaster.

 

Hurricane damage 

 

Over A Week To Dig Out

Day 1 is the worst, You stand in total awe to the situation as you go into rescue mode. About 10 AM the local fire dept was rolling trucks down each street making sure we were all ok and no emergency medical needs were needed. There is really only two thing you can do the day after an event of this magnitude, clean or cry, we chose to clean!

This was not our first rodeo. In 2008 tropical storm Fay left us with 12 inches in our house after the city storm drainage system clogged up with debris back flooding the neighborhood. Back then we had carpeted floors on the bottom floor. Talk about stinking after a few days in the heat after the event. At that point we decided to tile the floors on the bottom floor to prevent such torture if the event should ever happen again. Luckily we did and now we only needed to squeegee out the house to get back to living in it this time around. We still had to remove all the furniture and belonging from the house as they were ruined. It takes a week to clean out house and all while without power. We did get power back on the following Saturday afternoon. How did humans ever survive the ages without Air Conditioning? 

 

Clean Up.

 

 

The Next Six Months

Today it's September 19th and we have been able to get a skeleton office back up, The office phone is back up after being underwater for a spell. There will be mounds of work to do for the foreseeable future and working with the insurance adjusters will be akin to pulling teeth. But the family is safe, the house rebuildable, we have many blessings to be thankful for.

Thank you to all the people and our clients whom have reached out to us. We thank you for your thoughts and prayers and look forward to serving you in the future.

Plugins4Automate sales and licensing services are fully functional and available to handle your orders. Our support offices are online in a disaster area so may be spotty at times. Please be patient with us as we work to support your issues during our rebuilding efforts.

 

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