Trying to reason with hurricane season

With apologies to Jimmy Buffett, you can’t. End of song! So much shorter than the original!

It seemed like Helene took a full week to get to us; Milton will be here in three days. Is that good or bad? Depends. Faster storms leave faster. But slower storms have more time to get worn out by the land once they hit. But slower storms also have more time to get dangerous before they hit land. Faster storms are harder to predict because they are moving quicker. Slower storms give you more time to worry. So, meh. Little from column A, little from column B.

The big question I’m seeing all of my Florida friends get asked is of course “are you going to evacuate” which is a loaded question. I will try to give some bullet point generic answers here because I don’t want to get too much tl;dr…. but I will be happy to talk more about anything if anyone has any questions.

• Being able to evacuate means that you have a reliable car that will get you a good few hundred miles away without breaking down.
• It means that you have money for gas for the car, money for a hotel for an untold amount of time (could be a couple days, could be a few weeks), money for food.
• It means that you (and/or your partner, if you are not single) have a job lenient enough to let you go for an untold amount of time.
• It means that if you have children, the school is fine with you taking them out of school for an untold amount of time.
• It means that if you have pets, you have found a hotel that allows them.
• In short, evacuating before you are told to/forced to evacuate is a financial privilege.

Florida has designated evacuation zones (if you’re curious you can go here and plug in an address of yourself or a loved one to see where they are). I am not in any of them. This means that where I live is under normal circumstances considered safe, and not an evacuation zone. Now, that doesn’t mean that Counties can’t suggest that you go to a local shelter, especially if you live in a mobile home and/or have health care needs that require a power source. From 1979-2015 I was never asked to evacuate from Gainesville (although there was one time we did leave the house and go to a motel; that was when my grandmother lived with us and we wanted her to feel safer than she felt where we lived at the time). And from 2015-now I’ve never been asked to evacuate from Keystone Heights.

Consider also what Florida looks like (yes, basically like a long penis, I know, we’ve all heard the jokes, trust me). In a hurricane like this one (Milton) who appears to be heading a bit south of us, where people are going to evacuate from….. where do you think they’ll go? South to Key West? Not likely; they’re going to head North, to Georgia or beyond. There are only two highways out of Florida, I-75 and I-95. The entire state – heck, even just the middle half of the state – can’t all be on those two roads at the same time, not without hella traffic jams and every single station between Orlando and Jacksonville running out of gas. If more southern gas stations are even open to begin with, if they don’t close so that the people who work there can also evacuate. In my Rav4, Orlando to Gainesville is almost half a tank of gas. So if people from the middle third of the state are going to try to get out of Florida, they’re going to want a full tank.

There are rural roads you can drive to get out of Florida, yes; but the ones heading towards the interstates are going to be bumper to bumper, and so are the ones that head into Georgia and Alabama. And half those people will probably be lost, because, y’all, RURAL ROADS.

Am I, personally, planning to evacuate? No, I’m not. Yes, I live in a mobile home, but my studio is concrete block and that building ain’t goin’ nowhere. If I get nervous, me and the pets will go over there.

And Jeff and I came through Helene last week just fine. I mean, it was stressful, yes. The wind at night sounded a lot, lot worse than it looked the next morning. (I am still having trouble wrapping my head around how Helene could pass so close to us and us not get any damage, and then North Carolina is practically destroyed, what the fuck!) Yes, Keystone is a city of lakes… but I don’t have lakefront property and I’m on what passes for a hill here in Florida. The land around Twin Lakes is so abruptly hilly on this side of the lake that even the houses right on the lake are a good 15-20 feet above the lakebed, and I’m another good 15-20 feet higher than that.

And as I said on Facebook on September 23rd, which still holds true: “Note to self: check hurricane supply closet – I’m pretty sure I’m stocked up on all essentials but it never hurts to triple-check (solar chargers, two generators, batteries, candles, lighters/matches, toilet paper, paper towels, food that doesn’t need to be cooked, former large bottles of juice already cleaned and filled with water in freezer, pet food, medications, books to read if the power goes out, hand-crank radio). Yep. Pretty sure all I need are some bonus hurricane snacks.”

I’ve lived in Florida since I was four years old (and I’ll be 55 on Friday! Happy Hurricane Birthday!) and a chunk of that was out on a farm in the boondocks where the power would go out if someone sneezed, let alone if a hurricane came by. So I’m big on having tons of shit around the house that you might run out of and not be able to go into town to get. I’ve got… I don’t know, maybe six first aid kits around here? Jeff’s getting a third can of gas tomorrow for the generators, just in case we lose power again for a while. I’ve got a WalMart delivery coming tomorrow with even more pet food, and hurricane snacks. Jeff’s already cleaned up the majority of the debris from Helene. (Don’t tell Jeff, I don’t want him to think I like him or appreciate him or anything, but I am glad he’s here.)

Having said all this, if the po-po knocked on my door at 3 AM and told me to evacuate, I’m stubborn but I ain’t fuckin stupid. I’d go. And if I lived on the coast and not inland? I’d go if a big one was headed towards me. But unless things get wildly … wild … in the next 48 hours, I’ll stay here.

xoxo, y’all