Craig, did you come through the Hurricane alright?

[FULLREFUSAL]

Just wondering if everthing is alright and you have power etc...Haven't seen you on since the cane hit. I know you said you were in FL in the center of the state, small town etc..My family is all in Palm Beach county. Anyway, I hope all is well and i'm sure you'll post when you can.

[Anderton]

Yes, I'm fine. Oddly enough the worst of it was Thursday night, we were hit with feeder bands from the hurricane when it was quite a bit south. We lost power many times, our yard was covered with palm fronds...there was heavy rain, major lightning, and tornado warnings. I started to get really concerned about what would happen when the hurricane actually hit, but its path went more to the west and Friday the weather here was very close to normal.

 

We were very lucky, I feel terrible for the people on the west coast who were stuck in the middle of the destruction.

[Tedster]

Just a note for any on Florida's northwest coast...as well as an area from, say, N'Awlins east...

 

Keep an eye on Earl.

[FULLREFUSAL]

Good to hear from you Craig and i'm glad everything went alright..I Feel very very bad for the unfortunate SW Floridians in Charlie's path...

[TrancedelicBlues]

Originally posted by Tedster:

Just a note for any on Florida's northwest coast...as well as an area from, say, N'Awlins east...

 

Keep an eye on Earl.

Thanks for theheads-up!!

 

So I've still got a shot at this...

[Lee Tyler]

Cape Coral, Florida checking in here. The 5 mile-wide eye of this beast was literally less that 4-5 miles as the crow flies from my home, busy destroying the barrier islands on the way to Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda. I live on a canal right off the gulf, and initially the cat 2 status was reasonable considering I have a new home, and my elevation is 9 feet above mean high tide. But as the day wore on, Charlie started to become quite the asshole. Intensification was rapid and unexpected. Decided to take the usual documents, raise the puter, synth, Mackie power mixer and cabs as high as I could, floppy disc with 14 months of production stuff from my Kurzweil synth/workstation, wife, kid (no particular order) and procede to my moms house in Fort Myers. Observing the storms increasing intensity, I told my mom we would be best in that hotel room out east near the interstate I luckily reserved 2 days prior. At the hotel room, we watched the storm out the window and the local meteorologist's analysis, and was told that Charlie was NOW heading straight for the Lee Island Coast....uh...that means ME, NOT TAMPA! Freaked us out. It was a cat 4 at this time with 145 mph winds. My wife then started praying to her dead grandmother to spare us a direct hit, as she did 9 years ago in a cancer hospital in Tampa waiting for her bloodwork to return to normal after an autologous Stem-cell transplant for Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. (She saw her deceased grandmother in her room during the first recovery night post-transplant, and her bloods bounced back the following day that took the staff by surprise by the rapid return of red cells in her system) Moments later...and probably 20 minutes away from Port Charlotte's eventual destiny and destruction, this storm wobbled due north, spared the Fort Myers/Cape Coral area, and nailed Pine Island, Sanibel, Captiva and Upper Captiva. Actually, the storm turned Upper Captiva into Upper and Upper-Upper Captiva by cutting the island in two with a 400 foot gap! EFF ME! It simply avoided the Cape and Fort Myers! It then resumed it's N-NE course finding warm water in Charlotte Harbor to keep it's libido intact, then slammed into Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda. Like a Daisy-Cutter or MOAB hit that place! Tragedy for those good folks up there. My town, Cape Coral, was whacked very hard as well. Pool cages down everywhere, regardless of which direction they faced. EVERY 2 and 3 story pool cage bit the dust. Roofs were blown off. Trees of all varieties were massacred. Funny how most of the palm trees survived though, probably due to evolution and wind dissipation abilities, unlike the non-palms. Now the Seminole Indian crafted Tiki-hut on my dock had it's south facing side look like "morning hair", but was undamaged. We are talking about 115 MPH winds here! DAYAM!! Figured our Native American friends have been working on these structures for centuries and got it right by now. We only got a storm surge of like 4-5 feet, which still defies explanation. (expected surge was 12-18 feet at high tide) I am still waiting for a meteorologist to figger thisun' out. And there we were..... at our home....lucky...and very hot. All three of us trying to get to sleep in a king sized bed with no power....no fan. AH....BUT WAIT!! What about that fan/schpritzer deal from Orlando? You know that fan. The one with the floppy fan blades with a total diameter of like 2 inches and combo mister?? Well, that'll work! So there it was. At the foot of the bed, buzzing away....being supported and kept upright by an empty Kleenex Boutique box and BARELY producing a zephyr. I could fart and reverse the direction on that little bastid!

 

Hey

 

Am I rambling? Anyway, power/phone/cable/high-speed internet access is slowly returning to Cape Coral and environs, but I can't help feeling for the folks just a bit up north who have really suffered and will be suffering for some time to come. A donation to my local temple will be made in short order to help the effort up north and here in my town as well. All I got was loss of power/utilities, one 3 inch slice in my pool cage screen from a glass shard that landed intact at the bottom of my pool, and a "palm-frond coconut-salad" in my backyard. God help those that were affected, and the folks that are working IN THE HEAT fixing utility lines, directing traffic, etc. Signing off from Cape Coral, Lee.