More About How to Survive a Hurricane

by fritz

Infinityshock wrote an alright guide to surviving the hurricanes we have here in Florida, but I felt like I needed to write a follow-up. Not only on how to keep from dying and stop your shit from getting blown away, but how to survive the boredom of living for three weeks without power, water, phone lines [including cellular service], or any kind of cable. I'll talk about saving your house and belongings in this installment. I'll write a second article about how to keep yourself from dying of boredom.

If you haven't read Infinityshock's post, Care and Feeding of a Category Five Hurricane, go do so now, and keep in mind everything he said.

Our roof has gone almost twenty years without being re-shingled or checked for structural damage, and it was due to get a new skylight, so me and my father devised a brilliant plan to save it. After we cut all the branches that hung over our roof, we set out to the hardware store. We bought about thirty industrial sized eye-hooks with bolt ends, you know, the kind you can screw into pre-made holes, hundreds of feet of reinforced steel cable, and about five turnbuckle-eye-hooks [the kind that can be tightened]. We drilled holes and set the eye-hooks into the concrete foundation about every five feet and on both sides of the corners. Then did the same to the roof, drilling the hooks into the ends of the wooden tresses.

We started with one corner of the foundation, secured the cable to the eye-hook there, and proceeded to cross it over the roof, down through an eye-hook in a tress, through the eye-hook in the foundation, through another eye-hook in the roof, and back over the roof again. You get the idea, have fun with it. Whenever we ran out of a spool of wire, we tied a turnbuckle between the two ends, which we went back and tightened later once we finished. It worked nicely, and saved us a lot of shingles that would have been ripped off if not for cables crossed over them, holding them down.

As far as food goes, we were able to have full, cooked meals here. Mainly pasta, but it was still warm, real food, not Chef Boyardee. The secret is to have a barbeque grill with a propane stove type burner. Just make sure to fill your propane tank as soon as you know hurricanes are going to arrive, and you'll have somewhere to boil water and cook any `possums you happen to find during the course of the storm.

Also, if you have funds, invest in a generator! Our power was about for at least two weeks after the second storm hit, since the lines were only temporarily fixed, and having a generator is a wonderful thing. We managed to find one near the end of the first hurricane, and it made the second hurricane seem like nothing. But you have to use them correctly. I have a few personal words of advice about using generators;

Do not ever run a generator backward through the dryer outlet to power your house. It ruins things. We wired ours directly into our circuit breaker [this isn't a good idea unless you know what you're doing] and we were able to run all of our appliances and electronics, the air conditioning, and our water pump [for those of you who also have well water] and heater. With no horrible extension cords running everywhere. Of course, not simultaneously. If you try to run your central air, a refrigerator, the stove, and the water heater all at once you're bound to fry something. Gas for the generator is a problem to store [and find if you can't buy it all at once ahead of time]. We were lucky enough to own a pair of fuel tanks from a boat that held about twenty gallons each, and it lasted us the duration of the storms before gas went back on sale. Try to acquire mass quantities of gasoline in one spot that's easy to access, owning boats [as many of us do] is very helpful. Boats are also fun for when your street is four feet underwater.

Infinity was absolutely right about not going outside in ninety-mile-per-hour winds. After seeing a flying asphalt shingle sever a pine tree in half and keep going, I hightailed it back inside. I could barely get the door opened to get in because of how the wind was pushing against it. Just watch out an un-boarded window or a new skylight. [Also, seeing how singles become deadly shuriken, there's not much point in boarding your windows. If the window's going to break, it's going to break no matter what you do to it. I know this from personal experience.]

After the hurricanes clear, you'll want to take pictures of the damage your house, fence, and yard have sustained. Be sure to take before pictures, before the hurricanes, [after cleaning your yard up and fixing those holes in your fence]. These are for filing insurance claims. Do NOT let the insurance agent talk you into filing a separate claim for each hurricane. Depending on your policy, this is just a way for them to charge you your deductible twice and in essence steal your money. Just tell them that all of the damage resulted from the first hurricane, and be sure to not let on that you know what they're up to.