Homestead mailing list

[Leslie <cayadopi AT yahoo.com>]

Nope, I didn't evacuate.  I went right thru the storm just a few miles north 
of dead center of that eye.    It was very much a Cat 5.
 
The house and barn I built there that very same year and had just moved into 
2 weeks earlier.... were built like fortreses specifically for hurricanes.  
Little did I know.....
 
Once the storm hit, it was impossible to get out of my area.  On my property 
alone way over 500 old growth trees down.  It took days to even chain saw a 
path back to the barn, and then out to the road from the house, and out to 
the other road from the barn.  And we had to wait a lot longer for the public 
roads to be cleared, although the neighbors banded together and chain sawed a 
walking path down the road so we could check on each other.
 
Best friend's brother worked inside the nuke power plant that night (212 mph 
sustained winds according to him), which was 10 miles east and and slightly 
south.  Very similar clocked at the AFB nearby.
 
It looked like a nuclear bomb went off.  
 
In parts of my property even the grass was shredded off right down to the 
ground - tons of tornados within the storm - no less than 15 in my immediate 
area, 3 crossed the property, 1 hit the barn, the other 2 missed me, but cut 
the house 3 doors down in half right thru the middle and left both ends 
standing.
 
The area that I believed was showed most of TV was about 10 miles north - 
those were all cheaply built wooden homes.  No competition for the brutal 
north eyewall.
 
A sign from the Holiday Inn 3-4 miiles north landed in the side yard of a 
property about 1/2 mile west of me.... right in front of a toppled house... 
which provided much laughter for neighbors.  And we never figured out where 
this old boat came from that landed on a street
1 mile south.  I found a 2x4x8 piece of wood had pierced right thru one of 
the remaining trunks of a mango tree out in the pasture.  Geez, I also found 
whole uprooted trees on the property, that I have no idea where they came 
from.  There was a 2x6 board thru a tall Royal Palm tree several miles westm 
and pretty high up from the ground.
 
We had a 2 story house, much of it solid poured reinforced steel concrete.  A 
fortress.  We were upstairs in a safe room, actually a very large closet - 
concrete protected.  The winds started out of the north and increased more 
and more, so loud we couldn't hear each other without screaming at each 
other.  The pressure on our ears was truly horrible.  When the eye came, we 
felt the house gently rocking back and forth, and I thought there was missing 
walls downstairs.  But when the eye reversed the building shifted/tipped 
towards the north.  The house actually rocked on the foundation.  Somehow one 
of the floating slabs crack from the fireplace to the front door. Upstairs we 
had to reattached floor boards to floor trusses and later beefed up the roof 
trusses.  The house over time shifted back.  In some rooms the only thing 
holding the plaster walls up was the paint ---- the screws were pulled 
completely off of the wall studs. 
 
There was glass flying everywhere, and even though we had 2 doors between us 
and massive chaos and destruction, the glass and water was swirling and 
trying to come under the door, so I stuffed a pillow there and sat on it 
while using all my strength for hours to keep the door from blowing in and 
keep the glass out.  The shaking of the house was unreal, especially when 
unknown items crashed into it.  It was really scary when a 85' pine tree was 
ripped out of the ground and flew into the house thru a dining room sliding 
glass door (destroyed the dining room).  I didn't know until morning what had 
happened, but I knew something big had hit and likely taken out some walls 
(it didn't just the sliding glass doors, as the framing around was solid 
poured reinforced steel, and the tree just happened to be centered at the 
window area).  I assume that was from the same tornado that hit the barn.
 
All animals in the barn survived (even the roof held - except for one 
overhang), the only injury was a small cut on a boarder's horse's nose.  A 
week or so later another boarder's horse got mastitis (glad I knew what to 
do).  Another boarder's horse collicked about a week later, the only collick 
I ever had in 15 years boarding.  When we finally got enough trees cut away 
from the barn area and picked up roofing nails etc off the ground to make a 
safe path out, first the horses were terrified to go out (they weren't used 
to such bright sun with no trees left), and then they were terrified to go 
back in (so I assume they had "nightmares" of the hurricane....  One of 3 
sets of heavy steel hurricane doors on the barn was even damaged, trapping 
two horses in their stalls until we got that taken apart.  My horse trailer, 
which I parked inside the barn along w/my truck and another vehicle, was in 
the barn and survived.... Later animal rescue spotted it
 parked outside, so they enlisted me to help get horses out of damaged barns 
(no roofs on most of them) and evacuate them to a place called Tropical Park 
(formerly a race track, and currently show grounds).  It was awful - the 
injuries were horrendous (and this was about a month after).  There was a 
horse impaled about 20' above ground on a branch of a tree, my acquaintance 
Jack, an FBI agent,  cut the tree down so it could be removed.  Lots of dead 
animals were floating down the canals.  There was a very large barn across 
the street and down 2 properties.  Some 40 horses were there at the time the 
storm hit.  They had a metal roof, and pieces of that came down and swirled 
inside the stalls with the horses - the wounds were horrible.  The barn 
manager there came over and asked me if we had a gun. After talking to her, I 
grabbed my horse medical supplies instead.  Another friend claimed his 
chicken's feathers had been ripped right out.  Another
 large barn up near the north wall - the roof was gone, and so were the 
horses - sucked right up and out, as the stall doors were still latched.  
Same thing happened to one of my friends (former Farm Bureau Prez), roof 
sucked up and off and everything upstairs sucked up and out - she was about 
1/2 mile west of the barn.  

And then there were the oddest things.  The bedroom windows, north side blown 
in, east side blown out.  Bedroom doors, blown down the stairs and slammed 
into the front doors, and all 4 in the front yard.... yet sitting on the 
window sill next to the front door, I found a small glass figurine - 
untouched.  Don't even know how it got there.  Above, the glass chandelier - 
totally intact.  Yet in the next room, the dining room chandelier was 
completely ripped out of the ceiling and never found.  I had wood frame 
windows and the wood and glass must have really been flexing, because in one 
of them, I found a pine tree needle half sticking on the outside, then 
pressed thru between the glass and frame, and the other half sticking out on 
the inside.
 
I did look out the window when the storm proper first started, just before 
running for cover in the closet..... Lightning revealed the pine trees were 
bent over completely horizontal to the ground between 12" and 3' above 
ground.... these were mostly 80-100 year old trees.  Most snapped off.  One 
younger one that was very tall but not as thick, in the front near the street 
somehow bent under the power lines across the street, and I'm guessing when 
the eye came and the storm reversed the street snagged on the power line and 
brought it to our side... that tree was still sort of standing after the 
storm with the line snagged up some 25' in the air.  Still can't figure out 
why the power poles didn't come down or even bend towards our side.
 
Nearly every power pole was replaced months later though.  After the roads 
were open, the power company and sub-contractors came thru and removed all 
the transformers into special bags/containers (PCBs are in them).  Then 
removed poles, then replaced poles, later new wire strung, and in December 
the power company came out and told us they were turning the power on... a 
very unique experience.
 
I have a lot of memories from that storm - volumes of observations - from the 
destruction, to how people and families fell apart, how neighbors came 
together, really sad stories and really funny ones.
 
There is no way I'd ride out a storm like that again, even if I was 100% sure 
of the construction and I was young enough to deal physically with the amount 
of work it takes to clean up.  Even if I had enough money to deal with that - 
there is a huge uninsured cost involved in that kind of clean up.  Course I 
also choose to never live again in a hurricane zone - some of the trauma of 
that storm has never gone away.  I was terrified of even normal afternoon 
thunderstorms for years.  I can still see the details images in my minds' eye.
 
Hugo was only a Cat 4, and the damage not as extensive (my friend Ed went 
thru that, and his personal observations when he moved to Homestead for the 
clean up was that Andrew was much much much worse).  And Huge did cause 
extensive damage.  Most homes in S. Florida are built of cement block under 
the stringent hurricane code there.
 
Katrina - a Cat 3, flooding damage in N.O. yes, and extremely deadly from the 
flooding, but in terms of storm / wind strength, no where close to Andrew.  I 
remember watching that on TV and closely looking at the background in terms 
of trees roof damage etc (not just in N.O.)  
 
Actually, Katrina did some $20k in damage to us down in Homestead before it 
even hit the gulf coast (not including toppling tons of trees, again).  An 
expressway bridge even collapsed.  It was a very very wet hurricane in S. 
Florida, the wettest I ever went thru.  There were a lot more published 
deaths in Katrina.  I have personal knowledge of deaths as did my builder, 
and my blacksmith (a reserve, who was recalled to active duty and whom I 100% 
believed on what he told me about the deaths - normally steady as a rock - he 
was clearly traumatized by what he saw and eventually told me about), during 
the storm that were never counted in Andrew, and have yet to know why.  This 
was not my first experience of learning not to believe government statistics 
and other things from government.... but I found that particular massaging of 
statistics unreal.  Why not publish the real numbers?  
 
A couple months after Katrina, Rita hit, but other than a few more shingles 
off,,, no big deal. My son was dying in the hospital when that hit so I 
didn't pay much attention to Rita.  Then Wilma hit a a month or so after 
that.... $40k in uninsured damage, and another 100 trees down...  That was 
the last straw for me for hurricanes.  
 
 
 

--- On Wed, 1/7/09, bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com> wrote:


Wow, you evacuated Homestead during Andrew-- except for Bay St. Louis under
Camille, Charleston under Hugo, and Grande Isle under Katrina; you have seen
just about the worst imaginable in U.S. Hurricane damages.  

---------------------------------------------------------------------




>From Clansgian AT wmconnect.com  Wed Jan  7 14:21:02 2009
Return-Path: <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com>
X-Original-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Delivered-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Received: by lists.ibiblio.org (Postfix, from userid 3002)
        id 05ADE4C02A; Wed,  7 Jan 2009 14:21:01 -0500 (EST)
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.3 (2007-08-08) on malecky
X-Spam-Level: *
X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.8 required=5.0 tests=HTML_MESSAGE, 
MIME_QP_LONG_LINE
        autolearn=disabled version=3.2.3
Received: from imo-m11.mail.aol.com (imo-m11.mx.aol.com [64.12.143.99])
        by lists.ibiblio.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B0F424C020
        for <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Wed,  7 Jan 2009 14:21:01 -0500 
(EST)
Received: from Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
        by imo-m11.mx.aol.com  (mail_out_v39.1.) id 3.bef.3b7279c1 (32913)
        for <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Wed, 7 Jan 2009 14:20:56 -0500 
(EST)
From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
Message-ID: <bef.3b7279c1.36965a98 AT wmconnect.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 14:20:56 EST
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: 6.0 for Windows XP sub 11501
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.9
Subject: Re: [Homestead] Draft Horse
X-BeenThere: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9
Precedence: list
Reply-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
List-Id: <homestead.lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/homestead>,
        <mailto:homestead-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/homestead>
List-Post: <mailto:homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Help: <mailto:sympa AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=HELP>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/homestead>,
        <mailto:homestead-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:21:02 -0000



> >


Way off.  Dogs are hearty creatures with flexible habits.  Horses are much
more delicate in their ways and not flexible at all in their requirements.  A
dog will do fine if it eats twice a week.  A horse is made to eat 20 hours a 
day.