This Week at Our House #36 and #37 Hurricane Florence

****We finally have internet again, much earlier than we were told that we would. These are the notes I took about our family and the hurricane for the past two weeks that we have been offline. I will get pictures up in a day or two. There is a lot of internet catching up to do.****

The Hurricane

Saturday—we found out a major hurricane was coming

Sunday—I was surprised how many activities were announced during church considering the coming storm. It seemed so unlike the people here to continue with plans knowing a big storm was coming.

Monday—we continued praying for our safety and the safety of our home. Parents called asking if we were evacuating. We started repairing the roof.

Tuesday—went to Jacksonville for news, supplies, and food. The van had a moment of trouble on the way home. Jacksonville was out of bottled water and gas lines were huge. Found out that many people were buying generators and planning on staying.

Wednesday—the storm was down-graded to a category 3. We talked about the van breaking down if we tried to drive it 200 to 300 miles away. We prayed a lot and made the decision to stay home. We finished repairing the roof. Kate and I made a lot of food between Wednesday night and Saturday morning. Kate made 7 pies and 8 pizzas and I made chili and soup.

Thursday—The storm was down-graded to a category 2. We woke up to a very cloudy day. The wind was blowing constantly, though gently, and the air was very warm. By afternoon, the rain had begun to fall. By evening, it was raining hard and the wind was blowing harder. At 7:40, the electricity went out. We immediately noticed that the air conditioning was no longer running. It became humid inside the house almost immediately. The kids were frightened at first. We lit the candles I had purchased on Tuesday. The kids became wild in candle light. They played running around and wrestling games and it was hard to get them to settle down. The wind began to really howl and crash. The storm had made its way to our home.

Thursday night-Early Friday morning—11pm, we sent everyone to bed. The wind crashed and howled all through the night. We heard shingles blow off. At one point, I woke up to a crashing sound of the garage doors. I looked out, but the rain was too heavy to see anything.

The yard was very flooded, but the water did not even come into the garage

Friday—by 8am, the wind quieted. We cleaned the house, as is our usual for Friday. Though without electricity we could not vacuum. Still it was nice to get the bathrooms cleaned and the floors washed. We left the chickens and ducks in the shed all day. The kids would brave the storm to get them food and water. Adam and I walked around the house to assess the damage. Most of the tress lost a great many leaves, particularly on the East side. The East side of the roof probably lost between 30 and 60 shingles. The west side, which was the side that was repaired lost none. Two huge branches came down from the trees in the driveway. The grapevines were completely blown over and some of our favorite fur trees were partially uprooted. It rained hard all day. At sunset when we lit candles again, the kids went wild once more. I began thinking of dusk as the bewitching hour. They ran around and played loudly and wrestled. We tried to get them to play calmer games, but ended up just sending them to bed early. I went to bed too, but John stayed up with the rational teens and played games. At 11pm, the water was shut off. John, Kate, and I talked about what to do. We decided to put our dirty laundry in large trash bags, wash out the 4 trash cans that I use for laundry and use them to collect rain water. We opened the headlight (flashlight on a headband) that I had bought for the storm, but we had not opened yet in case we could return it and save the money. We decided we needed it out in the rain in the pitch black of night to wash out our laundry bins. We washed them in the down pour and set them up along with some other bins we had already set out to catch rain water.

Saturday—The first day with no water and no electricity. We washed the dishes out in the rain. I couldn’t help but thinking of Mr. Harrison from Anne of Avonlea and how he washed his dishes whenever it rained. We have a large indentation in the grass on the side of the house. We began gathering water in old ice cream buckets from that to flush the toilets. Later in the day, I went over to the neighbor’s house for news. We got some from the radio, but it was sketchy and not very local. I used their cell phone to call my mother in law to ask her to get the news out that we were without electricity and running water but that we were alive and well and the house fared well during the storm. I learned that the two bridges that run over the White Oak River, one on our street, and one on a major adjoining street were completely flooded over, even above the side rails. There was no leaving the neighborhood. The two closest towns were completely flooded and impossible to get into—Maysville and Belgrade. The Belgrade fire department was flooded so severely, the fire fighters had to be evacuated. The two closest cities were under water, all stores were closed or only accepting cash. 500,000 electric customers in our area were without electricity. The county shut the water off when they lost all but 4 of their generators. Our little area was the only local region not under water. The Lord had blessed us and kept us safe. Bewitching hour began again when the sun set. After feeling rather frustrated with the kids and their crazy-play, I just sent myself to bed. Later, John sent all the kids to bed early again.

The wind blew a lot of the leaves off the trees, many stuck to the house and windows

Sunday—Kate and I washed dishes again outside. We were still without water and electricity. Later we ate lunch and had Church at home. Given that the church buildings around us were all in cities that flooded severely and we were trapped on our street by the flood water, we didn’t even think about going to church and are sure it was cancelled anyway. Sunday, all our homemade food was either eaten or molding. The house was so humid that even the fruit was starting to go bad. The doorway to the front door became almost impossible to use because the humidity around the door was causing the wood to swell. In the afternoon, our neighbor came by to tell us a utility truck was assessing the damage in our neighborhood and would get it up in a day or two. About 7pm Sunday, the electricity returned. The internet was out and the water was still out, but we were very happy to have lights, air conditioning, and refrigeration again. We still had to carry in buckets of water for the toilets, and wash our dishes outside. Without internet, we still had no communication to the outside world.

Monday—the water and internet continued to be out for the day. But we held school in as much as our curriculum was not on the internet. We got news from the neighbors that the water had gone down and we could now drive out of the neighborhood. People could get to Maysville and the big city Jacksonville, but not the bigger city to the northwest of us. The gas stations had no gas, most of the stores were still without electricity and closed or only taking cash. We decided to continue to stay home. Kate and I continued to cook up all of our meat that had thawed. We did dishes outside and brought water in to flush toilets. We’ve used a lot of our rain water and the ground water is going down, so we while we may not run out of water to drink, we may have to find other ways for washing and using the bathroom.

Tuesday—The water came on at a trickle. We were a little concerned, so we talked to some neighbors and found out that they had the same thing. The radio said not to drink the water even when it comes back on. We still washed dishes outside. The neighbor’s also said that there was a way to get to Jacksonville and the stores were now all open, but only taking cash. We did school.

Wednesday—We had enough water pressure to wash dishes and do the laundry. We had not been able to do laundry for an entire week. The laundry smells very musty. I think in some things the smell is going to stay for a few washes. We continued to have no internet and therefore no communication. We ran out of milk, but honestly, it is a miracle that our milk didn’t rot while the electricity was out. With enough water and electricity, we got the kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms cleaned well. Even though it had not been a whole week, having to go to the bathroom in the dark, not flush except out of necessity and using flood waters to flush the toilets made them nasty. We continued to do school without our online programs, and we still are waiting around for the internet to be restored so that we can have communication and get information about what is open and what can now take cards instead of cash.

Thursday—We still have no internet. We need to get groceries and information. John said we should wait one more day before we use up our gas going down to Jacksonville without knowing whether we can buy food or get gas. We do not have any cash because we have very little money at all anyway. We are coming up on a year to when John got his last paycheck. Tomorrow is Johnny’s birthday, so we will definitely go to the store tomorrow to see if we can buy food, so we can at least make him a birthday cake. I am hoping the internet is our neighborhood and not our house. I think it probably is general in our neighborhood because we do not see a long list of internet options coming up when we check the wifi. I wish we could have cell phones, but we would not have been able pay for them if we had. All of our communication, including phone service is through the internet to make things as cheap as possible. I noticed today that one of the two neighbors that left for the storm came back. Most of our neighbors stayed. We are grateful that we stayed given that it has been a whole week before someone was allowed/able to get back home. On the whole, this has not been bad. It’s been like camping, although we have a large indoor space and comfortable beds. I know the kids would not have done well, nor anyone we stayed with, if we had to be visitors for so long.

Friday—Johnny’s birthday. Johnny and Adam went to the neighbor’s to ask about the internet. They

told Johnny and Adam that they heard the internet would not be fixed until October. They also said that they heard that the stores in Jacksonville were taking credit cards. Kate and the 3 little kids and I went down to buy the food that we needed and food for John’s birthday and the toilet paper that we were urgently going to need. On the way to the store, I made the usual right hand turn to get to the main road with all of the stores. There was a woman on a bike in the cross walk beginning to cross as the light for going straight had just turned green. The woman in the car behind me rammed into the back of our van. We have a small dent and a bit of pealed paint. She lost her whole front end. She yelled at me for stopping when the light was green, but of course, I had yielded to the pedestrian in the cross walk and therefore had kept the law and done nothing wrong. Still, I felt pretty shaken since her car took so much damage. She said that she had lost her house already. We stayed and filled out a police report and all. Oh, I sure hate these things. Afterward, I was able to get all of the food and things we needed, as well as some water bottles. Johnny did not have the best of birthdays, but it was not too bad considering everything. We are grateful to have a full tank of gas and the food we need. It will be weird not having outside communication for so much longer. One interesting thing about driving out was just seeing all the damage that some of the lower lying areas took. The east side of our roof looks bad, but we didn’t lose whole shingles, so we have no wood and even no tar paper exposed. Many homes have a lot of wood exposed and many homes lost siding and such. Electricity has clearly not been restored in a lot of places including the city part of Maysville. I am sure we got ours back early, because our area took less damage.

Tuesday-- the internet was restored in the evening. All is back to normal, but we will need to get the money to fix the roof. I expect it is about $200 in shingles and then we will need tar and nails, but that is a whole lot cheaper that filing with the insurance in which we have a much larger deductible.