I was prepared, and it still hit us hard.
The eyes of both Jeanne and Frances came aground at Stewart, just south of where I live in Satellite Beach. So we got the stronger winds north of the eye, and I live on a barrier island beachside, 75 yards from the ocean. My unit sent me to Goodfellow AFB, TX to set up an alternate command post, so my wife was left with the three dogs to evacuate on her own.
Preparations had begun the year or so before. Part of the house is off-grid as an experiment I'm playing with using solar panel arrays, a 2kva inverter, and a big rack of surplus telephone company batteries. No generator, but an Oldsmobile Achieva with another inverter attached to the alternator was idled for a few hours to give the battery rack an extra boost. The Olds was actually a very quiet generator, compared to the noisy things throughout the neighborhood.
I had organized the kitchen pantry into a bug-out configuration, so that when the sheriff or base commander ordered an evacuation of the barrier islands, all we had to do was sweep the non-perishable contents of the organized shelves right into the large plastic bins we had bought for evacuation. A case of MRE's was already in one of the bins, as was a case of bottled water and one of those 5-gallon collapsible water jugs. A third bin was full of canned and dry dog food, plus Milk-Bone biscuits for the long car trip. A Coleman Peak 1 gasoline stove and a couple pans were great for heating things up.
I had begun the habit of fueling my lawnmower from a 5-gallon jerry can, alternating with a spare 3-gallon plastic tank. Her Hyundai Accent would get the 3-gallon reserve, my Chevy S-10 would get the 5-gallon jerry can. That decision was based on a previous Florida evacuation where I witnessed gas stations charging $5.00 or more per gallon. Not a bad idea in hindsight, because fuel shipments to Florida gas stations were severely curtailed during the hurricanes of 2004.
As the projected path of Frances headed towards the east coast of Florida, we did some extra work. Our go-to guns and ammo stayed with us, but we moved the remainder of the 100+ firearms and ammo to a friend's house on the mainland, each rifle/shotgun/handgun individually wrapped in garbage bags and taped tightly closed before bring stored in an upstairs walk-in closet. All the ammo cans stayed in my pickup's box, which remained parked in my friend's 3-car garage for the first hurricane. On the way back to the house, we stopped on the mainland and topped off the remaining vehicle - the gas stations on the barrier islands were already dry. At the house, I disconnected and stowed the solar panels from their mounts and let the charge controller trickle charge the system from the utility line voltage. We filled the bathtub completely with water and a bit of bleach, then moved electronics and clothing to overhead cabinets in interior hallways. That left a small TV and our laptop for connectivity.
The next day, as predicted, I departed for Texas. Shortly afterwards, the evacuation order for the barrier islands came from the Brevard County Sheriff's Department. Here's where timing is critical - causeways between barrier islands and the mainland are closed when the wind speed approaches 50 knots. My wife had to leave work on the mainland, scoot across the causeway to our beachside house, load the final items and dogs into the car, and make it back across the causeway before the county closed it. Then she was on her way north to Montgomery Alabama, with the first few hours on I-95 averaging about 20 mph. She called me when she pulled into Montgomery, around 0300 the next morning. Calling her on the cell phone was difficult the entire time, Sprint had switched the tower transponders to emergency use frequencies, per their agreement with local and state governments.
I stayed deployed in Texas for the duration of both Frances and Ivan, so my wife gave me the first-hand reports of what our county and neighborhood looked like, once the all clear was sounded to return. Power was out, and reports were that the utilities had purposely cut the grid to minimize damage prior to the arrival of the heaviest winds. The power stayed out for just over a week in my neighborhood. There were no traffic signals, because they had been blown completely off their dangling wire mounts at each intersection. Hotels/motels along the beach had been overpressured and gutted, but their size had saved houses further inland that had been masked by the hotels upwind. (Somewhere I have a picture of our local Ramada Inn that had the north wall blown completely out - it's still closed and unrepaired)
My house looked ok, save for a bunch of missing shingles on the roof. That, and my office/reloading lab had a good sized chunk of the roof in the corner that showed daylight - plywood and blue tarp time. The contents of the refrigerators were kicking over. Remember that. Hurricane Ivan passed by, missing our county but dumping even more rain into a region that didn't need it. My wife said she saw water shooting up through manhole covers.
I came home after Ivan, hoping to clean up and get on with normalcy. No such luck. Jeanne was heading ashore after meandering in the Atlantic for an agonizingly long time. Sure as heck, there's Jim Cantore again, broadcasting from Palm Bay. Crap. We spent the remaining time before the next evacuation order restocking the hurricane kits, and getting ready to leave again. The order came, and we took two vehicles, this time to Kissimmee.
We returned beachside after 3 days in Kissimmee. Vegetation, signs, and power poles that hadn't been knocked down by Frances were taken care of by Jeanne. The hibiscus bush in front of my kitchen was completely stripped of leaves. Roofing shingles were everywhere on the ground and in the streets. The wooden stairways going over the dunes to the beach ended abruptly 4-8 feet above the water - there was no beach for the stairs to make contact with.
Power stayed out for another 7 days. I moved both refrigerators to the driveway, removed their now-liquid contents, finished gagging, then attacked them with bleach. Charcoal briquets on newspaper were then used to extract odors for the next several weeks. My solar/photovoltaic system allowed us to connect our cable modem, laptop, small TV, and have lights and a room fan without too much trouble.
The sheriff's department busted 3 teenagers for looting 4 houses in a row, just to the east of ours. Brevard County had issued a no-bail policy for looting during the hurricane season, so they got to cool their heels in jail until their court dates. What was interesting is that these kids were busted for armed robbery - they were fully armed as they broke into homes, ready just in case. Had they tried our residence while we were home...
Fuel shipments eventually made their way back to the local gas stations. The piles of debris and vegetation curbside were eventually picked up by special county disposal runs. FEMA, Red Cross, Salvation Army, and other agencies set up locations in local parking lots to distribute ice, water, blue tarps, and canned goods. Seeing friend's houses marked with the orange paint as uninhabitable really hits hard.
Lessons learned for the 2005 hurricane season?
British tourists marooned by the airlines at a LaQuinta Inn in Kissimmee get really big eyes when they see a family offload a truck with a big Coleman cooler, a big dog, and the patriarch with a sidefolder AK slung over his shoulder as they move things into their motel room. The spouse had an AR slung over her shoulder. Maybe some discretion would be in order, but we noticed a bunch more evacuees offloading vehicles into their rooms shortly after we arrived. A recurring theme, just make sure you get your room reservations early.
Even though your years as a GI have numbed you to MRE's, don't expect your wife to relish eating them after the second or third day.
(I've since stocked up the pantry with those little Dinty Moore lunch cup thingies for her)
Weber grills, or propane grills, are wonderful as the power continues to stay off. Same goes for Coleman stoves. And those solar-heated shower bags are also a nice touch.
If you're at a post-hurricane standstill, either at home or at work, go help somebody else, or visit neighbors/friends.
Human nature being what it is, looting
does happen. We didn't leave much of value in the house last time, but we also had some warning before the hurricane hit.
Keep your insurance current, including any riders you have for firearms, collectibles, etc. Is your policy set up to include flood damage from the storm surge? The wrong time to try to adjust or set up a new policy is during hurricane season, often times they won't allow policies to be created during this period.
Patronize your local businesses. We spent a goodly amount of time at the local raw oyster/buffalo wings bar, as did others. It seemed to help with the community recovery efforts.
Don't be surprised if you can't call somebody on a cell phone. The towers may be switched over.
Evacuation routes may not be 55mph as people get out of Dodge City. Think about alternate routes, full gas tanks, etc.
Pedigree canned dog food on a cracker ain't half bad. Just don't make a habit of it.