I'm on high ground but I'm hearing that old town which is near downtown Ft. Laud. is flooded pretty bad.

My rich neighbor up the street who is out of town wants me to check on his house but the streets are un-passable. He is actually five blocks from me so I may ride my bike over there once it isn't so windy.

Glad to hear I don't have to fish your hairy butt out of the water Simon :)

Grabbed about 40 gallons or so of water out of mu neighbor's pool so that I can flush toilets :)

I have two lines for that:
1 - Does your neighbor know?
2 - Why not just use their pool?
:D

Somehow I think taking a shit in her pool might upset her. Anyway too far to walk in the middle of the night when I have to pee. :D

Pics in out local paper
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...tility&index=1

Gald to see people checking in and to know your all ok. Those are some awsome pictures you all posted. Cleo your area is really a mess. You must be really fed up with all these storms.

We did fine here got some good winds every now and then but no where near like you all got.

Stay safe!

Never fails...

Last year we left our truck out in the storm, where it was hit by trees and crap and did some minor damage. This time we have a bigger garage and pulled it in the nice safe garage.

Somehow, the wind must have knocked open the attic access door which then dropped on the hood of the truck, nothing bad, but a nice scuff in it…. What are the odds?

1 in 2?

satellite dish realigned. Broken part replaced with another screw that was close enough. The nut holding the lower chimney strap splintered into pieces, but, I was able to get another one (without a lock washer) so that we could at least watch TV.

Its really a nice day out now. Cool, crisp, sunny... barely a cloud in the sky. And the hum of generators resonates through the city.

Good to see everyone checking in safe and sound |bananna|

My friend with her two children are here with me. Looks like they will be here for awhile since she showed up here with her car on empty.

Don't want to start on cleanup until water is back on so that I can take a shower and cleanup me after cleaning up the yard.

Since there is now four bodies to feed probably going to see if the grocery store is running on generator power like it was after Katrina but I do have a lot of food in the house so not a big deal.

Weather is beautiful and is suppose to stay cool for the rest of the week I think.

Checked my neighbor's house. Forgot to bring the keys to get in since I normally use the keypad and then when I got there remembered that the keypad doesn't work without power. His new pool is a mess the fence that was around it is now in the pool. Also there is chunks of someone's roof in his yard and I think it may be his from the second floor so I'm guessing he has water damage. Going back over later with keys this time.

FPL: Could be weeks before power restored
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...home-headlines

As long as it stays cool out, ADSL stays on, and I don't run out of fuel for the generator it wouldn't be that bad but no running water to shower in is really killing us.

Seeing as you don't want to shit in the neighbor's pool, you might as well bathe in it :D

Ouch...looks like your place took a thrashing Cleo :(

All is fine over on this side...landfall was about 100 miles south of us. Lost one of my small banana trees...lots of small branches down in the yard...and overloaded my septic drain field for a bit. Don't think we got anything over 60 or 70 mph winds.

Have never seen the canal behind my house so high...we now have hydrila(sp) 15 feet up on the bank. Water is receeding, septic field seems to be draining again...all is well. Rain added a solid 6 inches of water to the pool over the course of a few hours.

Oh, and while it hiccuped a few times...we never fully lost power.

I'll be up on the roof tomorrow re-clearing all the gutters that are now filled with leaves and crap again.

Glad everyone is checking in safe and sound :)

Got an automated call from our government. We are under 7 to 7 curfew and alcohol is banned. Bunch of other stuff too and they give out a number for ice and water tomorrow.

Are you serious? Curfew and no alcohol?

Funny - their handing out the mixers but no alcohol? WTF LOL

DSL died around 5:30pm -- voice line died around 7:00pm. We're served off an SLC-96 that only has about 8 hours of battery. Last year they rolled a generator up and powered it. I am suspecting they will do the same thing very soon.

Florida is like a ghost town. I drove from the house to Miami, expecting to see lights along the way. Except for obvious generator-equipped places, there were no lights visible from the Turnpike. Hard Rock Casino was eery -- only the red aircraft warning lights were lit and glowing against those domes they have on top. Some of the Toll Plazas had power, most did not. Trees were randomly strewn just outside the travel lanes with disabled vehicles usually located a few hundred yards beyond.

One gas station was open in Pompano Beach on the Turnpike and seemed to be pumping gas -- but appeared to only have one or two islands operating.

Colo has been on generator since 5:00am -- according to their latest stat, only 36 days of fuel left, 80000 gallon fuel delivery scheduled tomorrow and the truck will be pulled into the west bunker to fill up the tanks as needed leaving about 240,000 gallons of fuel on site (or 45 days if you want to do the math). There is another spare bunker for another 80000 gallon tanker in case power is not restored within 15 days. Hardly a soul here, generators are making enough noise to wake the dead outside. Chillers are working quite well. From inside, you would never know anything was not right with the world.

More pictures and an extra video from after the eye passing.

http://cd34.com/wilma/

Still no running water.

They are saying a month before all power is restored.

Would like to start on yard cleanup but not going to until running water is back so that I can shower after doing yard cleanup.

The sky was fucking unbelievably beautiful last night. No moon and no lights anywhere other then a couple of houses with generators. You could see every star in the sky. Haven't seen a sky like that since I was a child. :)

I have a house full of Puerto Ricans, I really need to become fluent in Spanish. One is someone that I dated some years ago and another is the ex of my old party goods supplier and her two small boys. We are all going to see if we can find a grocery running on generator power, there was a few last hurricane, store that is on generator power since I only stocked up on food for me and now there is five mouths to feed.

WOW, while typing this I hear water starting to flow out of my kitchen faucet that I left open so that I would know when water was restored. :)

I have been waiting for a post that would let me honestly use this icon.


|haha

Thanks Linkster!

For those of you keeping track at home, this is Day Two of "Stinky Cleo" |thumb

Cleo is no longer stinking. Still no running water but I do have an 80 gallon hot water heater full of hot water so we are taking buckets of water from its drain for sponge baths and doing dishes. Joy after a storm is being able to wash one's twat. :D

Will be making another run to neighbor's pool to fill up reserves for flushing toilets and if water is still not on by the time we start needing drinking water, we have 15 gallons still, will be raiding my rich neighbor's house of all his 5 gallon jugs of water.

Also the grocery store is open running on generator power so will be making a food run later today.

Cool! I've heard that about big storms in areas prone to light pollution and city haze. The storms are supposed to wash the atmosphere and sharpen the view.

Supposedly the view up the eye at night is even better.

After a couple more years of 3 to 5 storms a year you Floridians will barely even notice them. All the buildings that are fragile will have been knocked down, everyone will have generators and big tanks of gasoline and potable water at home, and Florida will have adapted.

Untill, like Greeny says, the eye's start sucking the freezing cold of space down to the earth's surface and leave all the alligators crusted with ice, ha ha ha!

We have running water. :)

Took a very long hot shower. Damn I think this felt better then any shower I've ever had in my life.

Now to start on the yard cleanup…

phone is back, dsl is back, cell sms is back -- however, I cannot check the one voicemail that is on my cell phone because all circuits are busy from the cell phone, all circuits are busy when I call from my landline to the cell phone, all circuits are busy when I call from my vonage phone to the cell phone, all circuits are busy when I route using a CIC code to force it long distance, and all circuits are busy when I use an extender that gives me DC dialtone.

So, whoever called, I apologize for not getting back to you yet. :)

Other than that, changed the oil in the generator -- it looked pretty clean coming out without any shiny sparkley bits suspended in solution. I take that as a reasonably good sign.

Ooh, got through to voicemail... and cell service drops out.

I need to buy a chainsaw, but, not many places are open around here yet and our local Super Walmart which somehow blows FEMA away in capabilities does seem to have two huge generators powering their store. Passed two gas stations that were open today that had lines almost a mile long in either direction, with police directing traffic.

I am thinking I need a larger tank-farm like Cleo has. :)

Oh yeah, one more thing… grocery store is running on generator power and has long lines but we had to go since nothing else is open and feminine products were needed so we also picked up a bunch of other things since we were there. Anyway the couple with their children were behind us and we started talking. They just relocated here from New Orleans after Katrina.

It seems they attract bad weather. Don't have them over to your house. Ever!

Glad to see you folks are getting some services back online over there.

Spent a good portion of the day re-clearing gutters of all the debris. Will mow the lawns tomorrow to mulch up all the small branches and leaves...and we're back to normal here.

Hope everyone gets back to normal life on the other side soon!

Good to see you all you Floridians are safe as well as clean down there! Nice to not hear of much damage either. Quite enough of that this year.

??? What compared to an atomic bomb blast?
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/wea...0.photogallery

Front yard is cleaned up. Just the back yard, roof tiles replacement, fence repairs, and some broken yard lights to go.

I just measured three inches of heavy wet snow in my front yard. It's been unseasonably warm here up until just last night, so all the trees still had their leaves on. Now all the trees on my property are bent over with snow. One small tree was completely bent over blocking my driveway - I just knocked the snow off of it and it might be back up by tomorrow.

Power has gone off for short periods here, but it's on now obviously.

This is I guess Wilma bringing us an early nor'easter.

Thats some amazing pics, I am glad you guys are all okay. I cannot imagine what that would be like, the most I have been through is the edge of a couple of cyclones. I don't think they are any where near as strong as hurricanes... what is the difference between them I wonder.. go go google

Well, play that first video in a loop for 3 hours, take a 90 minute break, then play it again in reverse for 4 hours.

Thats about what it was like here. :)

For Frances, play that first video in a loop for 17 hours.

Estimates are Nov 5 for power to be restored to our area.

Hey, bonus sig placement again

SO fucking glad to hear that everyone is okay.

Are folks in the Keys all right or are we going to have FL "refugees"?

Simon is ok :)

but he only had dialup and this board is wayyyyyyyyyy slow on that :(

Hello all |waves|

Just got back from the FEMA staging area. Picked up some ice, water and some food since the stores are mostly all closed for now.

The whole group of islands where we live was completely under water for a few hours during the second storm surge. I have photos in my phone but no way to get them out until cell service is restored. This was the biggest storm surge I've ever seen here, or anyone else I've talked with for that matter. Downstairs we got 2-4 feet of water in the house, depending on the room. Out in the street and out back the water was several feet deeper. Photos show the whole neighborhood under water, all houses looking like real stilt houses.

For now we have no cell service and no land line until last night, then it went out again and came back for awhile today, then went out again. Not sure when we'll have power or network services again. Local DSL and cable modem services are gone even with generators. Of course everyone is still cleaning silt out of their generators since they were submerged for hours too in most cases.

Just about every car on this street is ruined, shorted out by salt water. During the storm surge, some cars started up, some sounded their alarms, some drove a few feet on their own. One even caught fire. No one can rent a car since all rental cars were flooded too. People are flying to Tampa to rent cars and drive back down.

Right now we don't know when we'll have power again, they have to get all the houses in each grid inspected before powering on, since the houses can short out and burn like three houses did on the neighboring island over the last two days.

But hopefully we'll be back to normal soon, and I can get back to catching up with things I missed while we were offline. Our hosting servers are all fine, they're not located down here, so aside from me personally being a little unavailable, it should be business as usual for everyone.

I'll be back when I can. Anyone who needs me for anything, just shoot me an email or leave a message on ICQ and I'll try to check both of those whenever I can logon for a few minutes. I have to conserve battery power for now, and connecting via an old AOL dialup account isn't much fun anyway. :(

Simon


P.S. The board is faster without all the nice buttons, banners and avatars, but I'm looking forward to the full graphic experience again soon! :D

For those of you interested, FPL has a nice 2.8mb PDF that takes forever to display :)

http://fpl.com/storm/pdf/wilma_outage.pdf

Simon, did they ever connect the FPL link to the mainland or is Key West still using Diesel and their dual-fuel station?

I'm not sure about that one. We're actually located about 30 miles up US1 from Key West now. We used to live right in Old Town, and we were there for Georges, but now we're on the group of islands known as The Torches. As far as I know, the Keys doesn't directly receive power from FPL. Our local power comes to us via Keys Energy Services, which certainly may be buying its power from FPL. All I know at this point is that someone turned the power back on last night, and whoever they are, I'm damn glad they did. :)

Simon

Glade to see everyone made it through ok sounds like a major pain in the ass to me.
Has anyone heard from Adult Traffic, I hope he got his familie out of the Cancoon before the shit hit the fan.

Here ya go for the next time handy dandy all in one screwing :)

This morning a roof tile, the very last one to do, fell on my hand and severed two tendons in my right hand.

I'm fine after having hand surgery by a hand specialist at Holy Cross. Kind of hard to use the computer with this big splint on. Doc says that next week they will put one on that is less restrictive.

Going to need a bit of physical therapy on the hand but they say I will make a full recovery.

Very sorry to hear that Cleo, and I hope your recovery is very quick. In the mean time pretend you're a surfer and get used to that one hand computer usage.

I hope Luna is back up and ready to take over your reviews.

Relax for a couple of days and get some rest. (yeah, I know... not likely)