On Running for my Life

I suppose I'll start where I left off with Hurricane Irma. You might want to head back to this post from last year and re-read everything from September to refresh yourselves on my particular headspace in the days leading up to the hurricane, then come back here for the end of that chapter of my story.

So the last thing I wrote before the storm was that we received an update on Friday at 5pm that Irma was going to directly hit us. There were no changes to the forecast through Saturday, so we finished up making preparations at my mother's house (if you recall, my mother and grandmother live right on the bay and were under mandatory evacuation orders), brought her and my grandmother and all of their pets to our house, and then finished making our own house ready for the storm.

As the hours ticked by, we watched more and more of our neighbors leave. Many of our immediate neighbors in some of the newer construction households were staying, even with the threat of a direct hit. I guess it showed a lot of confidence in our builder, but Ben and I were skeptical they had strapped the roof down as planned. And even if our house was the fortress we were hoping it was, could it really withstand someone else's roof blowing into it? 

I hadn't really slept at all that week. And that Saturday evening... well, I had joked it was like going to bed on Christmas Eve... because you knew something big was coming. We all woke up at 6am that Sunday morning, although not sure if "woke up" is the right phrase to use if you haven't been sleeping. We were operating on pure adrenaline at that point.

A quick look at the news made me want to vomit. No change to Irma's path. Direct hit. Category 3. This video was shared on my husband's Facebook page. SO helpful.

Basically, this means St. Petersburg was over. And we had learned - in the middle of the night - the last of our neighbors, even the immediate neighbors I mentioned earlier, had skipped town.

My biggest fear was not about whether my mother, husband, or I could handle sticking around for the storm... it was whether my 90-year-old grandmother could. We knew that once the storm came, we wouldn't be able to get her medical help if she needed it. And depending on how bad the aftermath was, could we really care for her without power? Would it be too late to get her to an equipped shelter after the storm?

We quickly discussed the options remaining to us.

Option 1. Since my mom and grandmother lived in a mandatory evacuation zone, they were eligible to go to a special needs/pet-friendly shelter. The shelter would be able to get any medical help if needed. My husband hopped on his scooter (at 6:30 in the morning, mind you) to go scope the shelter out and get info about what they needed to do, and find out if we would be able to join them. 

The answer was no. We'd be split up. If communications went down, I would have no idea how they fared. And it killed me to send my mom and grams to a shelter with no comfortable bedding and just a cooler of food. Also, their pets would be taken from them and kept in a separate area. Now, my grams loves her dog, probably more than me and my mom. There was nothing comforting to me about this arrangement, other than that she'd have the basic needs to keep her alive. 

Imagining my mother and grandmother in the shelter with no way of communicating with us still chokes me up. I just can't.

Option 2. Run like hell to South Carolina, where Ben's stepmother lived. It was the nearest location of family members outside the path of Hurricane Irma (but - mind you - still in the path of Tropical Storm Irma). Because it was Hurricane Day, and there was no fuel to be found, the roads were clear (as relayed to us by our neighbors that had left earlier that morning). We did the mental math to determine if we could make it to SC based on the fuel that was in my Grams's minivan, and the gas we had set aside for our generator should the power go out during the storm.  

We decided on option 2, although Grams under protest. 

The next hour was a frenzy of literally throwing cats into carriers (we have 5 between my family, my mom, and my grams), packing clothes, and jumping into the car, my Grams complaining the whole time about sitting down to have a nice breakfast before we left. There's no time, Grams. We HAVE to go.

We were on the road by 9:00 am, heading east. We thought we had beat the storm, and figured once we were past Orlando, we'd be safe. After all, Irma was heading West, right? We traded off driving, taking two-hour shifts each with Ben driving first, then my mom. I took over near Jacksonville.

That's when we learned we may have waited too long to leave.