Our Irma Evacuation

[IHB1979]

Thursday morning, days before a Florida landfall, Irma was being forecast to hit SE Florida and exit around the Cape Canaveral area, then a Charlston, SC landfall. We live on the barrier island south of Cape Canaveral and we knew a mandatory evacuation order was imminent. My family and I buttoned up the house and decided to evacuate. We couldn't find any hotels in the central FL area. So I decided to make the best out of having to evacuate and headed northwest to the panhandle. Traffic was horrendous and gas was in short supply as we made our way from the Melbourne, FL area to Orlando. We were going to take the FL turnpike to get to I75 but it was a parking lot. Instead of taking I75 to I10 we ended up traversing the area on secondary highways trying to avoid the traffic. Took 44 from Leesburg to Crystal River where we took 98 all the way to our destination west of the big bend area, which at the time was out of the 5-day cone.

After hours in the car with my wife and sons, 4 and 2, we had to eat. We thought to calm everyone down we would find something outdoors, a picnic dinner. So we got off 98 in Yankeetown, found a park with a gazebo and maybe the largest Sabal palmettos I have ever seen right on the Withlacoochee River. Yankeetown is on the west coast of Florida, has the red outline around it on the map below.

 

 

After our little break on the Withlacoochee River, we kept driving, many others had the same idea we had and the traffic continued to be terrible.

What should have been a 6.5 hour drive under normal conditions ended up being 11.5 hours. We were safe or at least we thought! Within 36 hours the cone shifted drastically to the west, now possible SW Florida landfall...we were now in the cone again and our lodging was a wooden cottage within 5 miles of the panhandle coast. My plan had backfired and had to make the decision to move further north into Alabama. Believe it or not, we could only find a hotel reservation in Birmingham, AL. We loaded the car up and got back on the road feeling as though Irma was chasing us. About 2 or 3 hours into our drive we entered Enterprise, AL and drove by a Holiday Inn Express, pulled in because it looked empty and got the last room available. We spent the next two days in Enterprise as Irma carved a path northward through the peninsula of Florida. We had a lot of anxiety about going home, along with the 5.5 million other evacuees'. What would traffic be like, will there be gas, etc. We made a decision to leave Enterprise just as Irma passed north of the Florida border.  We had some gusty driving conditions and numerous trees were blocking I10, thankfully they were on the West bound direction of the interstate. We arrived home in 8 hours. Minimal damage, gutter, porch screen and some fascia blown out. Palms tipped and leaning, trees shredded but nothing compared to what others have encountered.

We had made it home Monday evening...with no power. It would remain like this until Friday morning. Needless to say my family now owns a generator and window AC unit.

[Jesse]

Thanks for sharing.  Good to hear you, your family, and property made it out ok.

[Kim]

Thanks for your story. First-hand descriptions are interesting and informative. Hope I never have to go through a similar experience.

[PalmatierMeg]

FL is an evacuation nightmare. You have no choice as you live on a barrier island. Our niece left at the last minute after hearing even inland Cape Coral was subject to 10-12' storm surge (so, supposedly, were we). She & her family drove through the night to Atlanta. Five days later her little caravan took 27 hours to get home (no hotel rooms anywhere) for a trip that should have taken 8-10 hours. Her house was fine except for no power so they ended up crashing at our place for the night and hot showers. What can be done next time? I really don't know. We stayed because we figured out years ago the horrendous logistics of these evacuations. We also went through Charley in 2004, which was a cat 4 when it hit our area at the last minute. We lost shingles on our 12 y.o. roof. We replaced that 11 months later with a metal roof.  We decided to ride out Irma and that storm turned out to be cat 2-3. No damage to the house whatsoever although the gardens were trashed. I'm absolutely sold on metal roofs in FL - well worth the extra cost.

I'm glad to hear you and your family are well.

[DoomsDave]

Bob, thanks for sharing your harrowing experience.

Glad you and your family are safe.

Your experience and Meg's observations point out clearly the dilemmas posed by a mass evacuation from a place that gets more and more crowded all the time, coupled with at least theoretically rising sea levels. A very unpleasant calculation.