wfooshee
O, Woe is me!!
Well, I got through the hurricane, but not without issue. I packed up my dog and three cats and rode it out at my office, which was a Good Thing. One corner of my roof is gone, the house is open to weather, carpets soaked, drywall wet, and in the garage, laundry room, master BR, and the HVAC closet the ceilings fell in. I had clean laundry hanging, now buried under wet drywall and loose fiberglass, as is my bed and the furniture in there. The BR closets look OK, but I haven't managed to get far enough into the room to evaluate the drawers and contents. LR is OK except for wet carpet, it looks like.
Neighbor helped me tarp the house. OK, he did it. I got up and started with him, but a couple of twinges from my back told me to not be up there any more.
Verizon is down, no word on restoration of service. No ISPs are working in the county. Panama City, Lynn Haven, and towns east have no utilities at all. Mexico Beach was apparently washed off the highway. Tyndall AFB is all but destroyed. The eye passed between Tyndall AFB and Mexico Beach.
I saw winds due north, fading to NW as the storm passed, so I knew I was on the "good" side of the eye. A tree fell on the office but the building held it. Roof damage, some water seepage, but no real structural issue.
Like I said, Verizon is down, so I have no communications. A customer's office that I have 24/7 access to has a working landline I've been using to call my girlfriend in Orlando every day.
I'm still camped at the office. Panama City Beach and the western half of the county is almost back to normal. Big stores are open, gas is available with long waits. Almost no restaurants open, a couple of fast foods with limited menus. I drove over to Destin to sit in a fast food place and use their wifi to get registered with FEMA, caught up with my employer, etc. I had trouble calling my homeower's company, and my girlfriend took all my policy info during one of our calls and got it done! Adjuster was at the house yesterday. He recommended getting a drying contractor ASAP, but realized the difficulty there, with power not expected for another 10 days or so.
So, no running water, no electricity, no power, no Internet. Gas works, so I shut off the pilot light on the water heater.
I have no idea how to handle the cleanup in the house. I am not equipped to handle loose, wet fiberglass insulation, and that has to come out before I can start evaluating anything else, or ripping carpet up, whatever. I also have a BIG inventory job to do with the garage, for all my tools, power tools, and all, find out what survived, what didn't. Inside furnishings are OK, it looks like, except the master BR, except where stuff soaked up from the wet carpet. My sofa, for example, is upholstery all the way to the floor,
No clue what to do with stuff. There is no storage around here that survived. Maybe a container in the driveway or something, but the house has to be cleared so it can be fixed, rebuilt, whatever. It's all just a bit overwhelming.
Miata and FJR were in the garage. Miata probably has paint damage from the wet drywall that fell on it, but its top held up! No bent bars, no pierced fabric! FJR was very hard to start, I was fearing toasted electronics. It cranked, I smelled fuel, but no fire at all. Waited a while, tried WOT cranking, no change. Waited a while, got some coughing but nothing else. Eventually it fired up and smoked like a mo-fo for a minute, but ran OK. My other car, the Aurora, was outside at the office. All the glass is intact, but it has five big dents on the windward side. It's old enough that Progressive might just total it if I claim it. I'm pretty sure they're going to have to paint the Miata, though.
This was a mother of a storm. I didn't leave because the forecast on the day before was cat 3, maybe even back down to 2 by landfall. It ended up being 2mph short of a cat 5! Center pressure was 918, I believe the first ever recorded under 920. It came fast and it cam hard, much harder than anybody thought. I've ridden out several 3s, but never again.
My Internet presence will be very spotty for quite a while. There is no Internet in town except for AT&T customers. There is no cell service in town except for AT&T customers. Verizon is putting up trailer-towers as fast as they can, apparently, but I haven't seen anything to show that...
Neighbor helped me tarp the house. OK, he did it. I got up and started with him, but a couple of twinges from my back told me to not be up there any more.
Verizon is down, no word on restoration of service. No ISPs are working in the county. Panama City, Lynn Haven, and towns east have no utilities at all. Mexico Beach was apparently washed off the highway. Tyndall AFB is all but destroyed. The eye passed between Tyndall AFB and Mexico Beach.
I saw winds due north, fading to NW as the storm passed, so I knew I was on the "good" side of the eye. A tree fell on the office but the building held it. Roof damage, some water seepage, but no real structural issue.
Like I said, Verizon is down, so I have no communications. A customer's office that I have 24/7 access to has a working landline I've been using to call my girlfriend in Orlando every day.
I'm still camped at the office. Panama City Beach and the western half of the county is almost back to normal. Big stores are open, gas is available with long waits. Almost no restaurants open, a couple of fast foods with limited menus. I drove over to Destin to sit in a fast food place and use their wifi to get registered with FEMA, caught up with my employer, etc. I had trouble calling my homeower's company, and my girlfriend took all my policy info during one of our calls and got it done! Adjuster was at the house yesterday. He recommended getting a drying contractor ASAP, but realized the difficulty there, with power not expected for another 10 days or so.
So, no running water, no electricity, no power, no Internet. Gas works, so I shut off the pilot light on the water heater.
I have no idea how to handle the cleanup in the house. I am not equipped to handle loose, wet fiberglass insulation, and that has to come out before I can start evaluating anything else, or ripping carpet up, whatever. I also have a BIG inventory job to do with the garage, for all my tools, power tools, and all, find out what survived, what didn't. Inside furnishings are OK, it looks like, except the master BR, except where stuff soaked up from the wet carpet. My sofa, for example, is upholstery all the way to the floor,
No clue what to do with stuff. There is no storage around here that survived. Maybe a container in the driveway or something, but the house has to be cleared so it can be fixed, rebuilt, whatever. It's all just a bit overwhelming.
Miata and FJR were in the garage. Miata probably has paint damage from the wet drywall that fell on it, but its top held up! No bent bars, no pierced fabric! FJR was very hard to start, I was fearing toasted electronics. It cranked, I smelled fuel, but no fire at all. Waited a while, tried WOT cranking, no change. Waited a while, got some coughing but nothing else. Eventually it fired up and smoked like a mo-fo for a minute, but ran OK. My other car, the Aurora, was outside at the office. All the glass is intact, but it has five big dents on the windward side. It's old enough that Progressive might just total it if I claim it. I'm pretty sure they're going to have to paint the Miata, though.
This was a mother of a storm. I didn't leave because the forecast on the day before was cat 3, maybe even back down to 2 by landfall. It ended up being 2mph short of a cat 5! Center pressure was 918, I believe the first ever recorded under 920. It came fast and it cam hard, much harder than anybody thought. I've ridden out several 3s, but never again.
My Internet presence will be very spotty for quite a while. There is no Internet in town except for AT&T customers. There is no cell service in town except for AT&T customers. Verizon is putting up trailer-towers as fast as they can, apparently, but I haven't seen anything to show that...
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