Sat, 29 Oct 2005

Here's all my Hurricane Wilma photos.
The first one was actually taken a couple days earlier, on my way home from work. We were really getting a lot of rain, as a precursor to the hurricane itself.

We mostly stayed inside for the first half of the hurricane. The power went out about ten minutes into it. We looked out the window and watched the wind blow, and followed the storm's progress on the NOAA site. The DSL modem and wireless AP were running off the UPS, and the notebook computers were running on battery power. Once the eye came over us we went outside to look around. So did everyone else. It didn't look too bad. The house was still standing, although the Pineapple Park sign took a beating.

The house full of Mexicans across the street came out to check on things. Then it started blowing as the eye finished passing over head and the second half of the storm came. So we went back inside.

The fence started to come loose (just like last year). What a surprise. So I pounded some stakes into the ground to try and tie it down. It sort of worked. It was a good thing we had taken everything moveable out of the back yard.

Once I got the fence semi-secured we went out to see the hurricane. I really thought I would be able to take off with the help of the winds howling down the street.

Our next-door neighbors were out also. We stood out in the intersection and watched stuff blow by. Linda wasn't looking, and a piece of something hit her in the back of the leg.

After a couple more hours the hurricane blew over, and we went back outstide to check on things. The back yard wasn't too bad, although there was a dazed looking mourning dove up on the powerlines. The fence was down again. The city crews were there cleaning up soon.


We spent a couple hours picking up around the yard, and then decided to go drive around. We drove slowly down to Lake Worth. All the traffic lights were out, and there was a lot of debris, but we only saw one house with the roof off. We got downtown, and there were a couple places open. We parked to go to Ray's, and saw GH, so we all went in and had a beer. The chicken wings were coming out slow, so we decided to drive by the beach. On the way we passed by AI's house, and he was home. We stopped and talked with him for a while, and the Head showed up, so we got a group shot. AI's neighbor's house had the roof off. Across the alley from him was an aluminum canopy that had come down. We inspected the column, and decided that it failed because the weld had almost no penetration.


Then we drove a couple blocks down to Stiffy's house. He and IC welcomed us and offered refreshments. We sat around for a while, inside, with the lights on, because he had his generator running. I also got a shot of the beer keg graveyard outside the house.

It was getting dark, so we figured we should be going. Stiffy's car was blocked in by a very large fallen tree, so Linda offered to clear it for him. She got out her handy tow strap, hooked it to the tree and her car, and pulled it free. Pretty slick.

We almost made it home, but got stopped at a curfew roadblock a couple blocks from the house. Linda presented her voter registration card, did some fast talking, and we made it past. It had really gotten cold, around 60F, so we built a fire and sat outside, looking at the stars that we could see because there was no electric light anywhere around. Then we went to sleep, and waited to see if it would just be a bad dream in the morning.

posted at: 11:43 | permalink |