Clean up
We had already heard from a neighbour before we set off for the drive home yesterday that the house “looked okay” but the 5+ hour drive was still full of apprehension.
By the time we pulled up outside of the house it was dusk, but there it was standing in front us looking a little shellshocked. All around were fallen trees, large branches and debris.
The house was fine inside. No water intrusion, no obvious damage apart from a couple of pieces of roof shingle that tore through our pool cage lanai. We feel so very lucky because all around us people have not been and there are homes and businesses devastated.
Then overnight our power came back on, which is a real treat. In Bermuda sometimes that would take five days. 2.2 million people in Florida were still without power this evening.
We’ve spent all day cleaning up. It’s dark now and there is plenty still to do but major branches and debris are piled up on the side of the road, and specialists will come and cut down and remove some big trees that were lost. Plants, palm fronds, pergolas, arbors and leaves were strewn across the garden, plants were ‘burnt’ by the sea-salt and my prized BBQ had been uplifted into trees between us and the neighbours. Took me a little while to find that.
I will repeat it again, we feel very lucky, if not a little jittery. I am happy we made the decision to evacuate, you can’t rebuild humans, despite what they said about the bionic man, but you can rebuild bricks and mortar.
Our neighbourhood has taken a good going over but there looked to be no significant damage other than a lot of fallen trees. We live in an area called The Oaks, and there are hundreds of them, although a fair few less today.
Sarasota and the surrounding towns did take a battering. The airport had its roof peeled off, the Van Wezel concert hall suffered storm surge and will be closed until the new year. Numerous high rises downtown have their windows out while the Selby Botanical Gardens has closed both its downtown Sarasota and Historic Spanish Point campuses, which is up the road from us, due to serious damage.
The worst impacted are the beautiful keys that line the coast close to here particularly Siesta, Casey, Bird, St. Armands and Longboat are still not accessible. I truly hope they recover.
Our minor recovery continues tomorrow. We are the lucky ones.
Glad that you mostly escaped . My son in Apollo Beach much the same . We previously lived in early 2000 on Siesta Key and our friend there has probably got a tear down and a rental that is in bad shape . We lived on a canal there and by the grace of god ….Strangely enough ( look at my name) we almost bought on the Oaks and have another friend who lives on there who also escaped prior to landfall but have not heard of his age yet
That’s funny that you almost bought in The Oaks. My other half really wanted to live on a waterway or inland canal, but my risk schooling told me otherwise. Siesta Key is pretty bad as is Manasota Key.
Hi CA,
Delighted to hear that your safely home and the damage for you was not severe.I sense that the community spirit is strong and folks will rally around to help everyone in your area. I watched the coverage on CNN and have witnessed the severe damage to Florida.
My best wishes to you, your family and neighbours for a positive recovery given time.
Chris
Many thanks Cliff. We are lucky and our neighbourhood will bounce back, I am hoping that some of the worst affected areas do too.
So glad to hear you’ve escaped relatively unscathed CA, I have also been watching the news with interest over the last few days. Interestingly a recruitment agency contacted me on Linkedin yesterday with some contract positions available onsite in West Palm Beach, so I assume many have evacuated with no plans to return. I am not planning to apply. 😅 !!
😂
Bon Courage (again) for you and everybody with the clean up. Looking forward to the next blogs…
Merci, Alan.
Glad to hear you and your family are all okay and apart from damage to surrounding areas, there doesn’t appear to be any fatalites in your area. As you say you can rebuild homes etc but you can’t rebuild humans!
Wishing you all the best and hopefully you and your family and others will be able to get back to a normal life ASAP.
Take care
Much appreciated Mike.
🙏🏼
Really glad to hear you and the family are safe. I have friends in Palm Harbor who missed the main onslaught. Really enjoy your posts, keep them coming.
Palm Harbor was just far away north to escape the very worst of the rainfall, but they still had plenty.
brilliant news that you are home safely and not too much damage to the house. More important things to think about and do but look forward to reading your posts again when you’re ready.
Thank you, Eric.
Glad you and your family/house are ok.
A friend moved to Florida a few years ago and he’d been there for about a month before a hurricane struck and took off half his roof. He reported that the clean up was pretty good – the local authorities clearly get plenty of practice and the house was insured and the roof swiftly repaired. However he pointed out that the humidity was the killer and he was cleaning off mould virtually daily until the roof went back on the house became weatherproof.