Our house was being tested with Hurricane Florence on mid
September 2018. In the beginning, this hurricane would cause minimum effect to
Fayetteville such as a few days of raining. However, along her way she became
bigger, from Category 1 to 4; making the cities along her path would expect
severe damages.
The hurricane was expected to reach Fayetteville on 14th
– 15th September (Friday and Saturday). However, schools and
businesses started to close on Wednesday afternoon. People stormed supermarkets
and hardware stores to stock on canned food, bottled waters, portable stoves,
generators, torches, etc. We couldn’t get generator because they were sold out.
We saw some people tried to make fortune, selling generators for almost 3 times
of regular price; but we decided not to be impulsive. We had a lot of canned
food and store water in a big new trash bin; that should be enough.
House-wise, it was a test for everything we had done. We
installed new roof when we bought it a year ago, and we built a shed and
outdoor shower. This disaster would test the quality of what we had installed
and built. Not only that they might fly away from their place, but the big pine
trees around the house might fall and crush them.
Day 1
On Thursday, the wind started to blow even though
inconsistently; trees started swaying a little bit. But towards the evening,
the wind started to escalate. It blew constantly in a faster pace; sometimes
raindrops followed. When we went to bed, everything still OK. Nothing flew or
broken. Power was still on, as well as water.
Day 2
When we woke up Friday morning, everything was the same like
before; the wind still blowing constantly. However, when we were about to make
breakfast at 10 AM, the power went off. It’s getting real now. Nothing we could
do but just watching the wind blew and the trees swayed from the back window. Of
course we also kept snacking all the food in the fridge before they went
spoiled. But surely time flew slowly.
At one point I went back to our bedroom, I realized that the
tree in front of the window had fallen. It was a medium size tree; luckily it
didn’t fall toward our house. It might be a different story if it did…
Day 3
We woke up pretty early on Saturday and the power still off.
But we were so grateful that the water line never went off. Later on I heard
some houses around my neighborhood had no power and water for days…
Anyway, at this point we had cabin fever already. Being
stuck in a house without really doing anything had made us bored. We noticed
the wind had slowed down, so we decided to rake up garden waste. While we were
doing it, light rain started to pour; but we stayed working until we got
totally soaking wet, around 1.5 hour later. We were pretty happy that we could
go out from the house and breathe the normal air, instead of AC.
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| A fallen tree in front of our bedroom. |
A few of the neighbors were also outside for a while. One
guy helped my husband in cutting the fallen tree with a chainsaw, when he saw
my husband was going to do it with an axe. What a nice gesture! One of the
neighbors went out to buy meals; so we knew that some restaurants were open. We
then drove around to see the current situation. Almost all of fast food was
open such as McD, Wendys, Hardees, Waffle House, etc. and they were all full! I
even never seen Hardees’ parking lot full with cars before…
But driving around after the peak of hurricane was
dangerous. Many traffic lights were not working and the roads were slippery.
Yet many people were outside, storming these restaurants. It seemed they all
had cabin fever too. I felt like a character in a movie where it’s dangerous
outside but still s/he goes out anyway; and the audience thinks s/he is stupid
in making the decision to go out. I guessed now I understand why…
We didn’t go to any restaurants; we just bought some snacks.
Back at home; we kept staying inside because the rain was getting harder. At
around 3 PM, finally we got the power back. Thank God!
Aftermath
The weather got better in the following days. On Monday, we
woke up early because we heard noisy sound from a lawnmower. Apparently the
weather was nice and the neighbors started to clean their yards. We were then
motivated to do the same.
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| Our flower bed before and after the hurricane. |
I know it sounds weird, but the disaster aftermath was the
best chance to meet the neighbors. We were helping each other in cleaning our
yards, from just lending out tools to literally help in cleaning. We spend the
whole day to clean the yard and afterward everything started to go back normal.
