Hurricane Matthew

Well…now I know what it is like to go through a hurricane. It is an adventure I hope I don’t have to go through again. The rain and wind howled and battered up against the house for almost 24 hours. Our little neighborhood of about 100 houses was told by Emergency Services to ‘hunker’ in place because we are 34 feet above sea level. So we didn’t leave. We were surrounded by other neighborhoods with mandatory evacuation orders.   As of a couple of hours ago we have electric – thank you Texas and all the states that sent their power companies to help out the more than 100,000 without power.
We hear from friends who did evacuate that they had to get all the way up into Georgia before they found one room left.

I know that the downtown district of Old St Augustine had at one time two feet of water in the entire area. The city is hundreds of years old with sewer systems patched and repaired over and over – the systems don’t drain well and the city is only about 5-6 feet above sea level. The water 8-9 foot surge from the ocean and the Intracoastal water way along with high tide caused water to flow all the way into town and out to the US1 highway – covering that important highway. We have five or six bridges in the area that were all closed so those that refused to leave had to stay.

Now, at noon we see that we are ok – nothing broken, a yard filled with debris but nothing we can’t handle. We can’t get into St. Aug because the crews want everyone to stay out of their way!

Thanks to all for your concern.