| Thanks everyone. Since writing saw a few teco trucks. At home depot to email. Email from teco said maybe everyone might be restore today for people who could get power but doubt it. We'll see. I want to conserve my tablet power as we use it as a clock as it's easier. I'm typing this for friends and family. But I`m typing this at home and will send it at Home Depot or someplace that has wifi and power. We lost phone and internet early. The power went out very late in the storm. We were lucky as we have minimal damage. The water flooded the garage by two to three inches. Water came in two sliding glass doors and a little bit around our front door. It didn't cause permanent damage. We had put plastic around every entrance. Three regular doors and twelve sliding glass door panels we had to protect. Plus across the garage. And two of the sliding glass doors are in an atrium behind a wood door that we also tried to protect. We had the plastic and then a neighbor let us borrow a hundred, maybe 200 pavers for a driveway. (They didn't have damage and still have some power, even cooking some stuff for us yesterday.) Extra pavers I guess. We built up the pavers along the edge of each door so the plastic was against it. And some in the middle to hold up the plastic. Some boards too for some. When done the only way in the house was through the kitchen window. I didn't want that to be it, so we stuffed probably hundreds of plastic bags in the tracks of the sliding glass doors from the inside Then put heavy stuff in front and also had towels and other absorbant stuff ready to throw against it. Not too long before the surge hit, the power went out. We had finished most of everything before that. We had plenty of flashlights. Then it slowly rose. There were no waves, it was calm. It just rose. There was light across the canal, but it was kind of hard to see. I shined a flashlight out of a window I opened and saw the water level had reached the level of the pool deck. Then looked outside and it started creeping across. Once it overtopped our land, I think the front yard filled in more which had risen from storm drains and maybe over topping land in a neighborhood next to me. At that point, we were an island. There was still several inches to go from the pool deck level to the floor of the house. Before then we already knew the garage was slowly flooding. I added more plastic and pavers that were in garage to try to fight it better. We had driven the car up onto some pavers to make it higher and we had extras from doing that. We then noticed water was starting to get in the house. That's when we threw the towels down more and some more absorbent stuff and heavy stuff to try to hold it against where the water was seeping in. While it wasn't perfect, it worked well enough. Had we not done it, rather than the garage flooding by two to maybe three inches, it would have been 8 inches. The water level on the house was over 9.5 inches outside the side garage door. And about 1.5 inches to the level of garage there. The house should have 1 to 2 inches in it based on how high it got on waterline on cabinets near pool. Maybe about an inch above the top of the carpet. But we kept most of the water out. The master bedroom was completely successful. We kept all the water out of there. The living room had some that got under the carpet in the padding under it. The family room had a bit more, maybe as far out as far as 4 to 5 feet from the door. Some water somehow also got into the dining room in a corner. Front door was next to it. We were fighting it all by taking every other dry anything and throwing it on the floor. Other towels, sheets, shirts, whatever. I think we might have put more heavy stuff at that point against the doors and maybe stuffing plastic we had left too. We were constantly checking every door in the house and adding more towels or shirts or whatever trying to prevent it from creeping further. And then eventually it stopped rising. I took a picture of a level and compared it later and saw that it had dropped a little. When it finally dropped below the level of the house we took everything wet up and threw it in the showers. We kept going through anything we had dry to get the water out of the carpet. Closer to morning when it went down some I went outside and opened the front door removing the stuff in front of it. Then the water was below the garage level and I opened it so that the water at that point could get out as at that point the barrier was keeping it in. We used so many clothes and other stuff to get up the water as best as we could from the three areas. But it's better than an inch or two that we could have had across the house. We kept it out of the walls. Most of what we have done since is trying to hang all that wet clothing, towels, sheets and whatever else to dry so we can get the bit of water still left out of that really absorbent padding under the carpet. We are keeping the house open a lot to let that dry too. Stuff is hanging outside on ladders stretched between chairs and whatever else we can around. The only damage was really to some unimportant cabinet doors by the pool. The bottoms warped on three. While we don't know how our deep freezer fared in the garage, it wasn't too deep. But the two to maybe three inches was around that. Closer to the door to the house inside the garage it was more like an inch deep as garage slant some. If what I see is the water line on freezer it is only two inches. A wood floating dock from a neighbor two doors down ended up in the yard next door. The water went so high it just slipped up above the two pilings it was on. Some small trees down around in the neighborhood. I have heard the neighborhood next to me in Dana Shores had water so deep in places furniture was floating around. I walked out this morning and the first house had a lot of trash maybe from inside, but the first street had at least some power. Hundreds more probably don't as much of the rest seemed dark. My neighborhood is weird too. Some have power and some don't. Water and electricity don't mix, and we have underground power. I assume flooded boxes are the culprit. A few houses share a box. Ours was completely under water. Our front entrance had waist deep water near the gate, with a little higher where lower. It was dark when I looked at the water line this morning. I was kind of looking for power trucks. Not a one. At around 2:30 this morning some trucks did go by but it was Spectrum fixing internet and phone for when the power does come back on. Next door to me one neighbor doesn't have power but the other does. They got internet back for 5 minutes this morning he said and then it went out. Some neighbors have partial power, or flickering lights. We have nothing. Have breakers off too in case of a power surge whenever it comes back on. I don't expect power soon. I think overhead powerlines are easier to fix and diagnose from what I heard from someone. Underground powerlines where salt water surge happens is a bad idea for a situation like this. Wind gets power lines overhead, but water gets it in the ground if water is high enough. I imagine they are going to do the easy stuff first and get the overall numbers of those without power down. Then they likely will get to harder stuff. I have no estimate, others have called TECO since I don't have a regular cell phone other than something that uses wifi. But I would guess it could be many days. And in some storms for some it takes weeks. I don't quite know the scope of the storm. I have heard of some areas around our region were hit hard, with one neighbor knowing someone on the Gulf side of Pinellas County that lost their home and car. I have heard of a lot of trees down in another state. I had power when the storm made landfall in Florida before midnight. Maybe an hour or more after we had power, but we turned the TV off and got to work on protecting the doors from the inside. To have internet and phone again, that needs to be fixed. All the boxes were completely submerged too. On one the box cover floated down the street. But we'll need power first. We have four dehumidifiers that could really help. But we'll do with shirts to soak up the bit of water left. It was never where you could see the water on the carpet, but the padding under it is like a sponge. But power would be nice in general. We have no damage we're going to get fixed, but we might loose the food in the deep freezer, freezer and refrigerator. We're eating some. I froze giant bottles of water before the storm and we rarely open the deep freezer other than when we put the stuff in the freezer in the house in there. It's still cold there because of those frozen jugs of water. But it won't last too many days. We don't have as much food in there being that it is hurricane season. But that will really be the only expense in the end if we don't get power back. We don't use our pool, we have a cover on it, but a neighbor mentioned that to get the dirty water out of there, maybe salt too i don't know, that it has to be drained, but we're not. Our neighbor did us a massive favor that saved the house from a lot of damage by letting us use those pavers. We would be ripping out carpet now instead of getting out some excess moisture. The garage would have been really bad. Termites already did a number on the cabinets and I opened those cabinets and I don't see damage other than one that could use trimming a tiny bit to get it to closed. But if it had been 8 inches like the waterline, that would have gotten into the walls of the house. Concrete block around the house, not inside. The water would have entered the walls of my computer room and the dining room. That would have meant ripping out the walls. An inch of water above the carpet would have destroyed all of it, we would not have been able to remove most of the water and simply air it out. We have wood cabinets that would have been damaged in most rooms, destroying the ones in kitchen, pantry, three bathrooms and my computer room. Other wood may have survived better, but that was like the cabinet by the pool area. It just barely got water in the door of several but it expanded the wood half way up the cabinet. Don't care about the pool ones, but couldn't have had that happen in the house. So, we were exceptionally lucky, even if it takes a long time to get power back. Within a week I'll send a message again or sooner. Sooner if we get power back, but even then if I don't have internet it might be the next day when we go out and I would email like this to say we have power back. I am typing this at home and if I see an email or other message where I am posting this I won't be responding directly. Just connecting to send this, though I will check my email and read what I got previously to my dad and check the weather too to make sure tropics are quiet nearby. I can charge my tablet in the car while we are out and typing this only took about 10 percent of the battery. Still have 86%. Using it as a clock only drained 1% over 24 hours. Again, we were extremely lucky. Even a neighbor right across the street from me had a few inches all across their house. Apparently they had waterproof floors, but they were drying it out with fans and I let them borrow two dehumidifiers. They wanted to make sure there wasn't water elsewhere. They actually have power still. Who has it and who doesn't is weird, but it seems to indicate they need to fix something specific to our box and they just aren't getting around to that anytime soon I bet. |