Monthly Archives: October 2005

We’re fine, but we’re in a sort of suspended animation. There’s power three or fewer blocks in every direction, and even for one or two houses on my street. But the rest of us are left in limbo, watching food and gas supplies dwindle.

FP&L, the local power company, has promised that all those of who live in Miami-Dade north of Kendall Drive (the group I’m in) will have power by … November 22. Yes, by Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, although there is apparently no shortage of gasoline, there is a very great shortage of gas stations with power. And without power they cannot pump the gasoline. Knowing that our pre-hurricane hoard of gas — which runs the generator which keeps the fridge going — was due to run out Wednesday night, I went off in search of gas Wednesday morning. All I found was gas lines. The first one was short, but only because it was a flash crowd; there was in fact no gas being pumped. The second one was ten blocks long. The third was almost as long, and the station had run out but expected a new delivery ‘soon’. The fourth was again ten blocks or more. I gave up and went home. By Wednesday night, an hour before curfew (curfew runs from 8pm to 6am), the line at the closest station was only about fifty cars, and took maybe forty minutes; I got home with minutes to spare. But I got my twenty gallons, and I’m good to go for another three days or so. I expect that by the next time I need gas, there will be a lot more stations open so the lines will be shorter.

A more pressing problem may be food, although risk-averse legal types that we are, we have several days worth of pasta, rice and the like, even after we finish eating the frozen stuff. Most of the local stores are running on generators and selling mostly dry goods at present. It would be nice to find a source of milk and bread, but I can’t complain compared to many. Plus the Miami Herald reports that FP&L will be prioritizing stores starting today, now that they’ve gotten the hospitals and other first responders sorted out. (A longer-run problem may be laundry; but I’m sure there must be a host of machines somewhere in the student dorms.)

The schools claim that they will reopen Monday, and that is the university’s current plan as well. The remaining issues are whether the roads will be sufficiently clear, enough traffic lights will be working to make the journey safe, and especially whether gas supplies will be plentiful enough to allow people to commute.

It also seems as if the weather, which has been unseasonably dry and cool — the mid-70s — will revert to normal, starting Friday, and climb to the mid-80s. Plus it will rain a lot, topping up the humidity. So it’s going to get much more unpleasant in the house, and the fridge will have to work harder, making greater demands on the gas supply.

In fact everything is fine, and our discomforts are in the grand scale of things quite minor. But it is surprising how much time coping requires.

Trees down everywhere. Several side streets blocked by trunks. Most houses in the neighborhood lost at least some roof tiles, but no one near us appears to have major damage. Power has been restored east, west, north and south of us — but not to the few streets surrounding me.

It was a ferocious storm, and we didn’t even get the worst of it — that was probably in Broward, one county north of us. From about 7am to 10am yesterday, we could every so often hear a tile being ripped off our roof, often ricocheting from the top floor down to the overhanging roof below (and doing more damage). It was all too easy to imagine the roof being peeled off, Hurricane Andrew style, if things got worse. It’s very hard to describe the sound of your roof being dismantled by a storm. Something between an angry giant flicking at it, and near-misses by something a bit more powerful than small arms. In retrospect, the house held up fine, but as this was the first serious test of our new roof post-remodeling, during the event we were more than ordinarily stressed out of our minds.

In the bright light of day, our damage is no worse than many other people’s (whether, with a brand new roof it should be less is a question I don’t know how to answer yet). And the weather is nice and cool today, so we don’t have the sweltering problem we had the last time the power was out for days, plus the generator runs longer on a tank of gas since the fridge has less work to do.

I’m writing this from the office – which has power – but don’t expect much more from me until things get closer to normal.

Michael and his family are fine, but they lost power early this morning. So no blogging for now. The phone works: “We’re watching the storm go by,” Michael tells me. “It’s very blustery out there.”