So there is a hurricane brewing off shore, and there is a decent chance that it may hit you.
Other than starting to stress, what should you do ? Like all good directions, that depends on your starting point.
If you are like a very few, you top off your gas tanks and wait.
Or you throw up your shutters, pack your bags and head out of town, praying for another miss – a very valid option. Erring on the side of caution is not a bad thing, when the opponent is Mother Nature. You thought your red-headed ex-wife was bad? Underestimate Mother Nature when she’s on the warpath, and you could pay with your life.
So do we bug out every time there is the threat of a hurricane hitting us? Do it enough times, and you become complacent with the near misses time after time, making your efforts seem like a waste. And that complacency can lead to you staying in the face of yet another “possible hit”, and being in your home when a tornado blows your house to splinters, along with you, your wife, and all your chickens. It’s a nasty experiment in weighing the odds….
And guess what? I don’t have the answer either! I try to remain flexible in my options for every threat. Rigidity in your efforts can lead to as much hardship as the emergency itself. Several years ago, a good friend of mine had his wife decide staying was NOT an option, so they packed up and left town, heading north out of Florida…only to get stuck in a traffic jam less than an hour away from home. Sitting in their vehicle while the storm barreled down on them was NOT a great place to be, and had their plan to head north remained unchanged, who knows how it would have turned out. Luckily, they opted to return home to hunker down in relative safety of their concrete home, taking only 45 minutes to get back home after 4 hours in their car heading north, crawling with the rest of the exodus.
Living in Florida makes for far less options for evacuation – its a giant one-way street, with most of the bad weather coming from the dead end. You only have one choice for directions to go to get away – north. And like a snowball, as you move forward, the size of the group heading north keeps swelling, eventually slowing movement to an almost complete standstill.
So, in preparing, your first step is to ask the immortal Clash question, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”.
If you leave, how soon do you leave? Do you have a place to get to, or will you join the thousands of those fleeing, trying to find a shelter from the storm? How well do you think it will go if you do not plan for it now? And keep in mind, if you head north out of Florida, hurricanes tend to go that same way, and you may end up in a strange town, overcrowded already…with the same storm you tried to get away from head straight for you again! Think it through!
If you opt to stay, do you do so at your own home, or do you go to a local shelter? If you live on the coast, do you even have the option of staying? Many areas have mandatory evacuations, and while you may think its your right to stay on your property, should you get into a jam, how can you, in good conscience, expect the emergency services folks to go back into the dangerous evacuated area to save your sorry, pig-headed, “I know better than the authorities” hide? Is it fair for them to be in danger trying to help you just because you thought you knew better?
If you stay home, is your home safe? Has it been hurricane-tested before? Ours has on several occasions, but do I want to be here if we get another direct hit? Well, that depends on the intensity of the storm. Yes, we would be better off being in our own home AFTER a storm, but while its getting slammed, is it the best place to keep my family?
I won’t answer ANY of these questions for you….I try to lead you into being self-sufficient. You have to think for yourself. And thinking FEMA, the local government, or the church will safe you in a pinch, think again. They may help you, but only after they’ve made sure that they are OK. They are not superhuman, they have fears and needs of their own, and while they may want to help, may be unable to for some reason.
I will only answer one question for you in this post. The title is, “The Storm is coming, what do we do?”
My answer is you go over the plan you made long before the storm became a reality, because if you live in Florida, it is NOT a matter of “if”, but “when.
It’s one of the few things I’ve seen from the government I totally agree with, though for far different reasons. Make a plan now.
Read how here:
http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes
Be safe,
db
Tomorrow, “Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink – MY water plan in a post-hurricane scenario”.