Hurricane and Natural Disasters Questions

[BeckyLa]

Ladysonja, I was just wondering how you made out with the storm. I hope y'all are doing great!

 

[WestKnollAmy]

It looked like it wasn't too bad.
I hope everything is well down there for everyone!
Did you get some much needed rain? And not much wind?

 

[Ladysonja]

Thanks for checking back... We dodged a bullet!

Hurricane Eduardo wasn't as bad as predicted, but it gave everyone who survived Katrina (LA) and Rita (TX) a run for our money.

Monday, the forcast was a Cat 1 Hurricane and they kept saying it was going to hit Galveston directly... It was predicted that it if stayed on the same track it was on and moved into the warm water of the Gulf between Matigorta and Galveston bay, it could develope close to a Cat 2.

Back 25 years ago when Alesha hit, it started in the same fashion which freaked me out. I was living in the same house I am now and remembered all the damage. The power box to the house was ripped off and the phone lines were down. Power wasn't restored for nearly a month... but they still sent a bill!

During the night Monday and Tuesday morning, it took a north eastern turn and remained a Tropical Storm and hit just east of Galveston... I can't remember the name of the town of land fall.

Where I live we had lots of needed rain and only a minimual amount of wind... Folks closer to land fall had lots of rain and wind. I did not hear of any tornados, but lots of strong down bursts that toppled a few trees.

No one was reported hurt or killed because of the storm.

We lost our power for about an hour because a silly little twig landed on the transformer and blew the brearker arm off the transformer.

The electric company guy was out... fixed the breaker arm and stood in the rain talking to DH for about 45 minutes because he was board to death...

Overall, I was impressed with the light companies readiness... They don't react that fast on a dry day... At least everyone was prepared for the worst.

I think everyone was gun shy from the last big one. I hope they don't become complacent, we won't.

Hurricane season does not end until November and we are over do, but we say that every year.

As for our new coop, it was dry. The newly added roof did it's job... not one leak!

The girls were inside in their temporary home and had no idea what was going on. If they were outside in a finished coop/run, I would have been riding it out in the coop to satisfy my fears of their safety - LOL! Then again, they probably would have been locked in the bathroom.

Take care and thanks for checking in!

 

[Rhett&SarahsMom]

When I lived in NC I was a wreck about the horses during the hurricanes. I would be even worse about my chickens! Poor little things would stand NO chance against the wind and flooding.

I am glad the worst I have to deal with here are blizzards. And both my house and where my horse is, is no where near a flood plain. Now, the recent spat of tornado's. THAT scares me!
Cant see those coming. Having been through two of those. Seen the spiral for a third one... I dont want to ever hear of see one again

 

[brandywine]

Well, how to prepare depends on what you expect to get ya -- blown apart by winds, matchsticked by a tornado, drenched from above, flooded from the ground up, plastered by a falling tree?

You could get the full-on treatment I saw in doing search-and-recovery in southern MS post-Katrina -- houses blown apart by winds, then drenched from above, then swept off their moorings by the storm surge, blenderized in the Gulf for a while, and tossed back up on land in little pieces, somewhere else. Preparation for that kind of hit involves driving, running, crawling, or slithering inland as fast you possibly can, dragging as many of your animals as humanly possible. (The only coastal creatures that survived in the direct-hit zone seemed to be crabs and a few of the wild pigs. And we kept finding dead ones of the latter. Even the sea turtles were plastered, and there were many deceased turtles in the debris piles.)

For the more prosaic hurricane experience, I'd secure the coop to the ground with steel cable and long anchors, put the poultry in easily movable dog kennels or cat carriers and bring them into a garage or the house -- above grade, even if you think you aren't in a flood zone.

We live like 380 miles inland. I spent the aftermath of hurricane Ivan searching for a man who had been swept away by floodwaters after clinging to a tree for more than an hour. The town where this happened was completely inundated by a creek so small that I didn't even know it was there.