Through my experiences, we have been, miraculously, spared the worst of what could, or more accurately, should have happened. During Andrew both houses two the left and right of us were completely and utterly destroyed. A door blew off and we needed the roof to be redone. We were in an enclave of Australian pine trees, which hit every house on the street but ours. The next day was surreal, as we were so used to having the sun blocked out by the trees (it was like a forest).
During Irene the winds were only sustained at tropical storm force, with some gust maybe over hurricane strength. Anyway, I am not sure how much rain we locally had, but the water was about a foot high in about half the house, and higher outside. Anyway, we couldn’t leave for about a week. We attempted once, but water started coming into the car and filling up… which was, uh, not good. During Charley, while the house was only penetrated through the doors and windows, pretty much everything in the kitchen and living room was trashed due to all the salt water. Again, those blasted tile shingles that should be banned from the face of the planet caused most of the damage as flying debris. The two story houses were especially affected. The house I am in now was missing most of the roof in the upstairs room, as well as in the entry room. That would have been pretty cool to tape (the fast moving clouds looking up from inside the house), albeit incredibly scary. The insulation was ripped apart, and the stuff was allover the house and neighborhood (and we are talking like 5000 square feet of it). The front door also blew open, and the shingles from the neighbor tore up the front side of our house. There are huge gashes in the plaster all around the house and what is left of the garage. The velocity of the shingles must have been incredible. A lot of the trees were actually sliced by debris. Of course, the house needs a lot of work, but at least we didn’t have to bulldoze it, like many of our neighbors did. It is actually quite funny, as the front looked sandblasted, while the back still retained a decent paint job.
With that said, we have remained surprisingly unscathed, in comparison with our neighbors. We just got our new roof a few weeks ago, and have nearly finnished the inside. We have repaired all the holes on the outside, and my dad is in the monumental process of painting the house. Not too shabby. I hope that this is the worse we ever get… after all, you can rebuild your house, but your mind is scared forever. My parents say the next one we get, we are bulldozing the place and starting over.
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cheers
Edited by Lysis (Sat Jul 30 2005 11:45 AM)
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