Hurricane Irma

I grew up on the coast and was sort of used to "Hurricane Season", but I've never had to deal with the panic of a hurricane as an adult, until now. 

Last fall on Labor Day weekend, Tallahassee was hit by a Category 1 hurricane - Hermine. People lost power for weeks, and there was a ton of lasting damage. So when it came out that Hurricane Irma was in the Caribbean and Tallahassee was in the path, everyone FREAKED OUT. I was working at the bank on Tuesday and one of my first customers of the day informed me that Costco was out of water due to the panic. I didn't even know about it and said as much, but over the course of the day I started to hear more about people's frantic preparations for a hurricane that was due to hit over the weekend. 

Throughout the course of the week, the hurricane shifted from going way east of us, to having a path that would likely go straight through Tallahassee. Gas stations ran out of gas, grocery stores were scrapped of water and non-perishable foods as people collected things that would hopefully get them through the Apocalypse Hurricane. 

Schools were cancelled on Friday, FSU cancelled the football game for Saturday, and basically Friday seemed like the day before the world was going to end. Carson dropped me off at work that morning so that he could grab us some provisions and see if he could find gas somewhere in town. He wasn't successful on that last mission (he eventually went out super early Saturday and found some), but I think we are set on junk food until the end of time. 

When the bank decided to close at 1pm on a Friday, not to reopen until Tuesday, it seemed serious. So Carson grabbed me from work and we went in search of a gas can for just in case, and made a trip to Hobby Lobby (to grab the essentials, obviously). On Saturday, we went to look for a gas can, and stopped by Winn Dixie in search of hot dog buns for our "cook all the meat in your fridge just in case" get together that evening. We didn't have luck at Winn Dixie, and just look at all these empty shelves. 

No gas cans left at the Marine store.

Not a lot of soup left at the grocery store

The bread aisle. We found one seriously moldy loaf, but everything else here was stuff people had discarded.

Shuttered and ready for the storm.

 So we went to Walmart looking for hot dog buns

Candle aisle.

Gas station, completely out of gas and pumps wrapped up

The USPS taped up all the mailboxes - I guess so that mail wouldn't get wet??

 We walked across the street and joined the Ryans at the Kings house for a grill-all-the-meat-they-got-at-Costco party. We also laughed at the fact that this was obviously super last minute because seriously all we had was meat. No sides or anything until Jules remembered that she had leftover mac and cheese in her fridge and grabbed it so we had a side. 

The sky looked ominous as we walked home.

Many of the churches in town cancelled services for Sunday, since Leon County had moved to a voluntary evacuation overnight. Attendance was light, but we had some guests who'd joined us from other churches. We had a normal worship service but also joined in groups with people around us to pray for the victims of both Hurricane Harvey, which had hit Houston a week before, and Hurricane Irma, which was destroying South Florida as we met, and heading our way.

Driving around after church that day was weird. Everything was closed and some places were boarded up and it felt so weird. 

We decided to leave our apartment at the last minute because of our sliding doors. They were predicting Irma to make landfall in Tallahassee as a Category 1 or 2, and we weren't sure how these old glass doors would do. Carson put our tables in front of them to hopefully block glass from getting everywhere, we quickly packed up, and we headed out. 

We didn't "evacuate" far - just to Dodd Hall, where Carson's office is. We joined several others who are in his program and basically camped overnight at the offices. 

Someone got the 49ers game on the projector of the classroom we used as our main room. You can tell that we were really roughing it. 

After the kids went to sleep in a professor's office, the adults gathered to talk and laugh as we ate cheese, olives and proscuitto. We seriously had too much food. 

Carson and I slept in Dodd 112, where his desk is. Someone's cat was in there with us, and spending time overnight with a cat confirmed my suspicion that I'm allergic to cats!

We couldn't hear the storm outside, but it ended up hitting us not as badly as anticipated. Trees fell, and it was definitely a storm, but we could probably have all stayed at home without issue. It was still fun to be with everyone just in case we lost power or something. 

We packed up and walked over to the Sweet Shop for lunch. It's raining in this picture but you can't tell... Here we are: the survivors of Hurricane Irma 2k17. Some aren't pictured, but out of the religion department we had ten adults, four little kids, one two week old, one cat and one dog. What an adventure!