Wilma Aftermath: Deja Vu All Over Again

Trees down everywhere. Several side streets blocked by trunks. Most houses in the neighborhood lost at least some roof tiles, but no one near us appears to have major damage. Power has been restored east, west, north and south of us — but not to the few streets surrounding me.

It was a ferocious storm, and we didn’t even get the worst of it — that was probably in Broward, one county north of us. From about 7am to 10am yesterday, we could every so often hear a tile being ripped off our roof, often ricocheting from the top floor down to the overhanging roof below (and doing more damage). It was all too easy to imagine the roof being peeled off, Hurricane Andrew style, if things got worse. It’s very hard to describe the sound of your roof being dismantled by a storm. Something between an angry giant flicking at it, and near-misses by something a bit more powerful than small arms. In retrospect, the house held up fine, but as this was the first serious test of our new roof post-remodeling, during the event we were more than ordinarily stressed out of our minds.

In the bright light of day, our damage is no worse than many other people’s (whether, with a brand new roof it should be less is a question I don’t know how to answer yet). And the weather is nice and cool today, so we don’t have the sweltering problem we had the last time the power was out for days, plus the generator runs longer on a tank of gas since the fridge has less work to do.

I’m writing this from the office – which has power – but don’t expect much more from me until things get closer to normal.