Lift Up Your Hearts!

12:45 p.m. Too late. All the Home Depots in the area are out of plywood. THAT’s what we should have done last weekend instead of yardwork (Saturday) or Disney (Sunday). We’re fine with batteries—good thing, because they’re out of those, too—but I’ll need to make a trip to the pool store and the grocery store. I had been planning to go grocery shopping Friday, to buy what we need for the Daleys’ visit next week. I guess that had better wait, but I should pick up a few staples while I can.

Wednesday, September 1, 2004. Yes, it’s true. While we are still recovering from Charley, Frances has us in her sights. Not locked in, I trust—but right now we are sitting on the bull’s-eye. We are praying that Frances will take a harmless turn out into the Atlantic, not only because we don’t want to deal with another hurricane, but also because Heather, Jon, and Jonathan are supposed to be flying in Friday night. Jonathan, of course, has never been here, and Heather hasn’t been home since before she got married. We’ve been looking forward to this visit for a long time. However, just because we went through a hurricane with Janet, that doesn’t mean we’d like to experience one with Heather to even the score!

We still have many of our jugs of water in the freezer from last time. I’ve started freezing more, because we discovered that they are a wonderful way of having both ice and a fresh water supply. I just finished measuring our windows, and we hope to go out for plywood later today. (For those of you new to these updates, when Charley came we discovered that our window-protection boards had disappeared with our move.)

Life for us has been essentially back to normal for a week, but there are still people around here without power. The more local the damage is, the longer it takes to fix. Whatever knocked our power out apparently did so for a large number of people, so that repair had high priority.

Disasters seem to bring out the best and the worst in people. You hear about looting and price-gouging, but after Charley I’ve heard more about kindness and sharing. Costco opened its gasoline pumps to non-members, and when the regular grade of gas was gone, sold premium for the price of the lower grade. In one neighborhood a longstanding feud was broken as neighbors united around a common need. On our street, post-Charley cleanup brought many of us outside at the same time, evoking conversations among people who hadn’t said more than hello for weeks or even months. People shared tools, information, advice, and labor.

Not everyone’s definition of the necessities of life is the same, but one neighbor and I found common ground as we shared computing resources in an effort to keep our personal webpages updated!

Power is gradually being restored to the area, though many of our friends are still without. If we stay near home, it is easy to conclude that things are nearly back to normal. Janet and I went shopping yesterday, and business was “as usual” for the most part. The greatest lack seems to be gasoline, as supplies have been disrupted, and it is needed not only for cars but for generators. Porter drove to a church meeting about 40 minutes away and found no gas available anywhere between here and there. I’m grateful I was able to fill the gas tank on the “other” car before the storm hit. I had been tempted not to bother, since we had one car that could get us where we needed to go, and the other was about half full. I did not reckon on gas being so hard to find after the storm, and we needed it tonight when we picked Andy up from the airport.

That was certainly an adventure. It was the first time we had been down through Orlando since the storm. We had heard that all major roads were open, but on that trip Janet and I learned that “open” does not mean “operating normally.” I-4 was fine, but we ran into our first snag when we exited onto Michigan Avenue. Suddenly all was dark, except for blinding flares and flashing police lights. It might have been possible to turn left, but as far as we could see we were being forced to turn right. So we did, turning around when we could, in a darkened parking lot. Darkened! That was the appropriate adjective for most of the trip. I suspect we would have found Charley’s destruction even more impressive had we been able to see it. We had glimpses of downed poles entangled in wires, uprooted trees, shattered signs, obliterated billboards, and metal structures doing homage to the storm in sweeping, low bows. But we didn’t see much; it was all we could do to see where we were going, and we didn’t always do a good job at that. We might as well have been on another planet for all the cityscape looked familiar. In the dark, landmarks—aren’t. Especially when your dark-adjusted eyes come into an intersection and are blinded by the flashing lights of police cars.

Finally we were able to read a street sign, and confirmed our suspicions that we had missed our turn. We reversed direction (again, in the dark), only to find that we could not turn left where we needed to but were forced by the police barricades to go straight. So we did, and turned around again, and were able to get on the right road.

Not that our troubles were over. On this road, some of the lights were working, but in fact that was not much help, because others were not. And this time there was no control at all at those intersections. When the lights are out, you are supposed to treat the intersection as a four-way stop, but we discovered that that is easier said than done, since it’s difficult to see a light that’s not on until it is too late to stop, especially if there’s a car behind you that whose driver is most likely not expecting you to stop! We discovered, too, how our eyes naturally focus on the next (working) light; it took constant, active thought to remember to look for the invisible lights.

Alerted by now to the fact that we could not depend on landmarks to tell our subconscious minds that the turn was coming up, we anticipated our next turn and moved smoothly into the left lane—only to find it blocked by police barricades. At this intersection, we could go neither left nor straight, but were forced to turn right. Again we traveled until we found a safe place to turn around and resume our journey.

There were a few more difficulties before we arrived at the airport, but only one more surprise: a tree that suddenly loomed out of the darkness completely across our path. Fortunately, it did not block all lanes, and we were able to go around it.

The airport itself was no problem, and our misadventures, it turned out, had been perfectly timed: we arrived just as Andy’s luggage was coming off carousel. We took a different way home and had much less trouble. The landscape was still foreign, but most of the lights were working, and we had no turns until we were nearly home. We checked out the gas stations and found a few that we think were selling gas, though most were clearly empty.

Hurricane Charley did not cut off our water supply; we did not even lose pressure, as some cities did, so our tap water remains healthful. Most of those being told to boil their water are also without power, and gas stoves are rare. Fortunately, gas grills are more common.

We can argue about whether it is good or bad to add fluoride to water. We can worry about Prozac making its way into our water supplies. We can aver that, despite treatment, dangerous chemicals still lurk in dangerous amounts in our tap water, and drink only filtered or bottled water. Then we can worry about what dangerous chemicals might be in that water. Some of us can remember the taste of cold mountain springs or fresh well water, and regret that our children may never experience such pleasure. But we can't deny that access to plentiful, clear water—hot or cold at our touch, even!—that doesn't harbor life-threatening germs and parasites, is a blessing that sets us apart from most of the people who have ever lived.

The cool shower—and the blessing of soap—that rinses away the heat, grime, and sweat of our clean-up efforts. Flush toilets. Clean dishes and clean clothes. The jugs of frozen water that kept our food from spoiling while we were without power. A glass of pristine ice water, the world's best and most thirst-quenching drink. The luxury of a long, hot, soaking bath. We even put thousands of gallons of precious, clean drinking water into a hole in the back yard and swim in it!

And let's not forget the sewer system—a thought appropriate here because our sewer and water bills come together, and because if the dirty water were allowed to accumulate, the clean water wouldn't last long. There was a danger in Charley that I hadn't realized: our sewage treatment plants require power to operate, and loss of power meant that the sewers could start backing up into our homes! Altamonte Springs handled the problem well, using huge, portable generators to feed the treatment plant lines, but it is still a great concern in harder–hit areas.

Water. Cleanliness. Health. Much too easily taken for granted. It makes one want to write a huge check to World Vision, or some other organization that works to provide clean water to those who need it.

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)

And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light. (Rev. 22:5)

Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (John 8:12)

Bathed as we usually are with light at the touch of a switch, with light at our command even in the darkest night, I rarely appreciated what these verses must have meant to people who really knew darkness. The idea of constant light seemed less than paradisiacal to me; I thought of darkness as restful, comforting, and revealing of starry splendors rendered invisible by the brightness of the day. I had been known to grumble at the intrusion of the light: our neighbor's motion-sensitive floodlight, activated by a passing cat and piercing my sleep; or a city's midnight glow that washed out my view of the stars.

Hurricane Charley spoke pointedly to the fallacy of my feelings. Darkness is only comforting when light is available at need. Without light, the darkness conceals dangers, from the chair ambushing your toes to the tree limb hurtling toward your window. A harmless insect suddenly lighting on your arm evokes disproportionate terror, because you didn't see it coming, and you don't know what it is. Does the darkened bathroom conceal a snake, or perhaps encroaching floodwaters? Unrelieved darkness is the natural home of fear.

What a blessing is a flashlight, or a candle! Yet in banishing fear, they leave frustration in its place. You can't quite see. Have I washed this dish well? Did I knit that pattern right? Reading becomes more strain than pleasure. Lethargy sets in: it is easier to sleep than to strain against the dimness.

Tonight I will once again appreciate the darkness that brings a visible hush to our frantic world. But only because light is again available when I need it. It is light that makes darkness beautiful; it is light that makes darkness bearable.

Charley brought darkness, and left behind the realization that a source of dependable, unfailing light is, after all, a very good thing.

8/14/04 10:00 p.m. Our power was restored at 7:45 p.m. We had spent the day trying to conserve cool air, in the house, the freezer, and the refrigerator. Porter had the rest of the strawberry-rhubarb crisp with nearly-liquid ice cream for breakfast. The house stayed reasonably cool, though we lost some of the effect by spending much of the day outside in the sun and heat, cleaning up. Porter and Janet worked on the roof, Porter on the screened enclosure, and I stayed on the ground. Hurricanes are good for neighbor relations; many people were out working, and all were friendly and free with encouragement and help.

Most of my experience with power outages was in the north, in the winter, where there was never any problem with what to do with food that needed to be kept cold: it was easy just to set it outside! Here we worked hard not to open the refrigerator and freezer any more than necessary. For our meals, we finished up milk and meat that we feared would spoil; fortunately we didn't have much of either. Despite the work, it was a relatively relaxed day: heat, humidity, and a darkened house tend to make one lethargic. We played Quiddler, read, napped, and enjoyed talking more with our neighbors than we have in quite a while. Now that the power has returned, life is busy again, as we realize that our responsibilities did not disappear in the hurricane, but were waiting for us on the other side.

The jugs of water I had frozen did a good job of keeping our refrigerator and freezer cool. Given the uncertainty of when power would be restored, however, we accepted a neighbor's offer to get a block of dry ice when he got some for his family. The cost was $30, but well worth it; it would have been necessary had the power stayed off much longer.

We went for a walk around the neighborhood, and saw that most people had escaped with only minor damage. Not everyone: there were some impressive tree uprootings. Other parts of Central Florida did not fare so well. Maitland and Winter Park were especially hard hit, and will be boiling their water for the next week. One of their power substations was obliterated. A friend drove by the Orlando Executive Airport (Herndon) and said that the runway lights had been bent double. At Orlando International Airport, winds were measured at 110 mph, much more than we experienced.

Our grapefruit tree only lost one of its fruit!

Here are a few pictures:

Trying to protect the piano
Camping out in the hall (most protected part of the house)

Janet knits by candlelight (the flash somewhat ruins the effect; it really is dark

Broken branches that didn't fall

Wind pressing against vegetation pressing against screen = torn screen

Debris on the back patio

The neighbor's tree fell exactly between his car and his mailbox

8/14/04 9:00 a.m. This won’t be long, as I don’t want to use too much of the laptop’s battery; there is as yet no estimate as to when power will be restored. Seventy-five percent of Seminole County (us) is without power, and 50% of Orange County. We lost power at about 9:30 last night.

Thanks be to God! And thanks to all of your for your prayers. We have a lot to be grateful for today. We have lost one easily-repairable screen section, and there are a number of tree limbs that will have to be trimmed, as they are broken and hanging. (That will be an interesting project of the kind I will not want to watch, with Porter on the roof. Come to think of it, don’t stop praying yet!

The pool is green with all the powdered vegetation driven through the screen. But we are all fine! Our across the street neighbor had a tree come down—for those of you who know, it’s the tree the Schweizers planted in their front yard. Miraculously, the huge tree came down neatly between their mailbox and their car!

During the worst of the storm, we were holed up in our hall. Janet knit by candlelight. We felt the front side of the hurricane, then the eye, then eventually we started wondering, “Isn’t this a mighty big eye?” Apparently the storm spread out a bit and the back side passed by more to the east of us. Porter took a walk around the block and reports some more trees down. Winter Park and Maitland apparently were hit harder, but we don’t know a lot right now. There were some fatalities, including a little girl crushed when a moving van, caught by the wind, fell over on her family’s car. To that family, there’s no meaning to “it could have been so much worse.” Nonetheless, we are all thankful, because Charley could have been so much worse for us, and for most of Florida.

8/13/04 9:20 p.m. Bringing the computer down now. Love you all! Hope to post good news in the morning.

8/13/04 8:50 p.m. Just lost power; it came back on in a few seconds. But it may be a harbinger of things to come....

8/13/04 8:45 p.m. Wind really picking up now. I hear tree branches falling on the roof. They sound large but I know from experience that they are small branches making a large sound. On our roof, a squirrel sounds like a herd of buffalo.

8/13/04 8:30 p.m. The rain's picking up now, and so is the wind. Still less than a normal summer storm. Right now we're just annoyed with the local NBC station, which insists on broadcasting "news" instead of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, even when they don't have anything new to say. They say if you want to see the Olympics, watch it on cable. But if you don't have cable.... We looked for live Internet coverage, but apparently NBC nixed that. Funny - we watch TV maybe once every couple of months, and two things we want to watch are in conflict.

8/13/04 7:15 p.m. Charley is now a Category 3, and some of the commentators are talking almost as if it's all over. But it's not here yet, and even if it's a Category 2 when it gets here, that's a LOT of wind and rain. There's still a tornado warning, too.

Andy will be pleased to know that amateur radio is getting a lot of good publicity - hams are providing emergency communication. Nothing else to report, except that the strawberry-rhubarb crisp is very good. :)

8/13/04 6:40 p.m. Time to make some dinner, while we still have power. We've filled almost every available container with water. It's a little funny, since we're much more likely to lose power than water. But we're fresh out of Leyden jars....

Still drizzling lightly.