Hurricane Ian

It’s been two weeks since Hurricane Ian made landfall on the west side of Florida where I live. While I was fortunate to be about an hour north of the worst destruction, it was an experience that I soon won’t forget.

Anyone in the path of Hurricane Ian received warnings on their phones like these.

They came repeatedly and almost to the point of annoyance.

Unlike a tornado, which I have experience with growing up in Chicagoland, a hurricane is not an unexpected event.

It’s a prolonged event that we have been warned about by the news for over a week in advance. They do not appear out of thin air like a tornado does.

So, the multiple warnings to “take shelter” during a hurricane are almost comical, as anyone who could see outside knew to take shelter.

However, the scariest of warnings came around noon when we were informed that the police, fire, and ambulances would no longer be out to help anyone.

You were literally on your own at that point.

The “Chicago Boy” in me immediately thought of the Purge, but in 60-75 mile an hour sustained winds. Ridiculous I know, but I still put a knife in one pocket and a bottle of pepper spray in the other while my Louisville slugger was always within reach.

Outside of the “I will defend my house” mentality, it’s a little unnerving knowing that if there were a medical emergency I would have to rely on the first aid kit I took out my 2010 Lexus that I recently traded in, peroxide that is years past its expiration date and all my medical knowledge I gleaned by watching all 9 seasons of Scrubs.

(Fortunately, Calei (my 17 year old daughter) has better medical knowledge than I, due to watching all but the last two seasons of Greys Anatomy).

With the repeated warnings, I pulled out a pair of pants, long sleeve shirt, socks and gym shoes and put them on the corner of my bed in a neat pile. I instructed my daughter to do the same. If Bruce Willis taught me anything, it’s you don’t want to be barefoot when there is busted glass all around.

The picture to the right is what the radar looked like when I took the video above. Of course I did not know this information at the time.

All day long my friends were losing power. It was random.

I lost mine around 245pm EST.

It wasn’t that big of a deal as I was able to have my sliding glass door open in the back of the house, as all humidity was gone and it was about 75 degrees outside.

It also helped that the wind and rain were blowing to the West, so nothing was getting in my house.

But my iPhone 12 ceased working.

I couldn’t go online and check emails, look at Facebook or even use the Weather app.

I couldn’t send text messages or communicate via FB Messenger.

Yet my phone said “5G” the whole time in one of the greatest technological scams since Y2K.

Was that Apple’s fault I lost all communication?

Was it AT&T, my cell phone provider since I was 18?

Analog calls sporadically worked and only for a few minutes at a time.

You don’t realize how small you are until you lose all touch with the modern world.

Now, this may surprise and shock a lot of my friends and family who only know me as the super hip, ultra modern fashionista that I am today; but many years ago, I was a Cub Scout.

Our motto was, “Be Prepared!”

This is why Calei and I had clothes set aside for busting glass.

I took my car in for gas at 630am on Tuesday morning with no issues. Calei took hers around 1030am and had to go to two different gas stations as they already were running out of gas.

I went to the grocery store at 7am on Tuesday. It was crowded, orderly and the shelves were stocked. By the mid-afternoon it was barren.

I brought all the furniture and grill in from the outside and bought a second canister of propane for the grill. All of our appliances are electric and I detest cold cuts. I was determined to have cooked meat even without power!

I made sure that we had several bags of ice and pulled out my giant Igloo Cooler in case I needed to pack it with our food and my emergency hurricane beer (Lagunitas IPA).

I also pulled out the 100+ tea lights that I bought about 8 years ago from Ikea when I was getting divorced thinking it would be romantic to nearly set my condo on fire trying to be sexy. I still had about 98 of them!

THE AFTERMATH:

What you see in the video above is how it was for hour upon hour.

Not too scary.

No busted glass.

Candles burning all throughout my house.

The only sound, the howling wind, trees falling and my daughter telling me how hot it is because we don’t have any air conditioning!

We both slept in the living room that night.

Well, she slept.

I would doze off occasionally and immediately wake up as the sliding glass door was open and I was still convinced that of all the houses in Sarasota someone could burglarize during a hurricane, it was going to be mine!

At 445am EST my power came back on.

I was fortunate, I have friends that lost power for over a week.

Our AC was working, Calei was happy, and the bags of ice I purchased kept our fridge and freezer cold.

There was nothing wasted.

Around 7am the sun was coming up.

It seemed like the whole neighborhood was outside.

Everyone was walking around their homes and assessing the damages.

I was very fortunate to only lose a bunch of shingles off the roof and have a lot of debris in my yard that needed to be picked up.

All the neighbors were checking on each other. Seeing if everyone was ok or if anyone needed help.

I texted my neighbor (who evacuated days before the storm) a video of her house letting her know it was secure, she only had a tree down in her yard.

Calei and I decided to go for a drive to see how the businesses and Siesta Key Beach held up.

Most all of the businesses on Clark Rd (purely coincidental, they did not name the road after me) lost their marquis signs and fences.

Trees and large branches littered the road.

Stop lights were out and I quickly realized that most Florida drivers (including my magnificent daughter) did not know that you are supposed to treat a non-working stop light as a stop sign!

We still had no communication with the outside world as the internet was down and analog calls were spotty at best.

I decided to take my e-bike to the office in downtown Sarasota to see if they had internet. I was not going to drive my car with so many traffic lights not working and there is a bike trail that covers 90% of my commute (although littered with trees like the picture to the left).

There was no internet in the office either. In fact, Comcast/Xfinity would be out until late Friday afternoon.

I decided to see if the only business that was open near my office (Joes - which happened to have my emergency Lagunitas on tap) was had wifi. They did not.

I decided to make a donation to them as generous as I am, and they shared their Lagunitas. Several friends joined me helping support the local business.

Almost two weeks later, our grocery store shelves are sporadically empty.

Seems like the bakery is the only section of the grocery store that is fully stocked.

The picture to the right was taken yesterday, almost two weeks since the hurricane hit, this is all the eggs that the Walmart Neighborhood Market has.

For over a week, you needed to sit in long lines to get gas for your car or generator. Fist fights even broke out at a few gas stations.

My daughter then realized I was not “being paranoid” or “over dramatic” or “a boomer” (which hurts because I’m Gen X) when I made sure that she had a full tank of gas.

Or that we had extra propane, food, water and shoes set aside.

We needed the candles.

We needed the ice.

We needed the full tank of gas to avoid the long lines and fist fights.

The food, ice and propane that I bought will not go to waste.

We were prepared for the worst yet expected the best.

This allowed us to be calm during and after the storm.

This allowed us to count our blessings as the “damage” we have up here is nothing like an hour south of us.

There will be a lot of re-building going on here in Florida for many years.

There are chainsaws going right now as I write this removing fallen trees.

There are twisted stop signs and stop lights.

There is a sense of relief and gratitude and compassion.

I learned a lot about being prepared from hurricane Ian and I hope that my daughter did too.

With all of that being said, the next time a Category 4 hurricane is headed my way, I am going to GTFO!!

(GET THE FAMILY OUT for those not up on internet slang - lol).

Stay confident my friends!

-Kevin T Clark, RF

Kevin is the CEO and Co-founder of Plan Confidence Corporation (PCC). PCC is an SEC registered investment firm specializing in providing advice to hard-working Americans investing in their employer’s retirement plans (401k, 403b, TSP, etc).

He is also an ERISA Nerd and one of only a few hundred Dalbar certified Registered Fiduciaries in the United States.