Our Ian Experience

I’ve communicated directly with many folks, but I thought I would briefly summarize our experience with Ian. This one was no fun (not that any of them are), and we avoided a major catastrophe here in the Tampa Bay area, but at the expense of Fort Myers, Port Charlotte, Sanibel, and points south of us. There will be some background first, but here we go. (You can click on the photos to see them full size.)

Our house was built in 1954. We have a low-pitched roof, and the outside walls are concrete blocks. Even some inside walls are poured concrete. So, the house is about as close to a bunker as one can get. With that said, we do have some vulnerabilities. There are three very large live oak trees between the neighbor on our east side and us. I believe the trees are primarily on her property, but they could be right on the line. In 2020, I had nearly three tons (that’s almost six thousand pounds) of wood taken out. We did have a laurel oak completely removed at the back of the property, but a significant portion of the three tons was from the live oaks over the house. I still have one big limb going over the house that worries me, and the tree guy is coming to look at it this week. It’s right across the middle of the roof and reaches the entire width of the house, plus some.

We are about seven blocks from the Bay, but there is a decent rise in elevation to our house. We are not in a flood zone, but we are in a B-level evacuation zone, and a mandatory evacuation was issued for our area Monday, if memory serves. I do also pay for flood insurance.

We have five windows in the original part of the house that I should replace with storm-resistant windows (which have the additional benefit of better insulation capabilities). A large addition was added to the back of the house about 30 years ago (well before me), with a row of windows looking out back. We don’t have shutters or boarding to board up and have considered it, but we always felt safe enough. Not after this storm. We’re going to start looking into that. The problem is, I’m about to spend $13K on a new fence around the backyard.

Some years back, I purchased a reasonably large open-frame generator. Except for the air conditioning, we could run the entire house. When they added the addition, a window unit was set in the wall in the back room so that we could sleep back there in the worst case. The problem is that we left it sitting for several years with gas still in the tank, and it will take some work to get it running again. Lay has a small one we were able to use to recharge devices, but it is a two-cycle engine, meaning we need to have the 2-cycle oil around, but it got us through.

We spent some time buying materials to cover windows in the days before the storm but decided not to put them up. On Monday, I bought us three 16Lbs bags of ice for our big party cooler. (It is just one of those plastic Igloo coolers, but it held ice until Friday.) I stuffed water bottles into every nook and cranny in the freezer, and as time went on without power, I’d take a few down and put them in the refrigerator. On Friday morning, I put the remaining ice in the cooler in an emptied drawer from the refrigerator, and we never had to move the food out.

Saturday before the storm, I’d made us a reservation at a hotel in Orlando for Wednesday and Thursday nights. We could cancel up to midnight that Tuesday night. I keep some important papers in a small lock box, and the others that I feel would need to go are in accordion folders in my desk drawer. We had those in a small roller bag and each of us had a bag packed full of clothes. We planned to leave Wednesday morning. About ten years ago, we evacuated to Orlando (The Parliament House) as Charley approached. Of course, we wound up in the middle of the storm as Charley took an unexpected turn down south of here and came to Orlando.

When we learned that Ian had made that earlier turn to the east and would likely hit Orlando on the way out, we elected to sit it out at the house. Lay’s company elected to close from Tuesday through Friday (in the end, they reopened on Friday).

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