5 Lessons I learned from weathering Hurricane Irma
It’s 2:00PM on Tuesday, September 12th. As I write this, the power and cell service have been down at my house for nearly three days. I’m mentally exhausted, a little shell shocked, and a lot angry. Some of that is justified, some, probably just a reaction that will fade with time. For those who have never lived through a hurricane, I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned.
1. Our power and telecom infrastructures are woefully unreliable.
Despite having worked in technology for 20 years, I was surprised by this. I had two power banks to keep my mobile devices charged, because I expected the power to go out, but expected to still have LTE service. If, by chance, cell service went down, I expected it to be temporary. While it’s difficult to keep above ground lines connected to over a million homes in the path of a major storm, I reasoned, it can’t be that difficult to keep a dozen cell towers up and running.
How naive.
I met with the neighbors yesterday. Between us we had two Verizon, one AT&T, one Sprint, and two T-Mobile. All had varying levels of no service. Maybe phone, no SMS. Maybe SMS, no phone. Maybe neither (thanks, T-Mobile). None had data.
Likewise, although I expected the power outages, I didn’t expect to spend days afterwards without power. Both Duke Energy and TECO gave big press conferences about the thousands of trucks and linemen (non-gender specific) who were on standby to restore service. Yet nearly three days after the storm, our status is still listed as “assessing damage”, with no ETA on repair given. At their latest press conference, they announced it could take up to a week or more to repair all the damage.
These are companies that receive billions in annual subsidies from state and federal governments, despite being private corporations. If they’re going to dip their hands into tax dollars, the least we should expect from them is forward thinking safety measures to keep the infrastructure running. I am very motivated right now to join or form a regulatory PAC to overhaul infrastructure provider regulation.
2. It is very, very noisy to live through a hurricane.
In the hours leading up to the storm, the wind went from breezy, to gusty, to a near constant wailing howl as it ripped between houses and over power lines, whistling between gaps in the jalousies, and roaring as the eye neared us. When I woke up Monday morning, the winds were beginning to subside, but the new sounds were generators running, chainsaws, and near constant sirens.
Ah the sirens. For hours and hours, I never stopped hearing them. Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, first responders of all stripes rushing everywhere, trying to reach the tens of thousands of people in need of emergency services.
In addition to that, I could hear the children screaming, the families fighting, the anxious family phone calls, and all of the sounds of humans in grief. With no power, everyone had windows and doors open to let whatever breeze was around come through to cool their houses, and the stresses normally hidden behind closed doors became public knowledge.
In spite of that, I also learned…
3. My neighbors are really wonderful people, and I should have gotten to know them better sooner.
In the middle of the afternoon Sunday, without any prior planning, we had a spontaneous neighborhood meeting in the middle of the street. We compared supplies and skill sets. We had plywood, but no tapcons or power tools. Our neighbor across the street had no plywood, but a strong back and ready hands. Our neighbor diagonally across the street is a manager at Harbor Freight, and had tapcons, power tools, and the appropriate skill set. Together with his brother (and despite our clear political differences), he worked tirelessly to help us board our houses and prepare for the storm, and afterwards, worked a chainsaw tirelessly to clear downed trees and fallen limbs, right up until he was injured by a tree branch. He spent most of Monday afternoon in the ER getting stitches, and still came by Monday evening to check on us and see how we were doing. And speaking of which…
4. Many of the injuries surrounding a hurricane come before and after the storm, not just during it.
Early Sunday afternoon, a teenager panicking and wanting to evacuate hit his Mom as he pulled out of the driveway. During the cleanup, our neighborhood hero Lee (who helped with our window boarding) took a tree limb to the face. Another neighbor down the block suffered a heart attack during the cleanup process.
Our lack of cell connectivity meant they had to risk the roads to get help, and the roads were in no way safe. Despite having had drilled in our heads countless times that when streetlights are out, they should be treated as four way stops, careless drivers ripped through intersections without even slowing down, causing hundreds of car accidents. And because there was no cell signal, they too had to rely on others to continue to risk the roads in an attempt to get them to the closest hospital.
Others were injured when coming into contact with downed power lines. Still others were involved in fights as supplies grew short, or simply due to the stress of the pending storm. Without power, and with the return of the Florida sun on Monday, the lack of AC led to a rise in tempers, which increased domestic violence.
5. Even in a Category 1 hurricane, the cleanup will take weeks.
I am very, very grateful that my neighborhood didn’t suffer more damage than it did. That being said, as I drove through the area looking for cell service, the amount of damage that did occur is not insignificant. Countless trees or heavy limbs down, signs torn down, fences torn down, roofs and overhangs torn off, and more. Tree and roofing services are already booked up for weeks ahead. Cars have been smashed by flying debris or falling trees. Streetlights and stoplights are torn down or broken. The list goes on and on.
Here in Tampa Bay, we tend to be a bit blase about hurricanes, because it’s so rare to actually get hit by one. That probably contributed to the number of people affected by this storm. Our typical hurricane preparation generally involves stocking up on vodka and chips. I’m glad more people took this storm seriously as it drew closer, or else the damage and loss of life would likely have been much worse. We ended up suffering a glancing blow instead of the Category 4 punch in the face predicted, and looking at the damage we incurred in spite of this, I can’t imagine what it would have been like if the winds had been the 110–130MPH gusts initially expected.
While I’ve lived here in Tampa Bay for nearly 30 years, our particular location rarely gets a direct hit from hurricanes due to the convergence of the Gulf Stream and the Gulf of Mexico gyre. Our last direct hit was in 1921. Because of this, few of us who are alive here now have ever lived through something similar. After Irma, none of us will ever forget. With the expected increase in violent storm activity due to warmer oceans (largely driven by global warming), it’s a lesson I hope we all take to heart.
