In terms of hurricane hits we were lucky in the Tampa Bay area. Irma did a lot of damage to the islands and hit Naples pretty hard, but here in Lutz we didn't have too much damage. Here's what happened.
So Dad and I organized everything outside. Anything that could be a flying projectile was put away. I made a trip to the gas station and filled up everything we had. Dad had the generator ready to be pulled out from the back shed. I also made a trip to the grocery store, and stocked up on "camping goods."
The power went out on Sunday, Sept 10th at around 8PM. I already had my candles ready to go. I put them in the fireplace with a mirror behind them to help illuminate the room. The next night I put a big piece of wood covered in aluminum foil behind the candles. That ended up working out pretty well.
The worst thing we had to deal with is boredom and each other. I played a little guitar, and played my 3DS game, "Ever Oasis." When we finally went to sleep the temperature was still cool. So we were able to sleep without it being annoyingly hot.
In the morning Dad tried to start the generator. It had other ideas. Luckily, our neighbor Dale is good with small engines, and took it apart and put it back together in less than 30 minutes. The generator started up, and we had power.
It's not a huge generator, but it was enough to run the fridge and outside freezer. We also had the fish-tank, some lights, fans, and a few power strips running off of it. We were advised only to run it for two hours, and then give it an hour break so it wouldn't get overworked and overheated.
The night of Monday Sept. 11th, I cooked dinner with the gas grill and a Coleman stove that hadn't been started in 30 years. Both worked just fine. Oh, and dinner was really good too. I'd like to thank myself.
But this lead to a problem that no one wants to take care of. The dishes had piled up. Let's just say they hadn't been cleaned in a while. So I spent an hour and a half doing them all by hand. I'd clean some, put them on the drying rack until the rack was full. Then I would dry them by hand and put them away. I ended up doing that three times. So yeah, there were a lot of dishes.
There was still a bit of daylight left so I started making new candles as a good number of mine had run out of wax at that point. I still had wicks and wax left. I also have a special pot specifically for double boiling wax. I managed to knock out quite a few candles.
For an hour that night I tried to set up an old TV that would pick up channels without being plugged into cable. I was just about to give up when the power came back on at 10 PM. So we ended up only being without power for 26 hours.
Once it was morning (Tuesday, Sept 12th) we walked out to survey any damage. We has a bush damaged beyond repair, and a few limbs down, but no damage to the house. I've spent a few days since then dragging brush to the curb, and putting the small leaves in trash cans.
I also had to spend a good amount of time putting everything back up (the Coleman stove, lanterns, etc.) Dad and I also had to rearrange the shed. Namely to put the generator back in place, and organize all our gasoline cans.
I realize we were much luckier than a lot of people in the Tampa Bay area. For us it more of an annoyance. For others, well, I still have friends who are without power. Let's just hope we have no more hurricanes come our way this year.
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