Tornado warnings. Unfortunately, nobody in my family ever took the time to learn the Florida counties outside of where we lived. We were clueless as to whether or not a twister was going to form right in front of our eyes, and the ferociousness of the storm we were driving through all made us silently ask ourselves the same question:
Had I evacuated my family right into their doom?
There were only two other cars on I-95 with me, and I watched them both take an immediate exit, wondering if they knew something I didn't. Even if we were to exit, where would we go? We had no idea where we could find shelter near Jacksonville.
I couldn't find a photo of the radar of the exact time we were driving up near Jacksonville, but here's what it was right before we left St. Petersburg... So I think we had been driving most of the morning in Irma's armpit there where it was clear. I was just the lucky one that got to drive right through her arm.
I was chased by another Emergency Broadcast System warning within a half hour... more tornadoes. I didn't think we were going to make it to Georgia. Ben downloaded the NOAA app to help determine if there was going to be an end to the chaos, and when. He saw that it was going to clear up for us if we could just go a little further, so I pushed through, squeezing the steering wheel so hard that my hands went numb.
As you already know, we eventually broke free of Irma. Driving across the border into Georgia brought us away from the tornados, but into a new challenge... finding gas. We knew we could probably make it most of the way to Ben's stepmom's house, but wanted to spare her the trouble of having to meet us far from her home with a spare canister full if we could. The Gas Buddy app on the phone didn't give us much to be hopeful for, except for one lone gas station about 45 minutes beyond the border that had reported gas three hours earlier. We were lucky to find it still had fuel once we arrived.
So with stopping to find bathrooms, gas, and switch off drivers, we made it to Ben's stepmother's house about ten hours later, where she had really stepped up to prepare for the arrival of "Ben's Ark" as we were calling it. She had gone to all of her neighbors' houses to ask if we could borrow cages for the cats, had gone to PetSmart to pick up disposable litter pans, and even asked a neighbor to borrow a reclining chair since my disabled grandmother can't sleep in a regular bed. She had cooked us a meal of comfort food - chicken and rice, corn on the cob, crescent rolls, some cake for dessert. I mean... just giving us a place to sleep that wasn't in the path of a category 3 hurricane would have been enough. She really went out of her way to make sure we were comfortable.
I collapsed onto the couch in her living room and called my Dad to let him know I was ok. We didn't make many phone calls while on the road, as Grams's van didn't have a cell phone charger and we needed to ensure all of our phones had power in order to use GPS to get us to South Carolina and to help us find gas along the way.
I couldn't hold it together on the phone with him. I cried, although it wouldn't have been the first time that week. It certainly wouldn't be the last.
Although we could breathe a bit better now that we were safe, our minds drifted to how things were faring back home. We have a Ring video doorbell, so Ben used his phone to pull up the app, and we were surprised to see it was working, which meant we still had power and internet. We watched the storm view from our front porch for a few minutes, surprised to see palm trees still standing but blowing a bit violently in the wind. We crossed our fingers and went to bed, hopeful we'd be able to peek at a house still standing the next morning.
But the Ring app wasn't working the following morning, so we couldn't be certain what had happened overnight. And there was no news coming out of my grandmother's and mom's neighborhood, which was at the biggest risk of flooding. So we stayed with Ben's stepmom on Monday to allow Irma to pass through, but knew we needed to get back on the road heading home as soon as possible to assess any damage that had been done to our homes.
A few of our neighbors had returned home Monday night, and gave us the good news - the roads were open and it seemed that Irma had shifted and spared our city as a whole. Our house looked like it had made it through unscathed. So Tuesday, we hit the road as early as we could.
The drive home was even harder than the drive there, though. Although we had no traffic on our way out of Florida, we had to fight our way back in, facing a 13-hour drive in a hot car instead of what should have been an 8-hour drive. For some reason, Georgia shut down every exit on route 95, so there were no bathroom, gas, or food stops. How's that for southern hospitality?
To make matters worse, my grandmother kept complaining throughout the trip "Nobody listens to me, I knew nothing would happen, we never should have left..." But how can you really know nothing is going to happen?
And I'll reiterate - for those who are newcomers here - I don't wish to be criticized for not leaving sooner. I think we made the best possible decision with the hand we were dealt, and in the end, everything worked out just fine. Our homes - even Grams's and Mom's on the water - were just fine. Our pets were fine. We were fine.
I don't know how we got to be so damn lucky... this time. As we're sitting in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence that was so devastating for so many, I'm not fooling myself that Irma represents the last of my battles with hurricanes. When will it be my day to lose everything?
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