It’s about 5:25am on October 25th, the day after the storm hit us. I went downstairs and sat in the car for about an hour to catch up on news and what’s going on with the area. They said the Palm Beaches were under curfew until around 5am, and from what I could discern, FEMA will be distributing ice and meals in some different places starting at Noon. I didn’t catch which places. When the sun comes up, the cooler, the camera and I are going to drive down U.S. 1 and look for something.
It’s about 58 degrees outside right now, the chilliest I’ve ever felt it in South Florida. Granted, I’ve only been here since April. The entire city of Lake Park is without power. I can see the stars vividly in the sky from my balcony for the first time ever.
Our water supply is contaminated, which is standard stuff after a hurricane. I went to the fridge for a bottle of water to brush my teeth, and smelled the familiar rotting meat smell. I’ll never know what possessed my roommate to buy a lot of fresh lunch meat sixteen hours before the storm hit. Maybe he just wanted me to have to suffer with the smell. I’m going to take it down to the dumpster after the sun comes up. Hopefully, he can get a FEMA aid check for eleven bucks to cover the cost of replacement.
I ran out of blank MiniDV tapes. Five minutes of rummaging produced three tapes I made of me in the car on my way down to West Palm Beach for the first time. Rubbish. I’m going to start recording over them. I’ve got enough batteries to run at least two more tapes through, as long as I don’t stop to capture any footage. No worries about that, though: I’ve only got two hours of battery left on the iBook.
Apparently, it’s much worse in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. The only news I’ve heard at this point is that the studio we shot the short film in was destroyed. I had already heard before we lost power that sections of Ft. Lauderdale were flooding, and that was well ahead of the storm making landfall.
For the most part, my car survived. Big props to the GEICO General Insurance Co. for fucking me on my coverage. As Ron White would say, I’ll be telling that story every night until the lawsuit settles. Remind me to tell you later, when I’m not on battery power in the dark.
Luckily, I still had hurricane provisions left over from some other storm. I don’t remember which one. It might’ve been Ivan. At any rate, I had them. A small plastic flashlight, and enough batteries to run it for seventy or eighty years. No portable radio, though, except for my car, and it’s not really as portable as I’d like it to be.
The nano is definitely getting a workout this storm. I’ve been using the hell out of it. In fact, I think I’m going to plug it into the laptop and charge it back up to full. I’ve got more use for the iPod than I do for the laptop, so I don’t mind sucking the battery of one to charge the other.
I’ve had to turn my phone off. It has a full battery, and I’d like to keep it that way. It’s not a huge deal, because I have the car charger for it. It’s just that I would like to avoid sitting in my car with the engine running for a long time while it charges. Not that it would be such a bad deal though — at least my car has a heater.
It’s freezing in here. Did I mention that? Out of all the things I thought it would be after the storm passed, the last one I would’ve imagined is *very cold*.
I opened the back door to get some air in here. My neighbors are starting to wake up; I see flashlight beams sweep across the courtyard once in awhile, coming from other apartments. I felt bad for the people in building 903 yesterday — the wind set off their fire alarm, and noone had the key to turn it off. Yuck. What a nightmare. The last thing you want during a storm is a loud fire alarm klaxon in your ear for four hours. I don’t know what eventually turned it off. Probably the battery dying.
There are only two other people in my building. I don’t know where I’m going with that — I just think it’s funny. The reason it’s funny is that it’s not because everybody evacuated, it’s just because that’s how many people live here.
It’s 5:43am now. In about an hour, the sun will be up. I’m going to clean up the apartment and take the garbage down to the dumpster before then, so I can get out of here right at the crack of dawn and beat the rush to the FEMA tent. I must suckle at the teat of the federal government.
Tags: Hurricane Wilma