After The Storm
The weather started calming down at around 6, when the eye was passing over us. My sister and I were hungry so we waiting for our parents to wake up from their nap to go eat at Flanigan's, open and only two blocks away. They didn't want to come with us so I went alone with my sister. We got to Flanigan's and it seemed like business as usual. There was sports on almost all of the TVs and people at the bar and most of the tables. Our parents started watching TV and saw that there were 60mph winds just a couple of miles away so they told us to get our food to go. We did, and as we were leaving Flanigan's, the storm picked up again. Not 10 minutes after we get home, we lose power (around 9pm). After eating dinner in the dark, we kept ourselves entertained by draining the battery on a few laptops. We started watching a Mexican movie about a wedding which we couldn't bear to watch for more than half an hour. After that, we watched National Treasure which, despite having essentially the same plot as The Da Vinci Code was quite an entertaining movie.
We only got some rain and very little wind today. A lot of places without power (our house included) but still a lot of people out. I ended up going to the Apple Store for a bit to check my e-mail and do some web browsing. The Mac mini I was using had a Mighty Mouse attached, so I finally got to try it out. I came back home and the power came back around 5pm. We were lucky to only have had lost power for less than 24 hours. I've heard that a lot of people are still without it and both Miami-Dade and Broward County officials will be handing out bags of ice tomorrow for people to keep perishable items cold.
From what I've seen, the damage here on the beach is pretty minimal. I've seen lots of downed and uprooted trees and some crooked electricity poles (and one that came down completely at the corner of our street) as well as lots of missing signs. The worst damage I've seen by far is the roof (the part that's over the pumps) of a Shell gas station in Sunny Isles that has collapsed completely. The station is across the street from the beach, but other similarly located gas stations didn't see that kind of damage. The worst damage they saw (at least visibly) is some missing numbers from their price lists (free gas!).
Hurricane Katrina was only a Category 1 (winds of 74-95 mph) when it hit South Florida, but she came with very little advance warning. Notwithstanding, I think officials got everything squared away pretty quickly with regards to closing services and opening up shelters and I applaud them for that. They say Katrina could develop into a Category 4 hurricane (winds of 131-155 mph) in the warm Gulf waters before making landfall again. I wish people on the northern Gulf Coast the best of luck and hope that everything will be alright.
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