Care and Feeding of a Category Five Hurricane

by infintyshock

Here in Florida we just got hit by two hurricanes in the past few weeks and a third one that is bigger than the first two is on its way here. It should be here Monday evening or early Tuesday.

First and foremost, during a hurricane peoples IQs drop about fifty or points or so. It has something to do with the lower barometric pressure. When someone who only has a sixty IQ to start with loses fifty points, that person is in a bad state of affairs.

Before the hurricane comes make sure any automobile gas tanks are full and fill up extra gas cans. Right now, a week after the last hurricane, there are still gas stations that dot have any gas and the ones that do have long lines with waits from ten minutes to an hour. Cigarettes are hard to find and for the first few days after the hurricane there was no alcohol. Not only because the stores were all closed but because the local government stopped alcohol sales. There were quite a few Chinese restaurants open when almost everything else was closed. Some were open even DURING the hurricane. Good thing I like Chinese food 'cause I ate a lot of it.

Make sure all the plywood for boarding up windows is purchased at least a week before the hurricane arrives. I bought some six days before the hurricane came and there was plenty on the shelves. Five days before the hurricane the lines were literally about three hundred feet long. (I have pictures.) There were news crews filming all the line-standers standing in line...it was really sad. While at the hardware store pick up some screws for attaching it to the house and get some rolls of plastic so that when the winds blow all the roofing shingles off there is something to cover your roof with so rain doesn't turn the house into a giant waterfall. That would be bad, unless the house is covered by really good insurance then it just means its time to go shopping for new stuff. As long as there isn't some ridiculous deductible. Fucking insurance companies.

Evacuating can be a good idea but what would be a twelve-hour drive turns into a twenty-hour drive. A friend of mine drove seventy miles in two hours on Thursday. (The hurricane got here on Saturday.) Anyone that is going to evacuate should do it at least three days before the storm hits and shouldn't come back till about four or five days after the storm leaves. Give things a chance to normalize. And traffic to die down.

Cover anything electronic or valuable with plastic or trash bags In case the roof does like something from the Wizard of Oz. If the house may flood, prop up anything that could be damaged by water on something like concrete blocks.

Speaking of water, while there will be plenty of it outside, it is likely that there wont be any in the pipes in the house. And if there is, that water wont be fit to drink for any number of reasons. Fill up buckets, bathtub, anything that holds water, with fresh water BEFORE the water pressure dies. A hot water heater holds quite a bit of water and it can be drained by the faucet at the bottom.

Make sure anything that has to be insured has insurance loooonng before the hurricane comes. And get flood insurance. Once a storm is on the way no insurance company will issue a new policy. Bummer. Good thing I already had insurance. It made having my neighbors tree growing out of my attic so much less traumatic. Im still debating whether or not I should yell at him.

Buy plenty of food for during and after the hurricane. And make sure there are plenty of junk food snacks. Canned food gets real old, real fast.

Candles? Flashlights? The 6-volt lanterns are the best. Get extra bulbs and batteries. Power lines don't do very well in winds and its bad enough having to sit inside a dark house, but when there is no lights things get ugly. The first power lines that I saw go down were in winds of about thirty miles an hour. (The sparks and exploding transformers made it almost as exciting as the 4th of July.) The best thing to do is buy a generator. And lots of loooong extension cords. At least 2000 watts. 2000 watts is enough to power an entertainment center and a refrigerator. Mine is 4500 watts and I had an extension cord going 200 feet to my neighbors refrigerator, a cord to my computer, cell phone, refrigerator, AC, and a 100-watt light. Fuck public utilities...who needs em. Besides...when the neighbors hear the generator crank up they become your best friend in the whole wide world. Even if they've lived across the street for five years and never so much as said 'hi.' By the way...generators are motors and they put out exhaust. Picture sitting behind a car in a garage with the engine running. That means don't run the fucking thing in the living room so you don't have to plug in an extension cord to the TV. Some jackass here thought that would be a good idea and they found him a couple of days later dead along with his dog and an empty fuel tank on the generator. Like I said...when these people start out with a forty IQ and they lost fifty points...that is what happens. Darwinism at its finest. There were quite a few people in the newspaper who were hospitalized because of running a generator inside a closed space. If you do this expect to be ridiculed and generally made fun of. Even if you die.

Sitting around a dark house with no electricity will get boring. The biggest, most frequently hyped and advertised thing the authorities put out over the radio and TV is to stay in your house and not go wandering around during 100-plus mile-per-hour winds. There is a reason for that. Tree limbs and other assorted flotsam and jetsam can do really nasty things to your face at 100 or so miles an hour. Anyway...after my IQ dropped fifty points me and my friends thought it would be a good idea to go wandering around during the breezy part of the storm. The first time we went out the winds were only around 30 or so miles-per-hour and I was driving an SUV. A Ford Explorer or something. I had to keep the steering wheel turned almost 45-degrees to keep the car on the road. Later that evening when we went out for a second time the winds were about 80 or 90 MPH and I took my late-model Chevy Malibu. I loaded about 600-pounds of dumbbells and barbell weights into the trunk and floorboard and that made quite a bit of a difference. I wouldn't say it was easy to stay on the road, but it was a helluva lot easier than with an SUV.

When driving on roads during a hurricane watch out for stuff flying and dropping. Traffic lights, street lights, road signs, tree branches and WHOLE trees are scattered around everywhere. A traffic light was laying in the road at one intersection that I had to move and when I yanked on it the thing fell apart. Whoops. The funny part was it was still working...blinking yellow and red, tho...if that counts as working. Someone that was with me even took a pic of it. Instead of helping. Tree limbs and whole trees tend to be attracted to roads for some reason. It was like driving in the forrest there was so much shit in the road. Bring a can of Fix-a-Flat or a spare tire. Really.

I was wearing heavy gloves, a jacket, and a motorcycle helmet. The only things that hit me were a bunch of branches and pinecones but Jesus H Christ, they hurt when they hit at 80 or so miles an hour. Watching fifty-foot high two-foot thick trees bent over at a 45-degree angle is very humbling.

Bring a camera. A video camera is better because a still camera just doesnt quite capture the mood of a gas station roof blowing down the street. I saw shit even I didn't believe...like a church steeple upside down skewered into a roof. A 20-foot long palm tree blowing down the street into a cop car was great, too. And the front of a kids play-room store blew off and all the stuff inside was blowing everywhere.

After the hurricane it takes days to get shit back to something that would be considered normal. No one had any power and even after the power came back the stores couldn't sell anything that had to be kept cold because it all went bad. The shelves were already emptied and no trucks were running 'cause the drivers were skeered of a little breeze so it sucked.

I didnt hear much about looting. The only first-hand report I know of was a 90-year old geriatric was in his trailer after the storm (the trailer parks were all required to be evacuated...mandatory....so he wasnt even s'posed to be there) and someone tried to break into his place so he shot through the door with his shotgun. Those trailer doors arent made very well...it was two thin pieces of plastic with foam in the middle. He must have hit something because the number of pellets that went through the door was a lot more than the number of pellets that were embedded in the wall in the carport. Nice. The only other thing I heard was the cops arrested two retards trying to break into a church. Who the fuck breaks into a church during a hurricane? Other than that, there were so many cops and National Guardsmen driving around looters wouldn't stand a chance. Oh...a friend of mines kid stole a road sign that was lying on the side of the road...but that doesn't count.

Anyone that complains about hurricanes is only complaining because they are skeered and they aren't prepared. Hurricanes are fun.