And It Could Have Been a Lot Worse.

We all thought hurricane Irma was heading directly toward us, a maxed out level five storm.  But we lucked out, and it took a different path.  The West Indies, especially Barbuda and St Martin, didn't luck out.  Neither did Puerto Rico and Hispanola.  Cuba didn't luck out.  They all got badly slammed.  A co-worker yesterday showed me photographs of a small country village in Cuba after the storm.  The wood frame buildings were just piles of rubble, and the inhabitants had no place at all to go.

The storm was then supposed to ravage the west coast of Florida, but by the time it got there, it was a level two, and it did much less damage than we thought it would.

Here, we got much more wind than rain, and not nearly the wind we thought we would get.  But it was enough to take out power starting Sunday morning, 9/10, and it brought down lots of branches and a noteworthy collection of whole trees.  Over-represented among the fallen trees were the Australian pines and the ficus/banyans.  The former are already recognized as menace invaders, and the county has outlawed them.  I hope the county, or the Village, will outlaw the latter.  They have very shallow root systems, and they can't take storms.  I saw many large ones down after the '05 storms, and a bunch more this week.  And with the large canopy, they always take power and other lines with them, as do the Australian pines, which are too tall to miss doing considerable damage when they fall.

We were all out working in the yards and streets by Monday.  There was lots and lots of debris, and we piled it where we could.  Swales and medians were loaded with it.  The Village engaged a company called Grubb to do the storm clean-up.  The word on the street at one point was that Grubb would be making its sweep on Thursday, 9/14.  Frankly, I'm not sure if anything happened on Thursday.  Clearly, the debris didn't disappear.  Today--Saturday, 9/16-- I was out walking, and I encountered a crew on upper Griffing.  I thought it might be Grubb, but it was FEMA.  They told me Grubb had concentrated the debris onto the medians, to work to get it out of the streets.  They--FEMA-- were now removing it.  They will make three passes through the Village, taking the largest loads first, then some of the left-overs, then using the fine-toothed comb at the end.

Some people on my street (119th) got power back by Monday morning, 9/11.  Mine came on Friday afternoon, 9/15, at about 4:00.  Much or most or all of Griffing still doesn't have power.  It'll all come.  We have been told everyone in BP will have power by the end of the day Sunday, 9/17.  I have no idea what the pace is for the rest of the county.   One guy I encountered this AM was a FEMA employee who happens to live in west Broward, in a relatively newer community in Pembroke Pines.  He told me the power lines in his community are all under ground, and they never had a flicker of lost power.  One BP resident I saw on Monday, 9/11, said he was glad for the concrete poles.  He was one of those whose power came back on Monday AM.  He said he hadn't favored them at first, but he likes them now.  I've noticed others of the old wooden ones leaning or down again this time.  Maybe eventually, we can get all the poles changed to the concrete ones.  It's too late to bury all the lines.  But if we had all concrete poles, and we got rid of the most vulnerable tree species, we'd do ourselves a big favor.

I thought we would have much more flooding than we did.  It turns out rain was not a major feature of this storm, and we didn't have large pools of water left.  The main area of flooding I saw was in front of the Rosses' house, across from the church.  And it's possible that that flooding was only because the canal got backed up, also flooding the open lot just south of the 6th Avenue bridge, next to the Rosses.  Maybe it backed up from there onto the street.  I heard that some houses just north of that bridge, on the north part of Griffing, and houses south of there, on the south part of Griffing, also had flooding from the canal.  As far as I know, it's all resolved now.

I hope everyone is OK now.  If not, let someone know.  You can tell me, or Roxy or Chuck Ross, or Krishan Manners, or Nick Wollschlager.