Hurricane Ian

If you are interested in constant updates about the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Florida, go to https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/hurricane-ian-florida-updates-09-29-22/index.html . Florida is a mess.

Out of curiosity I checked our former home's status with the power company. It's been without power since early yesterday. This is in Pinellas County, near St. Pete; early predictions had them in crosshairs, but storm moved south to Naples area for landfall.

Have a relative in Ormand, near Daytona and they are getting hammered with rain. This storm impacted almost the entire state.

Have a friend in Cape Coral who was on a cruise but managed to get to her daughter’s house in Georgia. Cape Coral is just off Ft. Myers so she might have a real mess. I saw a video of a shark swimming up a street in Ft. Meyers. Nearly bought a house in Cape Coral and glad I didn’t. Dealt with nightmare hurricanes in the Caribbean enough.

The causeway to Sanibel broke down so those folks are isolated.

Quite the devastation. What really irks me is the people who were told to evacuate and ignored the directives. Many of these people claimed that God would protect them, when in fact other humans have to risk their own lives, and take up emergency services resources better used otherwise, to rescue them.
Then there are the "you can't fix stupid" ones.
"In Volusia County, east of Orlando, a 72-year-old man died “after going outside during the storm to drain his pool"

And a bunch of these Floridians will still be climate change deniers.

While I'm NOT a climate change denier, pointing to that and Ian in the same breath is just not logical. We have been having hurricanes in the US South for eons. Ian is just the latest and is not the worst by any metric. Sea-rise on the other hand is going to/is making them potentially more devastating due to the rise in the sea level.... a fact most often associated with climate change.

Jacksonville was spared major flooding when Ian decided to go out into the Atlantic ocean. It was looking pretty grim last night. Most of the models missed that. We have many friends on the west coast and our prayers are with them.

We were at Sanibel just a few months ago. We ate at a local diner that had really good food. That diner is gone now as is a lot of things on the island. No way to get on or off the island now except by boat. It will be 10+ years to recover from this.

RoyD

RickS wrote:While I'm NOT a climate change denier, pointing to that and Ian in the same breath is just not logical. We have been having hurricanes in the US South for eons. Ian is just the latest and is not the worst by any metric.  Sea-rise on the other hand is going to/is making them potentially more devastating due to the rise in the sea level.... a fact most often associated with climate change.

While Florida has always been in hurricame alley, it's a fact that hurricanes are generally getting stronger and more prevalent due to climate change. They are also causing unprecedented flooding in many places around the world.

"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday that the storm surge that came with it was “basically a 500-year flood event.”

“We’ve never seen a flood event like this,” he said during a news briefing in Tallahassee. “We’ve never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.”

Yes, and I may have spoken too soon about the "level of severity" associated with Ian. It may well be Florida's worse in a long time or ever. Time will tell. Those folks are going to have a hard go of it for quite a while I'm afraid.
I might add that I am a frequent visitor to Florida AND specifically to that part so it is heartbreaking to see how much was destroyed.... and how long and at what expense it will take to get folks lives back together there.

Re people not leaving: Having lived through so many hurricanes and tropical storms it gets so tiring trying to track these things because right up to when they are due to strike they can wobble and it happens a lot that they miss completely and all you get is heavy rain and severely worn out nerves. Many of the remaining people I saw were very frail, elderly people who looked handicapped. I’m not saying there weren’t plenty of jerks who were throwing hurricane parties and getting drunk and then screaming for help but I suspect the frail I mentioned may not have had anyone to help them leave or had a place to go.

There were emergency shelters where people were instructed to go to if they couldn't evacuate. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine there was also assistance available to get there.
I wasn't even referring to people throwing hurricane parties and acting like it was a big joke. Most people stay because they somehow foolishly think they can save their property, think that "God" will protect them, or can't stand the thought of dealing with the heavy traffic of evacuees. Or like you, got "bored" of warnings that turned out to be nothing.

I grew up in Kansas, in tornado alley. Every tornado season, my family took dinner, a radio, flashlights, water, foamies and blankets to the basement several times a season, whenever there were tornado warnings for the area. Everyone did. People didn't sit around upstairs waiting to see if anything really happened, thinking they could save their possessions if a tornado suddenly touched down.

When we had a hurricane warning a few years ago, the one that hit around Mayto and caused flooding in Guad., I spent the day battening everything down, getting emergency supplies together for me and my dog, sussing out where would be a safe place to shelter where nothing could blow or fall on me (my shower stall), moving my car to a place where no trees or power poles could fall on it. I live on the coast, but 2 kilometers from the beach and there are big hills in between, so I wasn't too concerned about flooding. I do live near the arroyo, though, and the water could surge up it, but my house is on high ground and I have a two story house.

Many people were driving out of town, the line-up at the gas station was a mile long, but as the only way out is the coast road in either direction, that didn't seem wise to me.

Then I waited. We only got some  gusts of wind for about 15 minutes, with the tall palms swaying, and a few drops of rain. But I didn't resent the time I spent preparing, because no one can predict what will really happen.

The only unknown about Ian was where exactly it would hit, and what the result would be in terms of flooding. Its intensity was a known factor. People really needed to get out or to a safe place on high ground. One's home and possessions are useless if you're dead.

Where did I say I got bored? When I lived in the Caribbean I had to pack up the 5 stores I managed before even starting on my home plus there was nowhere to go for shelter. One time I was hunkered down with my dogs when the big one hit and the roof went flying in my upper floor condo. I lost everything.

When that happens your nerves take a terrible beating and you start tracking every breeze starting off the African coast. Luckily, my condo association put in concrete roofs and really heavy duty shutters but the fear and the horrendous amount of work is still there, not to mention weeks of no power, no supplies, looters and no income on a 26 square mile island. I was younger but faced with that now or 10 or more years older with my pets my priority I can’t denigrate the old folks who couldn’t leave or didn’t understand how bad the danger was and I would bet most had not faced this kind of danger before. After what I know now, you can believe that if I were in Florida I would have been in my car with my pets and headed north way before that monster struck but my sympathies lie with the very elderly there but not with the hurricane partiers.

And then there were the idiots who put out videos of themselves swimming through their flooded homes. Not because they were trapped there, they weren't. They just felt they needed to share how their flooded home looked on the internet. I guess they think cholera and typhoid only happen in third world countries.

Sorry, Carry Bean, I misinterpreted you saying it gets so tiring, and then it just turns out to miss and be heavy rain.
But there are people who think "Well, the last three turned out to be a nothing burger, so this probably will be, too, I'm not going to bother going to all that trouble".

mudgirl wrote:Sorry, Carry Bean, I misinterpreted you saying it gets so tiring, and then it just turns out to miss and be heavy rain.
But there are people who think "Well, the last three turned out to be a nothing burger, so this probably will be, too, I'm not going to bother going to all that trouble".

True, but if they survived this in Florida they most likely won’t risk it next time unless they truly are brain dead drunks. Florida is so flat that what’s really awful is the flooding. God, the heat and smell from it will be so horrible. And to be old and feeble dealing with it is just sad.

Carry Bean wrote:

True, but if they survived this in Florida they most likely won’t risk it next time unless they truly are brain dead drunks.

Owned a home in FL for 5+ years. Trust me, the same idiots who rode out Ian will stay put during the next one. Staying during a hurricane is a Red Badge of Courage for many Floridians.

Jreboll wrote:DeSantis voted no on hurricane Sandy aid when he was a congressman.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/us/politics/desantis-biden-hurricane-ian-aid.html

What a piece of work.

Just another self-serving right-wing hypocrite.

Carry Bean wrote:

What a piece of work.

Well he's a piece of something.

Climate change causing this is B.S. Just about every climatologist says so. The number and severity of hurricanes has not changed since they started recording them. Ditch the politics. This is a natural disaster of epic proportions and that is what it is. It is not political.

Stupid people who want to ride out these storms are always going to be there and some lose their lives for it. There was five days warning that this storm was coming and how strong it was going to be, but people still waited to see where it was going to go before deciding "maybe we should leave?" Human nature. I need to protect my stuff. All that stuff is not worth your life or your families lives. Death toll is 21 & rising this morning.

Pray for those who lost their lives, stupid or not.

RoyD

Here is the number of Atlantic hurricanes by year back to the 1800's.

http://www.stormfax.com/huryear.htm

Hurricanes happen. Earthquakes happen. Tornados happen. Floods happen. Best to not choose to live in areas where any of them can happen on a regular basis.