On Thursday, we stocked up on food, water, flashlights, batteries and candles. Every supermarket was packed with people buying everything and anything! All of the water and bread shelves were empty! It was craziness, much worse then what we see before a snow storm. We purchased plastic in case a window gets blown out and we need to seal it. We also got a backup battery powered sump pump for the basement. If we lost power, our regular pump wouldn’t work, and our basement could flood. We bought two car batteries to power the backup pump in case we needed to.
On Friday, Indira spent the whole afternoon at Lowes waiting for a generator delivery. We don’t have one, and if we lost power for a week or more, all of the food in our two fridges would not survive for more than a couple of days max. A thousand dollars later, we had a generator in the garage, along with 15 gallons of gasoline. We didn’t open up the box, hoping that if the generator doesn’t get used, we’d return it back to the store.
Also, on Friday we made sure to secure everything outside, here’s some picture of the stuff on our deck:
We put as much stuff in the shed as we could fit, some stuff in the garage and the rest we had to tie down with rope. One of our neighbors was away on vacation, so we got together and secured their front and backyard as well. The concern was that if we get a 100 mile an hour wind gust it could blow a heavy object into someone’s house window, door or even knock out a wall.
Saturday we woke up to an overcast sky, and by afternoon the rain started coming down. Mike was busy working with the town’s emergency team to make sure everything ready. He brought home an SUV to use for the weekend, in case the streets got flooded and he needed to get to borough hall. He also brought home a police two-way radio so that he could communicate with the police if power went out. Everyone was concerned about what was to come, lucky for us though, we have great neighbors, so Saturday night we went next door for a hurricane party! Everyone brought something to eat/drink, and we had a good old time, cheering all the tornado warnings that appeared on TV and drinking Hurricane cocktails. Being occupied and having fun totally took the mind off the hurricane situation outside. We stayed until 10pm, and then had to return home so that the kids could get to bed. We had a full house of people, Joan and David were staying over, Indira and Natalia were here, as well as Dan. We figured, there’s safety in numbers, and being all in one place would be better in case an emergency happened.
After kids went to bed, it got a little scary, you could hear the winds gusting outside, and the power was flickering. Mike was at the townhall and reported that north and south of us there was no power, so it was inevitable that were going to be next. The tornado warnings kept flashing on TV, and that was the scariest part of all, would we hear it coming and have enough time to get to the basement? And Mike wasn’t even home! Finally around 1 am, Mike got back home. All of the emergency personnel and police were spending the night at the borough hall. The plan was that no one was to go out on the streets until the storm was over. It wasn’t safe, since tree branches were breaking and power lines were all over the streets. It was a night from hell, but when the morning came, we realized we didn’t even lose power! Our garbage fence fell over as well as a few trees in the back, but that was it! We were very lucky! There was no flooding on our street and looked like everything was just fine! So, what are we to do? The answer was simple, have an after hurricane party! Since we stocked up on bread and cold cuts, I invited our neighbors over to our house for a grilled cheese party! We spent the afternoon and evening drinking sangrias and eating grilled cheese with turkey, ham and tomato. Everyone stayed for dinner, and we were able to free our grill of rope and grill some hot dogs and burgers! It was another awesome night!
Ashley took some pictures..
The month of August brought three times the amount of rain we usually get. Because the water levels are so high, not everyone was as lucky as we were. Many people didn’t have power for a week and some even longer. People in other parts of the state had major flooding. Luckily all of our family and friends got away with minor damage and short power outage periods!
I think we got lucky because we were very prepared for whatever was to come. Some way say that we overreacted, but I disagree, you can never be too prepared for something like this!
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