Hurricane Michael (General)

by dhw, Monday, October 15, 2018, 11:41 (2010 days ago) @ David Turell

Tony: Thank you both. In the grand scheme of things, we are so good right now. We got our well running today with a generator, so baths and fresh water are available. We have plenty of food and firewood and a roof over our heads. Life is good.

DAVID: That is great news. You all sound OK, but how is your Mother? Is she staying with you? I had no idea, of course, you lived in the panhandle of Florida, which is a nice stretch of country. I've been through so many hurricanes I had a generator put on site when we built this place 10 years ago. My first was the 1938 storm that hit Long Island, no names back then. It wiped out about 5,000 people on Fire Island which is a barrier island just off the south shore. It killed a business partner of my father. They are not fun.

Tony, thank you very much for this reassuring bulletin. Your own resilience is a tonic in itself. Such events really put things in perspective. We are still seeing haunting and heartbreaking scenes of the devastation caused by Michael and by the Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia (I think the latest death toll is about 2000). All this appalling suffering, and so much of it irreversible. I live in the West Country of England, where the climate is generally mild, and we complain if it’s too windy, too wet, too sunny, too cold, and if the shops have run out of our favourite treats.