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If you are watching the news in the US lately, you'll know that this year has been particularly bad along the East and Gulf coast in terms of hurricanes forming that have or will effect the US like the current hurricane Helene set to hit Florida. If you've never lived through a hurricane, and have wondered what it is like, read on.
1. PHASE 1: ALERT!
Typically, you get about a 2 week warning that a storm is coming. The first week is usually some mention of something brewing out there in the ocean that may form, and then when something materializes a bit more, you get a tracking forecast, where all the weather models predict where a storm is going to hit. If you are in one of those predicted places, you may start to prepare or wait, but by the second week of potential warnings, as the storm forms and gets its name (something that is decided at the beginning of the year from a pre-set list of unused names in alphabetical order), and weather models become scarily accurate, it's time to get off your a-- and start storm prepping!
2. PHASE 2: PREPARE
This is one of those few times in your life you should not procrastinate, especially if you don't want to be stuck drinking "Alkaline water," and eating "Meat-O's." Every family and business needs to prepare for a storm at the same exact time, so that means supplies go quickly. Stores are flooded non-stop with people, gas stations have endless lines, and it's all a bit of organized chaos. Typically for every storm, you'll need to fill up every car you have with a full tank of gas, get some cash from the bank (if the power goes out, can't use your Apple Pay!), fill your tubs with water (this will be used if the water goes out, and you need to manually add water so you can flush your toilets, fun!) charge every single device you have to the max, get food, get water, get pet supplies, get medications, make sure you know what your emergency/cancellation plan is for your job/kids school/your school, and bring your pets inside (day of). Then depending on potential severity, you'll want to make sure you have a generator/power supply, board up windows, lay down sand bags, have emergency food supplies, first aid kits, battery radio, and bring in all your outdoor stuff that could fly off or tie it down.
3. PHASE 3: HUNKER DOWN
This is a phrase you will hear ad nauseum. Weather reporters will tell you by this time X, you and your family should be hunkered down and have no plans to leave. They will put out dire warnings to those in mandatory evacuation zones that have not yet evacuated letting them know EMT, police, and other emergency services will be unavailable to them should they choose not to leave b/c they will not and cannot risk their lives trying to save you from a zone they told you to leave in the first place well before landfall. This is the point at which winds and rains start to pick up and make roads impassable or super dangerous or deadly to drive on. No matter who you are, when this bell tolls, you start to worry if you weren't already. This is the point where power starts flickering or just goes off altogether. You may start watching the waters rise at rapid rates or wind start shaking the trees and anything flimsy around you.
4. PHASE 4: THE SH*T HITS THE FAN
When the storm hits, especially if you are in a direct path, the lights/power will usually go out a few hours before and stay out. All around you, you hear things snapping, creaking, breaking and wonder what they are especially as night begins to fall which is undoubtedly the most scary time as you can't see what's really happening in the pitch black. Your pets will start losing their minds, barking, crying, and whining because they can feel the pressure changes in a way that humans cannot. On your devices, you'll start to hear annoying weather alert warning constantly as the storm hovers over you. What people also don't realize is hurricanes spin up tornadoes all the time, so on top of flash flood and hurricane warnings, you'll get tornadoes which can sometimes cause more damage than the hurricane itself. You may think, oh, give it like 2-3 hours and the hurricane should be gone, but hurricanes have the first wall of the storm, then the eye, and then the outer wall of the storm that must pass through. The last one I was in, was a full 8 hours of high winds barreling through on its war path. The howling winds are insane. The wind was so strong that it actually altered the foundation of our house and made the doors hard to open when we tried to exit afterwards.
5. PHASE 5: SHOCK AND AWE AND SADNESS
Seeing the destruction after a storm can be very traumatizing. My childhood library I've been going to since I was 7 years old that had been in business for over 60 years, was destroyed a few years ago, and never re-opened. It's seeing people's homes and cars damaged and destroyed. It's seeing houses crushed by large trees, and fences down, and water residue lines that go all the way up to a homes roof. It's all the endless broken trees, and bits of tile and soggy mattresses, and kids toys being tossed on the lawn. It's seeing the devastation written on people's faces as they calculate the cost mentally and financially the damage is going to take on them. Yes, you may have your life, which is most important, but beyond that, you may be homeless or it may take months to rebuild for you and everyone else.
6. PHASE 6: THE AFTER-AFTER MATH
So you need to fix your house, car, business, what have you now right? Well so does everybody else. Recovery, clean-up, getting your insurance money, finding someone who is NOT a scammer to do the work is a mentally exhausting task. Dealing with that in the hottest part of the year with no a/c and no power for many, well, you figure it out. It's an absolute pain in the a--. Depending on how bad the storm, power can be down for a few days or MONTHS. Its fighting tooth and nail with everyone to get the same resources everyone else needs. It's endless long lines, it's endless waiting in stores that are barely functioning with little staff, it's just absolutely annoying. I cannot stress, the mental aspects of this process enough. After one storm, it took 3 weeks for regular trash collection and 5 months for heavy trash collection to come and pick up all the home debris littered over every single block for miles. Every single day you'd leave your house and just stare at piles and piles of trash like you were living in a dump. You can complain, but its going to fall on deaf ears because it takes a Herculean effort to remove THAT much debris from every single house in the city.
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