New perspective about hurricane preparedness

[Tradd]

I do have most (but not all) photos scanned along with many of our documents. They are on an external hard drive, not in the "cloud". Most of the important papers are all in one place. I think I need to remind other family members what file boxes to grab in an emergency departure. Jewelry... never even thought about that or other small-but-valuable mementos. Thanks for that reminder.

I would have your photos backed up somewhere online as well as the external hard drive. Google Photos, Dropbox, whatever, but choose a second option. Redundancy is something I’ve been practicing long before I started diving.

[Tradd]

I just bought a Jackery 300 backup battery generator. $280 on Amazon. Would allow me to keep my iPhone charged a lot, plus I can also take it along for my weekends away when I outside a lot.

I also have a Little Buddy propane heater coming from Amazon. It takes the 1lb green propane bottles. I ordered 5 of those for pickup from the local Ace hardware. Also ordered more Sterno cans. They’re what I have for emergency cooking. Have a little folding metal stove to use with them. Really just a way to heat up water for tea/instant coffee or a can of soup.

[flowerseverywhere]

Tradd, that Little $20 radio works great. Turns out our local.weather alert station is about ten miles away. we didn't even have the antenna up and got a ton of FM stations too.

[Tradd]

Tradd, that Little $20 radio works great. Turns out our local.weather alert station is about ten miles away. we didn't even have the antenna up and got a ton of FM stations too.

Good to hear! Where did you get it?

[flowerseverywhere]

Good to hear! Where did you get it?

Amazon. They had quite a selection of small units. I guess we are so used to super expensive gadgets with all the bells and whistles we forgot how good a little radio could be

[jp1]

If you truly want to make sure your photos and other digital stuff is fully backed up you should follow a 3 2 1 backup thought process. Have 3 copies of everything, use at least 2 types of storage media and 1 copy stored offsite somewhere. For me that means two external hard drives kept at home offline and a copy on Dropbox.

A 321 backup system is one of the things I look for when I am underwriting a cyber insurance submission at work. A company that has one in place is unlikely to have to pay the ransom to get their data back in the event of a ransomware attack.

[flowerseverywhere]

Hurricane updates

As of October six, there were still about 500 people in shelters
Grocery supplies in my area still have big gaps as so much is shipped south of us. Rightly so. Eggs, milk, bread seem to be the biggest although there are sparse shelves all over the store obviously a lot of food was spoiled not only in homes, but flooded restaurants, grocery store, gas stations, schools.
A friend was visiting her mother when the storm hit and flew back to Orlando airport. Her car had been flooded parked there. She got it towed to a dealership but there is no word when they will even be able to appraise the damage there is such a backup.
Flooded areas still affect many inland. And of course the insurance adjusters and appraisers have a huge ahead of them. I have heard various statistics ranging from 18-25% are all the homes who had flood insurance.
One women in a shelter had two young kids with her and could not figure out how to get her kids to school as her car was washed away. Obviously some kind of school bussing is needed but.lots of kids are walkers here and buses would have been ruined and you just don't walk into a car dealership and get one.

So they lost their homes, cars, jobs, food, and are trying to figure out how to get back on their feet.

There are many rumors that FEMA will rebuild their homes, schools etc. FEMA has low limits and is there to help in an emergency. Maybe temporary help for shelter and some food, but there is nowhere for these people to rent. They were all washed away. even flood Insurance will not rebuild most houses, but would be a great help to clean up the mess if it was still standing

People standing looking at the destroyed Sanibel causeway saying they will return and the community will be stronger don't seem to be quite realistic. The widespread devastation seems insurmountable in both the physical rebuild and cost. Where will the money come from?

[iris lilies]

Thank you for the report. What devastation!

[flowerseverywhere]

This area is far from the coast and is a mess

https://www.wesh.com/amp/article/st-...ooded/41507672

another unfortunate thing is much money flows into Florida from Dec to April. There will be substantially fewer this year. I was surprised to see there has been much work done to restore the sanibel causeway and get electricity going. It is not very populated. Ft Myers area has quite a large population. Pictures are on the local news of people picking through what used to be their homes. Alligators usually have no desire to hang around humans but I’m not fond of snakes and it would freak me out to sort through piles of debris from who knows where.

[flowerseverywhere]

Tropical storm Nicole just passed. It was on TV nonstop here. Did you all see the east coast devestation? Houses swept away. Sea walls and dunes washed out. Portions of A1A caved in. Some areas will not be able to rebuild because there is no land to rebuild on. it reached hurricane strength briefly, but the damage from Ian combined with the storm coming in at high tide just collapsed numerous houses.

insurance premiums anywhere near the coast are bound to be totally out of this world. As painful as it will be for people who have lived in these areas for a long time, it seems like relocation will be the only answer.

again millions and millions in damage.