When my county announced the evacuation order with Hurricane Irma coming on fast, I had the good fortune to be in Illinois teaching a class:\u00a0 had \u201cpre-evacuated,\u201d as it were, and personally escaped the worst of it.<\/p>\n
The house got some external damage, but nothing breached walls or roof with wind and rain. On our end, it could have been a whole<\/em> lot worse.<\/p>\n Being prepared is A Good Thing even when you yourself aren\u2019t there.\u00a0 Power is still out, and will be for a while. (Last one was eight days or more; I experienced it as more of an adventure than a disaster.)\u00a0 That time and this, I was one of the lucky ones.<\/p>\n But with some help from good friends we were able to get the contents of the freezer to a church that has been feeding people a whole lot less lucky than we, a great many of whom are sheltered in our community.\u00a0 When another friend with seven young kids was desperate for a generator, we had one to lend him.\u00a0 When yet another friend\u2019s SUV picked the worst possible time \u2013 the middle of a monumental Florida hurricane \u2013 to go belly up, my personal SUV (with full tank \u2018cause I knew Irma had us in the crosshairs before I left for Illinois) was waiting for him at my place to use for the duration.<\/p>\n Me? I\u2019m flying tomorrow to Houston, where the devastation of Hurricane Harvey remains very fresh.\u00a0 (Yeah, I know.\u00a0 Why Houston now? Because\u2026reasons. Will get back to you on that.)<\/p>\n Condolences to those less fortunate than we, and best wishes to all who had to go through it.<\/p>\n And for those who didn\u2019t have to go through it, learn and reinforce the lessons of those who did.<\/p>\n Preparation ain\u2019t paranoia.<\/p>\n The recent monster hurricanes have done much to reinforce the wisdom of self-reliance that the Duffy family so long ago, and since, instilled into the Backwoods Home <\/em>values.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my county announced the evacuation order with Hurricane Irma coming on fast, I had the good fortune to be in Illinois teaching a class:\u00a0 had \u201cpre-evacuated,\u201d as it were, and personally escaped the worst of it. The house got some external damage, but nothing breached walls or roof with wind and rain. On our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-current-events","8":"category-preparedness"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}