Surviving Hurricane Ian

We survived our first hurricane. And not just any run-of-the-mill hurricane – one of the largest, strongest, and most expensive hurricanes ever to hit the USA. In the image above, we live in the bottom of the bright pink section. The outer edge of the eye of the storm. We had the most powerful part of the storm, from a wind standpoint, go right through our town. We didn’t lose power, like so many around us, because our town was built to withstand such storms.

If you haven’t seen any of the national news the Babcock Ranch has been getting, here are a few links:

CNN Article, NPR Article, CNN Video, RMI Article

The short-version is that despite being in the damaging eye of the storm, our lights stayed on and we had very minimal damage. Go a mile down the road and you begin to see real damage and loss. And the reason is that Babcock Ranch is built to be resilient by design. But read the articles. This is our 1st person-story:

On a Friday afternoon, I got a text from a high school friend who watches hurricanes and storms for a living. He said to keep an eye on the tropical storm forming because it might be a doozie and come our way. As more attention and forecasts came out, the storm was expected to be a hurricane that hit Tampa – about 2-3 hours north of us. It looked like we’d get some wind and rain, but nothing too scary. The initial forecasts even had the storm moving further out to the Gulf of Mexico. But then it all changed.

The forecast began moving further south and inland and the strength was upgraded. We had a “normal” weekend but the storm was on our minds.

It was an eerie feeling, knowing something was coming but not seeing any signs of it quite yet. By Monday, neighbors around town began putting up storm shutters. Our houses include metal panels that are attached to screws in the cinderblock to cover windows for hurricanes. It’s more annoying than difficult to put them up. It sort of seemed like only the crazy people were going to use shutters, especially as the storm was looking to stay north, but then it changed. I brought all of our outdoor furniture inside and put our shutters up in the rain and celebrated with a cold beer. We even managed to get our van into the garage!

The next morning, I went for a run and swam in the pool to cool down. It felt like sneaking into a place that had been closed for the season. Kind of fun…but also that I’d get in trouble at any moment.

Karissa and the kids at school readied their classrooms for a hurricane. That night, with the hurricane coming the next morning, we shut in our door and prepared for a brand new experience: surviving a hurricane!

The winds began gusting by 10am or so. The palm trees swayed. By noon, the “real” storm had arrived and stuff began moving fast. Shingles falling off of houses, a port-a-potty getting blown in the lake, small trees uprooted. After a few hours, the eye was supposed to arrive. But it didn’t. The wind direction changed and new damage started. Our lights flickered. We filled the tubs with water to flush the toilets. The lights flickered. We lowed the thermostat to 67 for when we lost power. The lights flickered. We filled a few cups with water. We didn’t lose power!

I made a YouTube video about our Hurricane Ian experience. It’s long. But it really captures our storm experience. It was a LONG storm, a LONG anticipation, and a LONG time to listen to the wind blow insanely hard.

We fell asleep listening to the wind howl and ring through our metal shutters. We turned up the volume on the TV and fell asleep.

The next morning, I went out to assess damage. I saw neighbor’s pool screens blowing in the wind. Shingles missing. Trees out of the ground. I peeked around the house at our pool cage and was SHOCKED to find it intact. No damage. We lost a few ridge caps, but otherwise had no damage. Amazing considering our literal neighbors had more damage…and our house is the only 2-story and we likely protected them from some amount of wind!

After chatting with neighbors in the street about our experiences and damage, we loaded the family into the golf cart to explore town. Seeing huge trees toppled over was surreal. Signs were damaged. Gates and fences broken. So many pool cages had broken screens and more. But no “major” damage in town. Nobody lost power here. Heck, our “storm shelter” was certified at the last minute despite not having a back-up generator…it kind of doesn’t need one!

Just a few miles down the road from us is and was a totally different reality. Power lost. Flooding. Homes destroyed. Such loss and sadness. All weekend – and into the next week – there was long lines and shortages of gasoline. Our grocery store had ZERO produce as it was the only one open for miles and didn’t get any new deliveries. A levy broke about 40 miles north and flooded the interstate and local roads – so to go north of that point meant driving to the East Coast of the state and coming back – adding 6 hours to the trip! It was a period with a lot of unknown, especially to us Midwestern folks.

We’re thankful to have had such a safe & relatively uneventful experience in a major hurricane that caused so much damage, devastation, & destruction. Just a few miles down the road, families lost so much. We’re thankful that we chose to live in a town designed for the future – for times when hurricanes aren’t “once-in-a-generation” events. And hope that some of the principles that helped keep our lights on during the storm are applied to the rebuild of Southwest Florida.