Hurricane Irma

[BEAT]

MEGA EDIT: Hurricane Irma is now weeks in the past, but the devastation it, and hurricane Maria did to Puerto Rico and the carribian is still very much current. Seeing as this thread is still sticked, I'd like to re-purpose it to focus on what you can do to help our fellow citizens that, as of this writing, our government has largely ignored. The following links are largely reputable charities that are currently hard at work to help the victims of these storms.

UPDATE: Zef (a gentleman and a scholar) alerted me to this PBS article on how you can help the victims of Irma and Maria. While you should definitely read it in full, here's a copy of their list of larger reputable charities contributing to the relief effort.

• United for Puerto Rico (spearheaded by the First Lady of Puerto Rico)
• UNICEF
• Center for Popular Democracy
• Hispanic Federation’s “Unidos” page
• International Medical Corps
• Former U.S. presidents have expanded their One America Appeal to include recovery efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands
• Catholic Relief Services
• Americares
• Direct Relief
• Save the Children, which focuses specifically on the needs of families and their children.
• Global Giving has a $2 million goal for victims of Hurricane Maria
• GoFundMe has also created a hub that includes all campaigns for Hurricane Maria.

Please spread awareness of these efforts, and give if you are able.

Thank you all very much, and god bless.

Original Post on hurricane safety:

UPDATE: If you feel where you live is in SERIOUS FUCKING DANGER, my wife and I might be willing to let you stay with us. Click for details.
Oh also I updated the map with the most current version wtfever.

Posting in the Pit instead of everything because hey, non-registered lurkers might need this information too.

So Hurricane Irma just hit the Caribbean. From there it's projected hit basically every island in its way as it slowly moves towards Florida, where it's projected to make landfall on Sunday September 10th.

MAP CURRENT AS OF 11:00 AM EASTERN STANDARD TIME, THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 7TH

So as our resident FLORIDA MAN figured I'd just make a little informal PSA thread.

BASIC PREPAREDNESS

If you live in an area that might be affected, please consult the national weather service's pages for before, during, and after the storm hits. By now most of Southern Florida has gone into storm-prep lockdown, but if you live in northern Florida or even Georgia or the Carolinas, now might be a good time to go grab a big case of store-brand bottled waters, batteries, granola bars, and other supplies before the rush happens. Also wouldn't be a bad idea to fill your car, and the little red plastic tank you use for the lawnmower now, before the inevitable price hike.

Pre-storm stuff I don't see on those pages I linked: Keep your cell phone other useful devices fully charged for as long as you can in case you lose power, and fill your bathtub with water before the storm hits, so you can fill your toilet tank in case you lose running water.

KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE

While you should definitely look up your county's evacuation zones and which room's your best choice for a storm room, but theres' some other stuff to consider as well. Such as...

Where is your home? Are you near enough to the coast to worry about the storm surge? Do you live in an area that has any history of flooding? If chances of the kind of horrific 4-feet-of-standing-water thing we saw happen in Houston seems likely in your area, it might be in your best interest to grab your most expensive stuff, seal everything else up as best you can, and get outta town before it's too late.

THIS IS ALL GOOD ADVICE, BUT THE BEST OPTION IS ALWAYS TO NOT BE IN A CATASTROPHIC FLOOD ZONE

How close are you going to be to the eye wall? The outer edges of a hurricane usually just seem like a bad rainstorm. It's the winds of the eye wall that are the ones that do the truly terrifying destruction. If the eye is going to be anywhere near where you live, and you haven't been evacuated, be prepared to stay inside your storm room away from any windows for awhile. If the eye itself passes over your area, don't do anything stupid like running around outside marveling at how calm everything is, because you have no idea how long you'll have before the other side of the eye wall hits you with just as much force as the first side.

How sturdy is your home? I'm afraid I don't really know anything about what you should do if you live in an apartment or a trailer park or anything other than the endless wasteland of suburbia subdivision hell. So you'll have to do your own research for those. This is pretty much limited to places I've lived.

FOR NEWER SUBDIVISIONS: A lot of the residential areas in Florida are subdivisions that were practically mass-produced during the housing bubble in the 90s. An entire (awesome) childhood of running unsupervised through half-finished construction sites, has taught me that 90% of them are consist of a concert foundation, outside walls of Cinder block on the first floor and wood on the second, and all the interior walls are just drywall and 2 by 4s. Honestly, that's pretty good for surviving a storm. However, the ones that always blew YOUNG BEAT'S 12-year-old construction-site-trespasser mind were the ones that skipped the Cinder block first floor and just built the first floor out of wood. I'm sure those houses passed whatever building code they needed to, but I'd be a lot more hesitant about trying to ride out the storm in one of those.

FOR OLDER NEIGHBORHOODS: This one's pretty situational, but in my experience, if a Florida house from like 1960 is still standing strong in 2017, it's either nearing the end of it's life or it built to last forever. In the case of the former, if you live in an old, all-wood house, I'd probably start weighing my options for getting out of town, especially if you haven't had any sort of inspection for rotting boards or any of the other thousand things that slowly weaken a building done in awhile.

I'm exceedingly lucky to be able to say that BEATPAD falls into the Latter category. It was originally Air Force Base housing, which means every single wall in the house, inside and outside is solid cinder block and concrete. It also has a room in the dead center of the structure that the realtor called a "storm shelter", but was actually designed as the room where you hide in case of motherfucking NUCLEAR WAR because the cold war was a hell of a thing. That said, while my walls are basically impenetrable, my roof is the same as every other roof in the state: wood and shingles. I've had it inspected recently, and I'm confident it'll survive Irma, but that's the part of the house you need to worry about.

Also, if your house has an addition, stay the fuck away from it during the storm. I turned what used to be a patio area in the back of BEATPAD into a sun-room type deal with like some kinda space-age aluminum roof and big huge windows? Super nice little addition that everybody loves! Will it survive the storm? Probably. Will I have anything I value in there during the storm? Hell no. Will I be hanging out in there during the storm? Fuck no.

All of that babble was... probably a lot less useful than just keeping track of your local warnings and following the advice of the national weather service, but if it helped your hurricane prep at all, hey, awesome! If not, well at least I gave you the link to Weather dot Gov so you can start your actual prep.

Stay safe, Stay tough, and God bless.

[Vaeran]

Thank you for this, BEAT.

[Ample Vigour]

God bless, BEAT. Stay safe, FL Tyrants!

Sing out if you need anything in the aftermath.

[Lady]

You are good people, beat. Stay dry

[Issun]

Be safe, Skelemanz!

[Pajaro Pete]

If you're not Gulf coastal, it would probably be a good idea to poke your congress folks and remind them that Puerto Rico and various other US territories are going to need plenty of help in the immediate future.

[WildcatJF]

Thanks for sharing this, BEAT. Stay safe all Florida Tyrants!

[Ample Vigour]

It sounds like our Florida family is on the western side of the peninsula currently, and relatively safe. Huge relief.

[Meditative_Zebra]

Kudos for the PSA, BEAT. Best wishes to everyone in the path of the storm.

[BEAT]

If you are in an area you have reason to believe will be hit hard and afraid for your safety and the safety of your loved ones, GIRL and I are willing to let you stay at BEATPAD when the storm hits.

IMPORTANT STUFF IF YOU'RE CONSIDERING DOING THAT.

• BEATPAD IS A FEW MILES FROM ORLANDO AIRPORT. Pretty much dead center of the state, which as of this moment is still very much in the path of the hurricane. This isn't a place you can go to ESCAPE Irma, just a place with concrete walls in an area that, to the best of my knowledge, has never flooded. So it's clearly not as good a place to stay as say, somewhere on the West side of Florida, or in some other state, far away from any and all hurricanes. But it might be marginally safer than wherever you currently are.
• BEATPAD IS PRETTY SMALL. Two bedrooms one bathroom, living room & Kitchen. None of which are that big. We got a guest bed, a futon and 2 couches, for people to crash on, but that might be an issue because...
• BEATPAD IS ALREADY PRETTY CROWDED. My brother already intends to weather the storm with us, and there's a pretty good chance GIRL's mom will do the same. Also another one of GIRL's friends has hinted that she might join us as well and bring her 2 young children with her.
• BEATPAD IS WHERE BEAT LIVES. Man that guy's an asshole.

Send me a private message if you feel you might need to do this.

[Falselogic]

Originally Posted by BEAT

If you are in an area you have reason to believe will be hit hard and afraid for your safety and the safety of your loved ones, GIRL and I are willing to let you stay at BEATPAD when the storm hits.

IMPORTANT STUFF IF YOU'RE CONSIDERING DOING THAT.

• BEATPAD IS A FEW MILES FROM ORLANDO AIRPORT. Pretty much dead center of the state, which as of this moment is still very much in the path of the hurricane. This isn't a place you can go to ESCAPE Irma, just a place with concrete walls in an area that, to the best of my knowledge, has never flooded. So it's clearly not as good a place to stay as say, somewhere on the West side of Florida, or in some other state, far away from any and all hurricanes. But it might be marginally safer than wherever you currently are.
• BEATPAD IS PRETTY SMALL. Two bedrooms one bathroom, living room & Kitchen. None of which are that big. We got a guest bed, a futon and 2 couches, for people to crash on, but that might be an issue because...
• BEATPAD IS ALREADY PRETTY CROWDED. My brother already intends to weather the storm with us, and there's a pretty good chance GIRL's mom will do the same. Also another one of GIRL's friends has hinted that she might join us as well and bring her 2 young children with her.
• BEATPAD IS WHERE BEAT LIVES. Man that guy's an asshole.

Send me a private message if you feel you might need to do this.

Oh, I thought there was just gonna be a party and that I was kinda, sorta, invited. I was gonna come maybe bring Cali with me.

But, I guess, that's not the case...

[Parish]

You are a good skeleton, Beat, even if you shout too much.

Stay safe, everyone.

I think we should be fine in central NC, though I will be hoping that my decision to buy the townhouse on the end of the row (which has more windows than the middle units) does not turn out to be a poor one.

[Abominable K]

You are a saint, Sir Skellington.

[Violentvixen]

Stay safe everyone.

[Parish]

Thread is sticky for the next few days.

[WisteriaHysteria]

Extremely relieved to hear that Puerto Rico seems to have avoided the worst of it.

[BEAT]

So... path as of 11 PM tonight.



Well shit.

[BEAT]

I know what I'm doing tomorrow: Cutting down the dead tree in my front yard with a chainsaw.

And working from home.

And I guess checking for evacuation notices every hour or so.

[Grignr]

Originally Posted by BEAT

I know what I'm doing tomorrow: Cutting down the dead tree in my front yard with a chainsaw.

Be careful! The most dangerous part of a hurricane (clear of the storm surge) is the fumes from generators and people using chainsaws.

They won't evacuate the Orlando area; we're the area with shelters that people are coming into. One of the reasons the governor stated for closing the schools today was so they could start becoming shelters. There will be strong winds, but in the range we experienced with Charley, which blew over ancient oaks standing alone in a field, smashed every fast food restaurant sign and bent shopping center store signs like pretzels. Yet the buildings and houses were fine, other than half the roofs sporting blue tarps for the next six months. Things standing out in the open (fields, parking lots) that could catch the wind were screwed, though.

I wonder if this will make Disney rethink starting the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival while it's still hurricane season...

[Vega]

My folks and I live on Florida's Space Coast, about an hour southeast of Orlando. Yesterday we boarded the windows. Today we got sandbags and are most likely going to stay in a local shelter. The only immediate problem is finding something comfortable to sleep on.

[Pajaro Pete]

Originally Posted by BEAT

So... path as of 11 PM tonight.



Well shit.

looks like they're sticking with this prediction, so it's like, i don't even know what to say to people. stay safe?

[Mightyblue]

The worst part about that map is that it leaves out that the eyewall ring is going to run directly up and through the panhandle; that's typically the strongest part of the hurricane.

[Solitayre]

Yeah, there's no silver lining here. It's looking like pretty much all of Florida and half of Georgia are looking at a direct hit from the strongest hurricane in history. Stay safe out there.

[Ted]

Originally Posted by Pajaro Pete

looks like they're sticking with this prediction, so it's like, i don't even know what to say to people. stay safe?

Ugh, hopefully it'll end up not as bad as it looks.


My thoughts are with you guys.

[WildcatJF]

Please stay safe everyone.

[Octopus Prime]

Yes, I'm quite insistent that everyone be safe.

[Zef]

Originally Posted by WisteriaHysteria

Extremely relieved to hear that Puerto Rico seems to have avoided the worst of it.

Originally Posted by Mightyblue

The worst part about that map is that it leaves out that the eyewall ring is going to run directly up and through the panhandle; that's typically the strongest part of the hurricane.

That's basically what spared Puerto Rico. The eye pulled North just before it reached the island and, although they did get flash floods, lose power and communications, and got some mudslides in the mountains, there was relatively little damage (nothing like Barbuda, at all.) My friends there are glad for it, and although they'll need disaster relief anyway, they acknowledge it could have been a lot worse.

So my concern has now moved to Miami and Orlando and all my friends and coworkers down there

[Vega]

Each day the forecasts move the eye farther from my town. We're no longer worried about damage to the house but power still may go out.

[Nerdy]

I posted this in the weather thread, but if you need to evacuate and are willing to drive up to Southern Virginia, the roomie and I can provide some shelter. We don't have a whole lot of room, but the offer still stands! (You may need to bring air mattresses, as we live in a 2 bedroom house)

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk

[Grignr]

Thanks to the shift westward, we're now sheltering my sister-in-law's family (who live in the Tampa Bay area). So now there's four adults and six young persons (ages 2, 6, 10, 12, 17, 20) in our 4-bedroom 2-bath house. And we're still going to get the eastern edge of the storm here in Orlando.

Exciting times!