{"id":5191,"date":"2017-10-23T13:32:24","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T19:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/rt\/?p=5191"},"modified":"2017-10-23T13:32:24","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T19:32:24","slug":"hurricane-irma-evacuation-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/queenofsubtle.com\/rt\/hurricane-irma\/hurricane-irma-evacuation-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Irma Evacuation 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt’s parents celebrated their 50th anniversary this year, and we’d long had plans to go join them in South Dakota in September for a road trip out to the Black Hills. A week or so before we were set to leave, we started seeing signs of a potential hurricane headed toward our island. We kept an eye on it, knowing we may need to prepare our house before leaving. We never expected things to go quite the way they did.<\/p>\n

Our flight from Key West to Sioux Falls was scheduled on Thursday, 9\/7. All of Labor Day weekend, every conversation in town centered on whether or not the hurricane was coming our way. All the models except for a couple showed it turning north and heading up the East Coast, but those few outliers were enough to make us nervous enough. I started to worry about the plan for Roy to go to his birdsitter’s on Thursday, in case they were going to evacuate. I called Delta and confirmed that I could indeed bring him onboard if necessary (for $150), as long as I had an airline-approved underseat cage. I quickly found one online and ordered it with 2-day shipping.<\/p>\n

On Labor Day itself, Matt and I decided the possibility was real enough that we should figure out how to put up the hurricane shutters. They were way easier to put up than we expected, thankfully. We put a set up on the guest room window to try it out.<\/p>\n

\"Test<\/a><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, I woke up and checked the NOAA prediction (like we’d been doing every 4 hours for the past few days). The new forecast track for a potential category 5 Irma went directly over Key West. The authorities declared a mandatory evacuation. And that’s when the panic started to set in.<\/p>\n

At that point we were for sure putting up the hurricane shutters, and had to figure out what to do with Roy. I talked to his birdsitter, and said they were going to evacuate with their own 6 pets. A couple friends offered to take him, so we figured we had that option. His cage was supposed to arrive the next day, so I figured we had the option of flying with him if necessary. All of that was fine until my friend called and said the Key West airport was shutting down on Wednesday. Which meant we weren’t going to be able to fly out Thursday.<\/p>\n

The rest of that afternoon was a full-on scramble involving rebooking a flight from Miami instead, piling all of our belongings up as high as possible in case of flooding (we have a ground-level house that got 3 feet of water in Hurricane Wilma), making staying-in-contact plans with our neighbors and tenants, putting up the hurricane shutters, and trying not to have a nervous breakdown. Matt did almost all of the work, because I was so panicked I felt like I was going to pass out. We hauled everything outdoors into the shed and gave our tenants the key so they could get out the shutters for their windows and door when they evacuated. We put our kayaks face-down on the patio and chained them up to a post, and gave our next-door neighbor the key; he asked if they could use them in case of emergency, since they planned to stay. Since Roy’s cage wasn’t going to arrive in time, I made arrangements to send him with Mark and his daughter Kennedy, who were going to be evacuating with their camper.<\/p>\n

I ran to Pet Supermarket to get Roy more seeds and pellets, and the shelves there were already half-empty. I ran into his birdsitter there and she was nearly in tears, trying to deal with her responsibilities at the SPCA.\u00a0Being outside was surreal – all you could hear was saws and power drills as people cut down dangerous tree limbs and put up storm shutters. People were on the street and online sharing evacuation plans, which was somehow reassuring knowing everyone already had a plan to be safe, just in case.<\/p>\n

Our flight was at 7:30 the next morning, so we figured we’d wrap everything up at home, do the Roy handoff, and drive north. Matt booked us a hotel, and we finished packing. I had our safe contents with passports, birth certificates, and everything we couldn’t afford to lose. I also grabbed our wedding illustration signed by our friends and family, plus a bag of random stuff around the house (stuffed animals we’d gathered over the years, a wooden bird from my grandma’s house, a pottery fish – all the things where I couldn’t possibly explain to anyone why it was important, but I couldn’t leave it behind). We put those in the trunk of the car, which would be parked in Miami for the duration. (Much, much later, I had serious regrets over not bringing some of my nicer knitting projects – I had double-bagged everything in plastic and put it on the guest bed – and my favorite Christmas tree ornaments. Those are things that will *definitely* be on the evacuation list should this ever happen again.)<\/p>\n

And then suddenly, through a massive SNAFU, we didn’t have a flight out of Miami after all. I called Delta, sat on hold forever, and cried my head off as the agent told me that all flights were booked and there was nothing they could do. I tried messaging them on Twitter (their support there is usually excellent), but got no response. We spent an hour or so frantically searching for any possible flight combinations that would get us from here (Miami, Ft Lauderdale, even Orlando) to either Sioux Falls or Minneapolis, so we could make it to my in-laws’ anniversary trip. We even considered driving all the way to Atlanta to catch the second leg of our flight that was supposed to leave Key West on Thursday. But everything was booked, and flights were coming up at $1200 and disappearing instantly before we could try to book them. (That was before they caught the runaway auto-pricing problem and set caps on airfare.)<\/p>\n

So we were stuck, and Matt had to call and tell his parents we couldn’t make it, because we were just going to evacuate by car and go… somewhere. We didn’t really have a plan in place. I texted Mark and told him we would meet him tomorrow with Roy instead.<\/p>\n

We’d just sat down on the couch in surrender around 9pm, when my phone beeped. It was the Delta Twitter agent, responding hours later. I explained the problem and told them we were desperate. Within a few minutes (with me dying of stress the whole time), he had us booked on the same flight out of Miami the next morning. I have no idea how they did it, but I’m considering it an actual miracle. It definitely felt like it at the time.<\/p>\n

I called Mark, explained the abrupt change of plans, and we finished up at the house. We put the last shutters up over our front door, wished our tenants luck with their own evacuation, and headed out. We met Mark around 10pm for the Roy handoff, and then got on the road to Miami. I cried for a while, and then got down to the business of getting us to the mainland as fast as possible. Matt called his parents and told them the good news.<\/p>\n

Despite the evacuation order, there was barely any traffic that late at night. The ocean was perfectly calm, which made it nearly impossible to believe that the hurricane was coming. We got to Miami in record time, checking into our hotel at 1:30 in the morning. We had exactly 4 hours until we had to be up for our flight the next morning. Exhaustion was a good thing, though, because it gave us no time to think about what was next.<\/p>\n

We got up at 5:30, drove to the Park and Fly by MIA, and took the shuttle to the airport. Even at that time of morning, it was mobbed with people trying to evacuate. We made it to our flight and discovered that our miraculous Twitter agent had also booked us in Economy Comfort seats, which were fantastic. We flew from Miami to Minneapolis, where we had a couple hour layover. We went to get breakfast and ended up sitting at the bar. When the bartender asked where we were coming from, everyone around us gasped and stared. (That’s something we got used to quickly over the next few days.) By the time we were done there we had talked to everyone around us, met another KW local who was sitting elsewhere in the restaurant, and the bartender had comped almost our whole tab. People are really, really great to each other during emergencies.<\/p>\n

We then boarded a short flight to Sioux Falls at met Matt’s parents at the airport. We had lunch in town, then drove to their house in Watertown where we spent the evening doing not much of anything except trying not to panic. Matt’s dad turned on the Weather Channel in time to see our next-door neighbor driving his Model A out of the Keys.<\/p>\n

\"Watching<\/a><\/p>\n

The next morning, the new forecast tracks were out showing they expected the storm to take its hard turn early enough to miss a direct hit on in the Keys. It was predicted to hit Miami instead, which was also terrible, but we were breathing a tiny bit easier over that. The further from our island, the better.<\/p>\n

Since we didn’t have Roy with us, I’d brought the knitted version of him. This one’s WAY quieter. We spent the day working at the dining room table, with plans to leave on our roadtrip the next day.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a><\/p>\n

That night, things seemed a bit calmer. The storm predictions were looking better all day, if a near miss.\u00a0After dinner, Matt and I went to check out Watertown Brewing for a couple hours. It was a really great little brewery. Also, we hadn’t been in South Dakota for almost 2 years!<\/p>\n

\"Watertown<\/a><\/p>\n

The next morning, we got up and headed off on the Great American Road trip. The distraction was good, but long hours in the car staring out the window aren’t exactly conducive to *not* thinking about a hurricane, either.<\/p>\n

The Dignity Sculpture along the Missouri River was really impressive:<\/p>\n

\"Dignity<\/a><\/p>\n

The giant prairie dog was less impressive, but we still got Bally’s picture with it.<\/p>\n

\"Giant<\/a><\/p>\n

I hadn’t been to the Badlands in years. I forgot how impressive and strange those mountains are.<\/p>\n

\"Badlands\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Badlands\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Badlands\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I kept checking my phone for updates from NOAA and the NWS over the course of the day, and again things were getting much, much worse for us. The hurricane was going to reach Florida on Sunday, and we were running out of time for it to make the turn north. The outlier predictions that had it going directly over the Keys and then up the west coast of the peninsula were starting to look like the accurate ones.<\/p>\n

I cried in Wall Drug.<\/p>\n

\"Wall<\/a><\/p>\n

We met a guy from Florida there who wanted to talk all about the hurricane. I hid behind Matt and made him deal with it while I tried not to have a breakdown in public. Bally was having a good time, though.<\/p>\n

\"Bally<\/a><\/p>\n

We got to our hotel in Rapid City, and I decided it was finally time to disconnect from everything. Seeing the predictions was only making me panic more, and there was no longer anything I could do about it. We just had to wait to see if we had a home to return to.<\/p>\n

All the while, Matt’s parents were having their 50th anniversary trip, wanting to take photos of all of us together and celebrate. I know that mostly they just wanted the distraction as well, but it was still awful. I was just a zombie the whole time, alternating crying and feeling totally blank for a few hours at a time. Those couple of days are a total blur. We went out with friends of his parents, had some great meals and some good beers, and saw a lot of really cool stuff on our trip. I just have a lot of trouble remembering it.<\/p>\n

\"Reindeer\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"King<\/a><\/p>\n

These hungry burros are in Custer State Park. They were hilarious.<\/p>\n

\"FEED<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Buffalo<\/a><\/p>\n

We got caught in an actual bison traffic jam.<\/p>\n

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