Tuesday 9/14 9:03 AM, Jacksonville
Song: Stormy Weather (a
Jazz
standard)
Here’s an update from
hurricane infested Central Florida.
We’re doing well. Jacksonville was worse
off than Oviedo
after the second hurricane—three days without power here, but we didn’t
lose any trees. I truly can’t remember who I emailed right after the
storm, so I’m kind of spamming again. Hope you don’t mind. Just hit
delete!
Friday the 13th’s
Hurricane Charlie--and how many more storms later? What a month.
The hurricane did a great
deal of damage in the Oviedo area—it
looked like Nagasaki.
But, Carola’s 1920’s Sears home in the city proper and my small home on
an acre of land in the county were pretty much spared. There are about
50 trees down on my property and a lot of huge limbs from the giant old
live oaks down on hers. Also we both lost the service (electrical)
entrance equipment.
Carola lives in my house
with daughters Andrea and Jessica along with Jessica’s baby
Phoenix. We worked at first clearing just a path
into my home and rebuilding the electric service entrance there (thank
God for Mark, Tina’s husband!) and then pulling the trees off my roof
and the shed. Later we cleared an area to park cars. We weren’t
expecting electricity for two weeks so Carola sent her daughters to stay
in Gainesville
for the duration. We had temperatures in the 90’s and probably several
inches of rain in the days following the hurricane, so it was pretty
miserable--but, at least the mosquitoes were happy!
Monday we hired a fellow
with a heavy-duty chain saw to cut up the oak limbs at Carola’s house
($250 for two hours—a good deal by post hurricane standards.) and
several of the neighbors helped drag limbs for half a day. FEMA has
actually picked up all the downed wood we got to the curb. The road at
Carola's Magnolia street
house (along the whole front) was seven to nine feet deep in branches.
Most of Oviedo
looked like that. A crew of five Mormons came and helped. What a God
send! No more jokes about the Mormons I promise!
The small pleasures in the
first few days: Finding gasoline! Finding a restaurant open so you can
have hot food. Sitting in air conditioning. The Publix supermarket
getting ice! Coming to
Jacksonville
for a night’s sleep and doing laundry. Yeah, we finally got
power--earlier than I expected--Thursday evening. I had to politic a
bit with the power crew (down from
Tennessee
for the storm). They had run out of new wire and didn't want to re-use
the somewhat ratty looking cable that had been supporting a big pine
tree. And it got cool inside. Also that gave us water for showers and
other nice things (like flushing toilets!). So you can imagine we all
smelled a lot better!
I cleared a path all the
way around the Jessamy
Street house (where Carola lives). She mowed
in front and in back so we have the feeling of being in a civilized (if
smaller) yard. That Friday we found out that Carola's office had lost
part of its roof, but little of her stuff was damaged. It'll probably
be several months before we get everything cut up—I put in a day every
weekend. I hired eight pine trees removed around the house before the 2nd
hurricane ($800—still not a bad deal). (The trees were pretty beat up
and a danger to the house.)
John and Carola Debo |