October 11 and later
10/11/2019: Fortunately, it got a little cool through the evening. With the Master bedroom soaked, I am using the sofa to sleep on in the living room, with some candles and a battery powered radio from the Hurricane Kit. Somehow, the primary iHeart Radio stations (including 98.5) are broadcasting community service information without towers. I woke up and set to try to get to the UPS store to give Scott Cornell (the owner and a friend) a status report. It took an hour to find my way around downed trees and power lines, not to mention avoiding any kind of debris on the road so as not to puncture my tires. The Rogue was serving as not only transportation, but as my generator to keep the phone and laptop going. T-Mobile signal still strong and robust data. Started using some containers I had set aside to prioritize the personal property I was going to try to save but mostly just made sure the neighbors were OK. October 11th was also when I made the realization that I had too much stuff, so from now on October 11th will be the day I purge.
10/12. Woke up early (did not get much sleep) and walked to several places to take pictures, which I posted in public albums linked to a Facebook group for Bay County affected by Hurricane Michael. Several people had asked to see the status of their respective homes since they had evacuated. There were a couple of instances where the phone signal dropped, but the SMS texting seemed to be alright for most of the time. Just to make sure though, I coordinated with all of the people I was communicating with to include time-stamps to get a feel for how recent the texts were. That seemed to work out well. "Talked" with Scott Miller and Jeff Sobel; both offered me guest rooms in Niceville. At the time, I thanked them and said I was doing OK, which I was. The Rogue was running fine and barely used under 1/4 of a tank total since I had filled it on the 9th. I pried open the garage door for access and in the process, released the left lever-arm while I was standing a bit too close to it and it hit me in the ribs. Not hard enough to break ribs (I think) but ripped the shirt and left a gash and a knot. Not my smartest moment, especially with the realization there are no emergency service facilities available. As a result, I concluded that the last thing I needed was to over-stress my bio-system and I decided to accept Jeff's offer of the guest room. The overall curfew still very restrictive. Radio announced that curfews would be soon changed to dusk to dawn, so I targeted leaving the 14th in time to be out of Bay county before dark. I also was not sure if I would be able to get gas before I got to Niceville. I knew I had more than enough gas for normal conditions, but had no idea how much stop and go traffic I would be in.
10/13. Woke, worked to pack, saw Marine 1 and escort fly by, Curfew changed to dusk to dawn, so I targeted leaving the 14th in time to be out of Bay county before dark. I also was not sure if I would be able to get gas before I got to Niceville. I knew I had more than enough gas for normal conditions, but had no idea how much stop and go traffic I would be in. My USAA adjuster contacted me and advised that he was still not able to get into the area, but would shoot for no later than the 20th. Also discovered that having your suitcases in storage may help organize the house, but makes it tough to pack to move into someone's guest room. Fortunately, part of the storm actually blew down two old suitcases (the ones I moved to and from Okinawa with in 1987/1990) down from the rafters in the garage where I had put them shortly after moving into the house in 1992. Bad reinforcement for being token hoarder...
10/14. Drug more stuff out of the house to the curb, packed up what I considered essential items that I did not want to leave in the house in case of a break in and eventually drove to Niceville. Google Maps was right on point with all the tie ups and even vectored me North through Southport off of 77A to avoid 77 where it was snarled One of the benefits of my Gypsy Lifestyle for the past 3 years was that I have been living out of suitcases and laptops for the whole time and backing up when I could get to the main computer, so it actually was pretty easy to transition back to that. That knowledge had been the basis for my reactions to moving stuff during the collapse of the ceiling, so a lot was already centrally located. Once Jeff welcomed me and showed me the guest room, I unpacked, did laundry, had a shower, and a restful sleep.
10/15 The day started out with a mild panic attack - the first I can recall ever having. I could not find my house keys. Eventually, with Jeff's help, I started breathing again, we packed up our various lock picks with us (one of the benefits of being/ knowing a magician) Jeff driving his Honda Pilot. Started at Niceville Wal-mart, got tough-tote bins, Gas cans (for me and my neighbor Bob Bungay) and 100SPF suncreen. Stopped by Home Depot for generator, what tarps they had, and nails, as well as filter masks. Was expecting a message from American Express about charging $1200 at one time, but when I eventually talked to them, they were already aware of the hurricane and because it was at a Hardware store, it went through without flagging. Jeff continued to drive and I tried to nap, but really could not. Was not sure what the best route to the house was going to be and the cell signal got dicey as we drove on Hwy 20 (knew 98 would be a zoo), but he knew someone who lived along the route just before Freeport; we stopped in and borrowed some Wi-Fi to plot the best route. Again, Google Maps did an amazing job letting us know where the slow ups were going to be, even if we could not avoid a lot of them, it made it easier to believe it when it could re-route us. Turns out I left the key in the front door lock, sheesh.
We assessed the primary need for the tarping was the library/guest room and went to work. Home Depot had sold all of their large tarps, but we picked up a box of 10x20's at 10mil thickness. These may have actually worked better as we were able to overlap and otherwise mold the tarps to the very irregular remaining roof. At some point, I realized that although I wanted to help, Jeff is a master in this environment, having worked riggings in his youth, and I just needed to keep out of his way. Due to the curfew, we did not need the generator set-up, so we locked it in the house and returned to Niceville. The return trip was just as sobering as the trip out, as I have often said in description, I have seen war zones that were better organized and orderly. From 60 miles into the house, so few trees still standing, no building without some form of damage and general chaotic feeling. Not that there were riots in the streets, but just that overall feeling that the area was beyond recovery. Even with that, though, Power companies from as far away as Oklahoma (that I saw) were doing the initial work for restoration.
With the house tarped effectively, I made probably the best decision of the entire experience. The last thing I needed to do was over-exert myself and risk getting injured or sick, so I declared that I would give myself :admin days" to sleep in and get my mind out of the house and catch up with the business of being me. This was a realization that was a combination of the knowledge that my mind was not running at full processing power (the events leading up to the "panic attack"), the realization that the tarping work was harder than it felt like it should be, and the pain I was beginning to feel in my wrists after the hammering and toting/tossing. I knew I needed a new license plate for the Rogue (the old one is probably somewhere in Alabama as it was ripped off during the storm), and this was my driver's license renewal year, due just about a month away.
10/16. My first admin day. I got the new plate and renewed my license without much hassle at the Niceville office for Okaloosa county government. I admit I needed to take a moment while the clerk was helping me as it hit me just how badly I had been affected when she asked me what my address was. I also opened up a UPS store mailbox in Niceville, not knowing what provisions could be made for the total loss of the one in Panama City that has been my long time address. I also bought wrist and knee braces as well as had another bright idea. I had been reasonably careful using gloves and boots, but there still was a lot of exposed sharp things around and I was not sure how long it had been since my last tetanus booster, so I dropped in to CVS and got one. CVS doesn't do Tricare, but I really did not care and the staff found me some good discounts in their files anyway. Most importantly, through Jeff, I made contact with the manager of Spacebox storage and rented a 10x10 storeroom. I have a 5x10 full and a 10x10 less than 1/4 full in Panama City, but at this time, had no idea what their condition was. I bought all of the totes at the Eglin BX and filled the Rogue in anticipate of my return trip. It was here that I realized that I was not going to be able to make it to the 3 of Clubs convention in Seattle the 19th-21st. This was the first time I had actually ever pre-paid (non-refundable) for a convention hotel room, so I blame that for Hurricane Michael; all my fault. I did use Delta's standard offer to reschedule a trip with no fees after a natural disaster like this for another time frame as well as change the trip I had planned to LA and home for my birthday from ECP to VPS. As far as the hotel that weekend, I knew some friends who were going and offered the room as a gift, since I figured they could probably cancel their reservations and save the money. It turns out that they had planned on commuting each day, so they were able to get good utility from actually staying at the venue and getting some late night sessions in. I told the event organizers to see if there was anyone in the local area who could otherwise not afford to go and to give them a Scholarship.
10/17 and beyond. The rest of the month was filled with trips to Panama City and Admin days. Due to the curfew, I could get more done by spending a night at the house and then returning the next day with another load for storage. Even though the curfew times were initially moved to later than before, with the days getting shorter, they started compressing and an earlier departure time was usually warranted to avoid the still huge traffic snarls. These trips were pretty well reported in my photo albums and entries on Facebook. I will just highlight deviations. Jeff and I decided that the Pilot would be a better vehicle for the round trips, at least to start because of the better capacity and 4 wheel-drive (just in case)
Bought a motion sensing light and installed it in the house. We got sewer restored by the 17th, so it was nice to have a light turn on when I would get up to go to the bathroom. I installed another one just outside the front door so that the Bungay's could see when someone approached the house while I was gone. Luckily, we did not have any looting issues in the immediate neighborhood, primarily I think because most of us had ridden the storm out and were obviously still living in the area. Also on the first trip back, I set up the generator and wheeled it outside. The first thing I did was to power up the garage door opener. OK, I lie. The first thing I did with the generator was run the Kuerig and make a cup of coffee, then ran the extension cable to run the garage door so I could position the "puck" such that I could lock the damaged door when I was away, but release the shuttle and open the door enough to drag stuff out while I was there. Overall, I was able to position the door between a few inches of fully closed when locked and propped open about 3 1/2 feet off the floor when I was working there. This was important in that it gave me more confidence that the house remained secure while I was gone and spending my admin days in Niceville. In spite of the damage to the house included two broken windows, they are triple pane and at least one pane survived in both of them and the doors remained intact and lockable.
I purchased a $1600 magic effect (used) shortly before Michael. For some reason, even though it shipped out of Las Vegas, it wound up being in New England on the day the storm hit. Although it was great that it had not been affected by the storm, it was now headed towards the area and I had no idea what the mail service would be like in Panama City, so I did an "intercept" to send it to Niceville Post Office. Paid through the nose for the intercept itself and the additional postage to go 70 miles up the road ($42 plus). Oh well, at least I knew where it was. Turns out I probably did not need to worry as the owner of my Panama City UPS store arranged for the Lynn Haven UPS store to fill in and was/is transporting the mail there, and sorting it for distribution.
Because the roof damage included the corner where the power pole was attached, part of the Gulf Power "recovery" efforts was to cut the wires and disable the meter on the house. I did not have any damage, but they had no way of knowing that and left a note that I needed to get an electrician to re-certify the house for power. Power was restored to the neighborhood around the 24th (amazing in itself since the first estimates were more like 2 months, not 2 weeks) but I was still on generator if I needed to run anything. Here I got lucky again. The Bungay's (Bob and Barb) son works for an electrician. Where I might have had to wait for a month or more to find an electrician, I had one replace my pole and certify the house on the 27th for $150. Once that was done, the task was simply to catch the attention of one of the various power crews driving though the neighborhood to get the wire hooked back up and meter energized. which I was able to do on the next trip. Again lucky, as the crew was actually supposed to be working in another area, we found out as they were half way through the work on my place. Fortunately, they finished up mine first.
The insurance adjuster did me probably the number 1 solid for the whole event when he found me a water damage mitigation company that had driven in from California (which is his home turf - he was mobilized for the response team). They came out, took there measurements and estimates and scheduled me for demo and drying starting 11/4. All of the specifics were handled direct between them and the adjuster, which was really the point at which I started feeling a little bit less overwhelmed at the enormity of the situation.
10/26 My friend Scott Miller, who lives in Ohio but had offered his parent's guest room in Niceville for me was in town and volunteered to help. Because of the storage issues, lack of PODS, limits on how much I could pack out, etc. it was key that the garage be as cleaned out as possible so the Water damage mitigation people had someplace to put what could be saved as they gutted the house. based on the initial surveys, it appeared that the living room was not going to need to be demo'd, but almost all of the rest of the house did need it and the living room was already pretty full from stuff I had originally moved to "higher ground." So we primarily worked on clearing out at least half of the garage to give them that much space and I did some more cleaning out closets and packing totes to carry to the storage in Niceville, although I did find out that the store-rooms I had in Panama City survived and were now accessible, although no longer climate controlled (A/C ripped off the building). That will allow me to prioritize crates either to Niceville or placed in local storage if they don't need to be kept cool/dry.
10/28 Spent the night again on the couch for another overnight. The insurance adjuster assigned me an additional Personal Property adjuster and he was to come out the morning of the 29th. Traffic is still iffy enough that I did not want to risk not being here when he got to the place, and a small space heater I had in the garage works fine to keep the living room warm enough, as well as I have 2 wool army blankets.
10/29 The personal property adjuster showed up on time and I showed him around. He took his notes and headed out. I had logged on to the Corps of Engineer's Operation Blue Roof page a few days after landfall to file for help after hearing about it on the one radio station and they were working their way through the requests for aid, and my number came up. They did the roof at the back of the house, but were in a quandry about the front where the roof was missing. They said they would talk it over with the bigger bosses and see what could be done within the program. I also realized that although the Rogue seemed to be fine except for scratches, I did not want to have something pop up after the 30 day window to file, so I opened a claim on my app. I got a few more totes packed up and then the fun started. I could not get the Pilot to start. After a few minutes of concern, I finally got it to start, but there was no way I was going to stop before I got it back to Niceville where my Rogue was. Fortunately, my habit was to fill the Pilot up on every trip, even though the tank was probably good for 2 round trips. I had not used much through the night since the generator was working.
10/30 Returned with Brian Ward to try to maximize my efforts to save the library. You have seen the pictures. Fortunately it was sunny out which helped a lot as we filled the front yard with books. Many were dry by the end of the day, the rest we set aside in either "dry some more" or "we will try, but these are probably lost" piles. We also put one of the larger FEMA tarps on over the garage in front where the CoE had not put a tarp to assure that when the household stuff got moved out there, it would remain dry. USAA informed me that a vehicle adjuster could meet with me as early as Saturday (11/3). While I had planned to honor my commitment to attend Daytona Beach Magic Festival, (2nd-4th), I had already decided to cut the trip short, so this gave me good reason, so I scheduled it for 1730. There is a time zone advantage to driving back from the east coast and I was going to be able to leave at about check out time and still make the appointment. This was also the day that I caught the attention of the power company truck.
10/31 Admin day and we took the Pilot in to the Honda dealer and left it with them. However, while I was gone, the corps of engineers showed up again and tarped the remainder of the roof with the ubiquitous blue tarps. They took off some of the work Brian and I had put up the day before, LOL (if I had only known). The original work that Jeff (mostly) and I had done remained in place because there was no structure below it and they were not going to risk their people at that point (makes sense). Working together, the results were tested in a heavy thunderstorm when I returned on the 1st and seemed to do very well, although I really would not know for sure until the house was gutted.
On to November...
10/12. Woke up early (did not get much sleep) and walked to several places to take pictures, which I posted in public albums linked to a Facebook group for Bay County affected by Hurricane Michael. Several people had asked to see the status of their respective homes since they had evacuated. There were a couple of instances where the phone signal dropped, but the SMS texting seemed to be alright for most of the time. Just to make sure though, I coordinated with all of the people I was communicating with to include time-stamps to get a feel for how recent the texts were. That seemed to work out well. "Talked" with Scott Miller and Jeff Sobel; both offered me guest rooms in Niceville. At the time, I thanked them and said I was doing OK, which I was. The Rogue was running fine and barely used under 1/4 of a tank total since I had filled it on the 9th. I pried open the garage door for access and in the process, released the left lever-arm while I was standing a bit too close to it and it hit me in the ribs. Not hard enough to break ribs (I think) but ripped the shirt and left a gash and a knot. Not my smartest moment, especially with the realization there are no emergency service facilities available. As a result, I concluded that the last thing I needed was to over-stress my bio-system and I decided to accept Jeff's offer of the guest room. The overall curfew still very restrictive. Radio announced that curfews would be soon changed to dusk to dawn, so I targeted leaving the 14th in time to be out of Bay county before dark. I also was not sure if I would be able to get gas before I got to Niceville. I knew I had more than enough gas for normal conditions, but had no idea how much stop and go traffic I would be in.
10/13. Woke, worked to pack, saw Marine 1 and escort fly by, Curfew changed to dusk to dawn, so I targeted leaving the 14th in time to be out of Bay county before dark. I also was not sure if I would be able to get gas before I got to Niceville. I knew I had more than enough gas for normal conditions, but had no idea how much stop and go traffic I would be in. My USAA adjuster contacted me and advised that he was still not able to get into the area, but would shoot for no later than the 20th. Also discovered that having your suitcases in storage may help organize the house, but makes it tough to pack to move into someone's guest room. Fortunately, part of the storm actually blew down two old suitcases (the ones I moved to and from Okinawa with in 1987/1990) down from the rafters in the garage where I had put them shortly after moving into the house in 1992. Bad reinforcement for being token hoarder...
10/14. Drug more stuff out of the house to the curb, packed up what I considered essential items that I did not want to leave in the house in case of a break in and eventually drove to Niceville. Google Maps was right on point with all the tie ups and even vectored me North through Southport off of 77A to avoid 77 where it was snarled One of the benefits of my Gypsy Lifestyle for the past 3 years was that I have been living out of suitcases and laptops for the whole time and backing up when I could get to the main computer, so it actually was pretty easy to transition back to that. That knowledge had been the basis for my reactions to moving stuff during the collapse of the ceiling, so a lot was already centrally located. Once Jeff welcomed me and showed me the guest room, I unpacked, did laundry, had a shower, and a restful sleep.
10/15 The day started out with a mild panic attack - the first I can recall ever having. I could not find my house keys. Eventually, with Jeff's help, I started breathing again, we packed up our various lock picks with us (one of the benefits of being/ knowing a magician) Jeff driving his Honda Pilot. Started at Niceville Wal-mart, got tough-tote bins, Gas cans (for me and my neighbor Bob Bungay) and 100SPF suncreen. Stopped by Home Depot for generator, what tarps they had, and nails, as well as filter masks. Was expecting a message from American Express about charging $1200 at one time, but when I eventually talked to them, they were already aware of the hurricane and because it was at a Hardware store, it went through without flagging. Jeff continued to drive and I tried to nap, but really could not. Was not sure what the best route to the house was going to be and the cell signal got dicey as we drove on Hwy 20 (knew 98 would be a zoo), but he knew someone who lived along the route just before Freeport; we stopped in and borrowed some Wi-Fi to plot the best route. Again, Google Maps did an amazing job letting us know where the slow ups were going to be, even if we could not avoid a lot of them, it made it easier to believe it when it could re-route us. Turns out I left the key in the front door lock, sheesh.
We assessed the primary need for the tarping was the library/guest room and went to work. Home Depot had sold all of their large tarps, but we picked up a box of 10x20's at 10mil thickness. These may have actually worked better as we were able to overlap and otherwise mold the tarps to the very irregular remaining roof. At some point, I realized that although I wanted to help, Jeff is a master in this environment, having worked riggings in his youth, and I just needed to keep out of his way. Due to the curfew, we did not need the generator set-up, so we locked it in the house and returned to Niceville. The return trip was just as sobering as the trip out, as I have often said in description, I have seen war zones that were better organized and orderly. From 60 miles into the house, so few trees still standing, no building without some form of damage and general chaotic feeling. Not that there were riots in the streets, but just that overall feeling that the area was beyond recovery. Even with that, though, Power companies from as far away as Oklahoma (that I saw) were doing the initial work for restoration.
With the house tarped effectively, I made probably the best decision of the entire experience. The last thing I needed to do was over-exert myself and risk getting injured or sick, so I declared that I would give myself :admin days" to sleep in and get my mind out of the house and catch up with the business of being me. This was a realization that was a combination of the knowledge that my mind was not running at full processing power (the events leading up to the "panic attack"), the realization that the tarping work was harder than it felt like it should be, and the pain I was beginning to feel in my wrists after the hammering and toting/tossing. I knew I needed a new license plate for the Rogue (the old one is probably somewhere in Alabama as it was ripped off during the storm), and this was my driver's license renewal year, due just about a month away.
10/16. My first admin day. I got the new plate and renewed my license without much hassle at the Niceville office for Okaloosa county government. I admit I needed to take a moment while the clerk was helping me as it hit me just how badly I had been affected when she asked me what my address was. I also opened up a UPS store mailbox in Niceville, not knowing what provisions could be made for the total loss of the one in Panama City that has been my long time address. I also bought wrist and knee braces as well as had another bright idea. I had been reasonably careful using gloves and boots, but there still was a lot of exposed sharp things around and I was not sure how long it had been since my last tetanus booster, so I dropped in to CVS and got one. CVS doesn't do Tricare, but I really did not care and the staff found me some good discounts in their files anyway. Most importantly, through Jeff, I made contact with the manager of Spacebox storage and rented a 10x10 storeroom. I have a 5x10 full and a 10x10 less than 1/4 full in Panama City, but at this time, had no idea what their condition was. I bought all of the totes at the Eglin BX and filled the Rogue in anticipate of my return trip. It was here that I realized that I was not going to be able to make it to the 3 of Clubs convention in Seattle the 19th-21st. This was the first time I had actually ever pre-paid (non-refundable) for a convention hotel room, so I blame that for Hurricane Michael; all my fault. I did use Delta's standard offer to reschedule a trip with no fees after a natural disaster like this for another time frame as well as change the trip I had planned to LA and home for my birthday from ECP to VPS. As far as the hotel that weekend, I knew some friends who were going and offered the room as a gift, since I figured they could probably cancel their reservations and save the money. It turns out that they had planned on commuting each day, so they were able to get good utility from actually staying at the venue and getting some late night sessions in. I told the event organizers to see if there was anyone in the local area who could otherwise not afford to go and to give them a Scholarship.
10/17 and beyond. The rest of the month was filled with trips to Panama City and Admin days. Due to the curfew, I could get more done by spending a night at the house and then returning the next day with another load for storage. Even though the curfew times were initially moved to later than before, with the days getting shorter, they started compressing and an earlier departure time was usually warranted to avoid the still huge traffic snarls. These trips were pretty well reported in my photo albums and entries on Facebook. I will just highlight deviations. Jeff and I decided that the Pilot would be a better vehicle for the round trips, at least to start because of the better capacity and 4 wheel-drive (just in case)
Bought a motion sensing light and installed it in the house. We got sewer restored by the 17th, so it was nice to have a light turn on when I would get up to go to the bathroom. I installed another one just outside the front door so that the Bungay's could see when someone approached the house while I was gone. Luckily, we did not have any looting issues in the immediate neighborhood, primarily I think because most of us had ridden the storm out and were obviously still living in the area. Also on the first trip back, I set up the generator and wheeled it outside. The first thing I did was to power up the garage door opener. OK, I lie. The first thing I did with the generator was run the Kuerig and make a cup of coffee, then ran the extension cable to run the garage door so I could position the "puck" such that I could lock the damaged door when I was away, but release the shuttle and open the door enough to drag stuff out while I was there. Overall, I was able to position the door between a few inches of fully closed when locked and propped open about 3 1/2 feet off the floor when I was working there. This was important in that it gave me more confidence that the house remained secure while I was gone and spending my admin days in Niceville. In spite of the damage to the house included two broken windows, they are triple pane and at least one pane survived in both of them and the doors remained intact and lockable.
I purchased a $1600 magic effect (used) shortly before Michael. For some reason, even though it shipped out of Las Vegas, it wound up being in New England on the day the storm hit. Although it was great that it had not been affected by the storm, it was now headed towards the area and I had no idea what the mail service would be like in Panama City, so I did an "intercept" to send it to Niceville Post Office. Paid through the nose for the intercept itself and the additional postage to go 70 miles up the road ($42 plus). Oh well, at least I knew where it was. Turns out I probably did not need to worry as the owner of my Panama City UPS store arranged for the Lynn Haven UPS store to fill in and was/is transporting the mail there, and sorting it for distribution.
Because the roof damage included the corner where the power pole was attached, part of the Gulf Power "recovery" efforts was to cut the wires and disable the meter on the house. I did not have any damage, but they had no way of knowing that and left a note that I needed to get an electrician to re-certify the house for power. Power was restored to the neighborhood around the 24th (amazing in itself since the first estimates were more like 2 months, not 2 weeks) but I was still on generator if I needed to run anything. Here I got lucky again. The Bungay's (Bob and Barb) son works for an electrician. Where I might have had to wait for a month or more to find an electrician, I had one replace my pole and certify the house on the 27th for $150. Once that was done, the task was simply to catch the attention of one of the various power crews driving though the neighborhood to get the wire hooked back up and meter energized. which I was able to do on the next trip. Again lucky, as the crew was actually supposed to be working in another area, we found out as they were half way through the work on my place. Fortunately, they finished up mine first.
The insurance adjuster did me probably the number 1 solid for the whole event when he found me a water damage mitigation company that had driven in from California (which is his home turf - he was mobilized for the response team). They came out, took there measurements and estimates and scheduled me for demo and drying starting 11/4. All of the specifics were handled direct between them and the adjuster, which was really the point at which I started feeling a little bit less overwhelmed at the enormity of the situation.
10/26 My friend Scott Miller, who lives in Ohio but had offered his parent's guest room in Niceville for me was in town and volunteered to help. Because of the storage issues, lack of PODS, limits on how much I could pack out, etc. it was key that the garage be as cleaned out as possible so the Water damage mitigation people had someplace to put what could be saved as they gutted the house. based on the initial surveys, it appeared that the living room was not going to need to be demo'd, but almost all of the rest of the house did need it and the living room was already pretty full from stuff I had originally moved to "higher ground." So we primarily worked on clearing out at least half of the garage to give them that much space and I did some more cleaning out closets and packing totes to carry to the storage in Niceville, although I did find out that the store-rooms I had in Panama City survived and were now accessible, although no longer climate controlled (A/C ripped off the building). That will allow me to prioritize crates either to Niceville or placed in local storage if they don't need to be kept cool/dry.
10/28 Spent the night again on the couch for another overnight. The insurance adjuster assigned me an additional Personal Property adjuster and he was to come out the morning of the 29th. Traffic is still iffy enough that I did not want to risk not being here when he got to the place, and a small space heater I had in the garage works fine to keep the living room warm enough, as well as I have 2 wool army blankets.
10/29 The personal property adjuster showed up on time and I showed him around. He took his notes and headed out. I had logged on to the Corps of Engineer's Operation Blue Roof page a few days after landfall to file for help after hearing about it on the one radio station and they were working their way through the requests for aid, and my number came up. They did the roof at the back of the house, but were in a quandry about the front where the roof was missing. They said they would talk it over with the bigger bosses and see what could be done within the program. I also realized that although the Rogue seemed to be fine except for scratches, I did not want to have something pop up after the 30 day window to file, so I opened a claim on my app. I got a few more totes packed up and then the fun started. I could not get the Pilot to start. After a few minutes of concern, I finally got it to start, but there was no way I was going to stop before I got it back to Niceville where my Rogue was. Fortunately, my habit was to fill the Pilot up on every trip, even though the tank was probably good for 2 round trips. I had not used much through the night since the generator was working.
10/30 Returned with Brian Ward to try to maximize my efforts to save the library. You have seen the pictures. Fortunately it was sunny out which helped a lot as we filled the front yard with books. Many were dry by the end of the day, the rest we set aside in either "dry some more" or "we will try, but these are probably lost" piles. We also put one of the larger FEMA tarps on over the garage in front where the CoE had not put a tarp to assure that when the household stuff got moved out there, it would remain dry. USAA informed me that a vehicle adjuster could meet with me as early as Saturday (11/3). While I had planned to honor my commitment to attend Daytona Beach Magic Festival, (2nd-4th), I had already decided to cut the trip short, so this gave me good reason, so I scheduled it for 1730. There is a time zone advantage to driving back from the east coast and I was going to be able to leave at about check out time and still make the appointment. This was also the day that I caught the attention of the power company truck.
10/31 Admin day and we took the Pilot in to the Honda dealer and left it with them. However, while I was gone, the corps of engineers showed up again and tarped the remainder of the roof with the ubiquitous blue tarps. They took off some of the work Brian and I had put up the day before, LOL (if I had only known). The original work that Jeff (mostly) and I had done remained in place because there was no structure below it and they were not going to risk their people at that point (makes sense). Working together, the results were tested in a heavy thunderstorm when I returned on the 1st and seemed to do very well, although I really would not know for sure until the house was gutted.
On to November...
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