Fortunately our house made it out fine. We didn't get flooded and didn't even lose a shingle from the roof. We only lost power for two hours because we are on a priority grid, close to a fire station, police station, and town hall.
We did get some wind and damage, here are the pictures:
Five days before Irma was to come, I was able to get to Home Depot when they opened at 6:00 am. It was packed. This was the line to check out at 6:15 am.
This is what I purchased. I bought a new gas can, two cases of water, and one window unit air conditioner. The gas can was rationed to 1 per customer and the water was rationed to 2 cases per customer. I got the air conditioner because I was afraid the electricity would be out after the storm and needed to keep Ethan cool.
I also tested out my generator two days prior to the storm for the first time. I started to panic when I realized the generator needed oil out of the box and I didn't have any. I went to the convenience store down the street and was able to get three quarts before curfew. I got the generator working fine.
The day before the storm, we went shopping for groceries one last time. There was very little to buy.
I had a few shutters that I bought after Hurricane Matthew but never prepared. They were several inches too tall so I had to cut them. I cut the plastic shutters easily with a Dremel Saw Max circular saw. I couldn't cut through the aluminum shutters without breaking all of my blades. I had to go to the store and buy diamond tipped blades. I was able to finish cutting the shutters and actually melted a lot of the aluminum while cutting.
It was very hot outside and I ended up getting sunburned with all of the preparation for the hurricane.
Here's a before picture. Notice the lush tree in the background.
I took my gate off so it wouldn't blow away. I also parked my truck between the house and the shed.
Here is the photo with no gate and my truck parked in the yard.
The house is all shuttered up. Where it looks like we are missing shutters, those are where the clear plastic shutters are. I wanted to be able to see out windows with the shutters on.
Sparky is helping.
Toby is wondering what we are doing. I even had to remove the turtle fence from the yard and we put the turtle in the garage. Sparky decided to jump into the turtle pond for some reason and we had to wash him. I'm glad we normally have a fence for the turtle.
I took this picture when during a lull in the storm. The hurricane broke a neighbor's tree at the base and the tree is upside down in the front yard. The worst was still to come.
After the storm I could see trees down everywhere. You can see some down in the background. At this time, I could hear chainsaws in the neighborhood. There were a lot of trees down in the roads and driveways for many people.
Here you can see all of the leaves that ended up in my pool. I don't even have trees in my yard.
Damage to my fence.
What happened to the tree? Look at how much of the leaves blew away and the branches got twisted around.
This was a lot of work. I lost three consecutive fence panels here.
This is from the three fence panels down. The wind snapped several 4x4 fence posts.
More damage to my fence.
Here is a clearer picture of the upside down tree across the street.
We were fortunate. I had a lot of work to do cleaning up and fixing the fence. The pool took a while to clean. I'm glad it's over. I hope we don't have to do it again next year.
