Wilma 2005

Hi Folks ~ I recently showed what's left of the pine that came down in our back shed, in Hurricane Wilma. I though I'd do a little post about this hurricane.

Wilma took a back seat to Katrina, even though she was a bad hurricane herself. The eye of Wilma came right over us, and it was the first eye we had ever been through. We went out in it to fasten on some tarp to the shed roof, and just as we were about finished I yelled to DH to hurry up, because I could feel the back half of the storm coming. We no sooner got inside when the hellish fury of the storm started up again immediately, only much worse.

We had been on the cusp of the eye in both Frances and Jeanne the year before, going through both of them within two weeks of each other. Wilma was so much worse than either of them. I was petrified to say the least.

We lost power around 11 the night before she made landfall the next morning on the west coast, and were without power for 13 days.

We have a camper on our property and popped the top and used it as our cooking shack as it had a little gas stove. We rigged up hoses in the sun and an outdoor shower to have hot showers. I washed clothes by hand in a 5 gal bucket.

Friends who only lost power for a short time made ice for us, as ice was very hard to come by.

But, we survived, we are thankful, and we hope we never have to go through another one like that again, or worse.

Here is a bit of info from Wikipedia about Wilma.

Before hitting Florida, Wilma intensified despite increasing amounts of wind shear, briefly producing winds of 125 mph (200 km/h) before hitting Cape Romano, Florida as a 120 mph (195 km/h) major hurricane (although maximum sustained winds at the Florida landfall, according to some sources, might have been stronger). Wilma crossed the state in about 4.5 hours and weakened to winds of 110 mph (175 km/h) after entering the Atlantic Ocean.

Damage from Wilma was extensive and widespread over South Florida due to winds and flooding.Hurricane Wilma caused widespread destruction of critical infrastructure, including power, water and sewer systems. Florida Power and Light, the largest electricity utility in the state, reported more than 3,241,000 customers had lost power,[29] equivalent to approximately 6,000,000 people, with most residents getting power restored in 8–15 days.

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My heart goes out to everyone who has ever experienced massive storms, whether they be a hurricane, a tornado, snow storm, whatever. They are horrifying. We did not know if our little 50's cottage would survive or not, but it did and we are grateful. Because of the tornadoes some people lost their homes and businesses. We did have a mini tornado go over us. While laying in bed freaked out, I noticed a change in the storms noise and fury because it sounded just like an oncoming freight train overhead, just like they say. That passed and the storm kept on howling like before. We could hear debris hitting the roof and house and we just hoped nothing bad happened.

As soon as Wilma passed, we went outside to assess all the damage, and had to come back in to get flannel shirts, as Wilma had brought a cold front. and it was now in the 50's. I immediately started clearing the driveway, hauling out small branches to the street to be picked up. I think we eventually had 5 or so huge piles of cut up pine and Melaleuca trees. We just kept plodding along day in day out. A neighbor had a chain saw and that's how we cut up the pine that was in the shed. The clean up around the state was monumental.

We did repair the shed, put an awning on the side that had been damaged and used the leaning pine section as a prop and strapped the awning to it. DH put an almost 11' stainless steel restaurant sink that we found dumped in an ally many, many years ago, on that wall and that is now my potting bench and area.

Below are pictures.

You can see the whole pine tree, the top half is out the other end of shed. When the top was cut off, the rest of the pine tree rose up out of the shed.

This was taken looking out through the sidelight in the scullery,
looking toward the workshop,
which part of the melaleuca tree had fallen onto,
poking a hole in the roof.

This is some of the Melaleuca tree fallen in a different direction.
It was a beautiful tree before the three hurricanes wrecked it.

This was our 'camp site'. Cooking shack to the right.

Inside the cooking shack.

Here I am in the neighbors yard. Sections of our privacy fencing was down on all four sides.
We cut up the pine tree, and hauled it all into our yard, then out to the street to be picked up. Before this picture, I had tripped going into the camper, carrying two jugs of water and fell into a bench with right hand, slamming my pinky finger between one jug and the hard edge of bench. I thought 'oh no', and hurriedly got the rings off my pinky finger. It and the next finger swelled right up and turned purple soon after. We think I probably broke my finger. I just taped it together, put a sock on the hand and started carting stuff. That was the least of our worries. The finger healed, is a tad crooked and feels arthritic at times, but heck we are still here and so is our little cottage/compound.

Here is the area after we repaired the roof and wall, and put up the awning.

The round artistic piece is from a friend, and it's French. The iron leafy planter on the wall we found a block over when people were moving out. The bird houses were made by DH and blown out of the trees by the hurricanes. We lost several trees, so that we not longer live in the woods at all.

This is from today.

May we once again have another quiet hurricane season.
Hurricane season lasts from June first until the last day of Nov.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL