Chapter One: Two Rules

Florida Hurricane Survival Guide for Newbies
By Loretta Cochran

Read the Introduction

Chapter One: Two Rules

I could begin by discussing how hurricanes form, their anatomy, the conditions that favor strengthening, the steering forces that determine their path, and defining the intensity designations as indicated by the Saffir-Simpson Damage-Potential Scale, but let's save that for later when you’re locked in your house with two weeks of canned food, no power and nothing else to do besides seek to understand the demon wind threatening to rip the heavily mortgaged and uselessly insured roof from over your head.

Instead I thought I’d begin with the most useful knowledge I gained in the 2004 season: how to save your own sweet ass. Sure, all that meteorology stuff is intellectually interesting, but in my experience, you will not give a damn about intellectual stimulation while a hurricane is bearing down on you. Your own sweet ass will be your primary concern. I fully support and encourage this attitude.

Hopefully, you will remember more than two things from this book. But if like me you immediately forget the critical details of how-to books and typically end up with decorative paint jobs that look like a monkey took a palm frond to your kitchen, you can cut out the two rules below and affix the paper to your hurricane kit, the necessary contents of which we will cover in a later chapter. If you don’t recall everything, remembering the two rules will give you a sense of purposeful direction while one half of your community goes into a panic resembling the movie Independence Day and the other half nonchalantly purchases twenty gallons of liquor, twenty bags of ice and dozens of plastic cups (but not a single flashlight battery) with the intent of “riding it out.”

Important note: riding it out is not recommended.

Yes, some members of the ride-it-out half of your community will laugh at you as you tearfully stuff your car or cars with personal keepsakes and food and toilet paper, but remember this: they’re assholes. You can console yourself with this vision: if the storm makes a direct hit, they will be on their knees, supporting a stinking pantload of fear atop their ankles while praying to whatever god they have recently begun to believe in to save their idiot, drunken asses from their own stupidity. Maybe that doesn't sound like much consolation to you. Probably that's just me.

While the panicked half of your community is standing in 63-hour lines for plywood and gnawing each other’s arms off over the last package of Plylox clips at the home store, you will have prepared far in advance because we’ll cover preparing your home to get the crap beat out of it by 150 mile an hour winds in a later chapter. Meanwhile, practice repeating these two rules like a mantra:
Let’s start with rule number one, Run From the Water. The water in question here is called “storm surge ” about which you will hear much as a hurricane approaches your community, particularly if you, like us, live in a coastal community. Since you will be virtually glued to the television screen during this period, you will likely see some very cool computer models of a digital storm surge. This virtual surge will push onto the shore engulfing the very beaches at which you enjoy walking, swimming or tanning yourself into oblivion. It’s cool to watch on TV, but like most reality television, it bears little resemblance to reality. To make it more real, the animation designers would need to include running, screaming people, eddies of roofing tiles and insulation and several thousand dead fish.

Let’s delve into the mechanics for a moment because if I accomplish nothing else here I would like to think that I helped you understand how storm surge works or at the very least contributed to your appreciation of the gravity of the situation.

Storm surge occurs when a hurricane is offshore, either paralleling the coastline or about to make landfall. The intense winds act something like a shovel, scooping up and pushing seawater ashore. And if the wall of water isn’t enough to scare the vital fluids out of your body, on top of the storm surge ride wind-driven waves that add to both the surge’s height and its capacity for destruction. The actual level of a storm surge depends upon when it happens—-if it is high or low tide—-and how much wind driven activity occurs on the surface. In many cases, a storm surge will rise twenty feet or more and sweep right over the tops of those beautiful multi-million dollar homes built on the barrier islands. Most of our barrier islands are little more than glorified sandbars, but they provide a source of astronomical income for Florida builders and real estate agents, so we like to call them “islands” and “keys.” Even if you own one of these homes, which no doubt provide a magazine-perfect coastal lifestyle under most circumstances, islands, keys and their immediate vicinity are truly the last places you want to be when a hurricane makes landfall nearby.

The reason you must run from the water is plain: there is nothing else you can do. You cannot hold it back. You cannot stop it with ten thousand sandbags. It is simply impossible to hide from water. Seriously, think about it for a minute. Where are you going to hide as a twenty-foot wall of water approaches? Unless you have a watertight room in your home, you have no place to go – except up. Keep in mind that a watertight room must also be airtight so even if you had one, you would suffocate. (But hey, you’d die dry.) If we agree that suffocation, even in relative comfort is not desirable, let’s reflect on “going up.” If you live in a three-story house or one of those stilt houses, you’re golden (as far as water is concerned – wind is another story and will covered in the next chapter.) If not, there will be very few places in your home that are high enough to escape the advancing sea.

As the storm surge approaches, if you have forgotten or chosen to ignore the two rules, you will be forced to—more than decide to—climb out onto your roof. At this point, the wind is probably still blowing hard enough to fully embed your body into the house across the street like an ivory inlay on a fretboard. Plus, emergency personnel are where the newscasters have told you a hundred times they would be at the height of the storm: hunkered down so they can be there to respond to injuries and rescue requests when the storm ends. So, there you are on the roof, clinging to a chimney or the encasement of one of those little whirly do-dads that supposedly aerate your attic and you realize that no one is coming for you any time soon. When your neighbor’s new patio table goes whizzing past your head, you might start thinking, “maybe riding it out wasn’t such a good idea.” Congratulations. This is absolutely the correct thinking for your situation. Unfortunately, you figured it out too late as evidenced by the screams of terror, which, you will soon discover, are issuing from your very own, very mortal soul.

To avoid having to admit to yourself that you’re a dumb ass, I strongly advise you to discard the “going up” strategy right this minute. If you’re already in the middle of the storm and the water is creeping up your walls as you read this, nothing in this book will help you, so please, please put it down and hightail it to higher ground wherever you can find it—even the roof is attractive if you now find yourself in such dire straits.

If you manage to hold on through the wind, someone will presumably (well…almost certainly, um…most likely, err…probably) find you. Eventually. When you are found, you will be the subject of one of those daring rescue videos you see during nationally syndicated natural disaster coverage as you are airlifted or boated to safety. However, your rescuers may or may not arrive before the floating colonies of fire ants discover one of their favorite food groups—you—hunkered down in a lovely dry spot. These nasty little buggers will be frenzied with joy to find both dry ground and food during a hurricane—and in the same place, no less. I can say with some certainty that you will not share their enthusiasm.

You might even consider dropping into the water to rid yourself of the hideous beasts as they begin their fiery gnawing on your tender flesh. This is inadvisable as there are additional colonies making their way through the water: to them, you will appear to be a patch of dry land and, well, you get the picture. Additionally, carried in with the surge are some weightier sea creatures that truly do have well-formed teeth perfect for ripping the flesh off the bones of their kill. No, you’re better off taking your chances with the fire ants. If you’re allergic to fire ants, you might begin to think that things couldn’t get much worse than this. Congratulations again. You have made an utterly accurate assessment of your situation.

Thus, if you live near the water, turning a cowardly tail toward the approaching storm is also known as “putting your best face forward.” As it happens in this case, your best face is actually your retreating butt. Hurricanes generate many ironies. That’s not a rule; it’s just an observation.

But how do you know if you’re close enough to the water to warrant a tail-between-the-legs strategy? Pull out your homeowner’s insurance policies. Do you carry flood insurance? If the answer is “yes,” go start your car.

Another way to figure out if you should run is to find one of those hurricane maps put out as a “public service” by many media outlets and corporations. They are available at most grocery stores from May to June. (Reminder: hurricane season is June through November. Are you getting the hint? Pick it up early.) These guides are packed with advertisements aimed at scared puppies like you and me as well as a few serious articles and perhaps a heartwarming survival story or two just for good measure. Ignore all that crap and turn directly to the map of your county or region. Locate your home on the map and then locate the map’s legend, which will indicate in color-coded brilliance how close you located yourself to death by drowning when you chose your home.

Here’s what you need to know: are you in a Zone A/1 evacuation area? If yes, go start the car now. Are you in a Zone B/2 evacuation area? Find your keys, pack your car and keep your shoes on. Are you in a Zone C/3 evacuation area? Have a drink and watch the radar blob churn toward your location. But don’t drink too much, you might yet find yourself on the road. We’ll go into why when we discuss rule number two.

The trick to knowing when and how far to run is to analyze the projected strength of the storm at landfall and thus figure out how likely it is that your area will be affected by storm surge.

Example: Charley was a projected to be a category four hurricane when it came ashore. We live a little more than two miles from the beach and just over a mile and a half from the Intracoastal Waterway. Across the street is a man-made “finger canal” held back by a twelve-foot seawall. As Charley approached, forecasters projected landfall essentially right on top of our house and an accompanying twenty-foot storm surge.

Now, this being our first hurricane, we didn’t know much about storm surge—tidal waves (tsunamis) were our only frame of reference. (A tidal wave is the same as a tsunami just as a cyclone is the same as a hurricane. I know…I know…it would be easier to classify nature’s fury if we could all agree on a common lexicon, but hey, talk to NOAA. I don’t make the rules.) Tidal waves come in fast, as a wall of water, and recede just as quickly. In this way, they bear little similarity to storm surge, which acts as its name implies: it surges ashore instead of crashing ashore and it recedes slowly.

Being acquainted with tidal waves and reasonably adept at basic arithmetic despite our public school educations, we began to calculate. Twenty feet of water, minus a twelve-foot seawall equals eight feet of water in our home. Coincidentally, this is exactly the height of our ceilings. So, sure, we could take shelter in the closet if the hurricane made a direct hit, but drowning in the closet seemed an unnecessarily uncomfortable end and we agreed it was not at all what we wanted to do with our weekend. As it turns out, those calculations would have been closer to correct had our home been located on the barrier island, but we’re two miles inland, so the surge might have crested the seawall across the street, but it was unlikely that we would have seen eight feet of water in our home. But who knew? Clearly not us.

The moral of the story is: listen to the news and check your local tide charts. Know your elevation above sea level and how far you are from the shoreline. If you are a few miles inland, remember that the surge will come up the canals near your home, but it is not likely to be as high as it will be where the surge comes ashore. And when in doubt, run. Run like a nine-year old. Bolt like a scalded cat. Pick your favorite simile for hauling ass and act it out. Get yourself and your family out of harm’s way before it’s too late and you find yourself swaddled in fire ants waving your underwear at passing helicopters from whatever is left of your roof.

Okay, I have to admit, running from a hurricane is a crapshoot, but if you live near the water, staying around for storm surge is a certainty you don’t want to live with. Come to think of it, you probably won’t have to.

After Charley, the news was full of stories from people who ran and, like my husband and I, actually ended up closer to the point where Charley made landfall than if we had stayed home. (We went to his brother’s house in Sarasota, which was inland but turned out to be a wood frame house. Generally speaking, concrete block construction will fare better than wood frame, but not always.) But recall the forecast landfall was essentially on top of our house—that middle line I told you about went literally right through our neighborhood. Using the best information available, we ran. So did a friend whose home is about a half-mile closer to the beach. But she wanted to get even further inland, so she ran to Arcadia. As it turned out, she ran smack into the center of the storm and ended up huddled inside a bathroom buttressed by mattresses while her home stood peacefully on the northwest side of Charley and barely felt a breeze from it. I told you hurricanes generate many ironies. Did I tell you many of them are unfunny?

However, it is likely that in the direct hit that was projected, our home would have been utterly destroyed. My poor husband was beside himself as he had just spent several months installing a Mexican tile floor and had barely finished puttying the nail holes on the new baseboards when news of Charley’s impending visit began to break. I tried to console him by complimenting the quality of his work. I pointed out that the because of his painstaking attention to detail, the floor would likely be the only thing remaining when we returned. Strangely, this did not soothe him.

My best advice, besides heading for Alaska, is to watch the cone of probability and try to determine if the water will affect your area. If you believe it will, shutter your windows and lock down your garage door and go. There is no thing in your home that is worth giving your life for. Take your loved ones and your pets and run from the water.

Up Next: Chapter Two: Hide From the Wind