Hi guys, just got internet back today, we did go to a shelter in nearby North Port Jr high school, as the news started saying the surge could reach 12 - 16 feet. I'd say there were about 2000+ people there. This was the lunch room - before it got busy.
We were assigned to various classrooms, It was two of the hardest days to endure, we got about an hours worth of sleep the first night. The second night we got about 3 hours sleep due to a group of four people that kept talking all night/morning. At 2:30 am I asked them to quite down, as my 91 year old mother needed to sleep and I was fed up with them. At 3:30 am they were yacking again. I got up and told them I need to get some sleep or I was going to knock them out. The other 30+ people in the room also spoke up and said they would help if they didn't shut the f up. So we had peace and quite from 3:30 am to 6:30 am. The shelter lost power at 3:30.
The shelter served meals, nothing to brag about, but it kept us fed.
The shelter said it was "pet friendly" , we found out they wanted to house the pets in the gym, and give the owners time to visit, then lock down the school when the storm went over. Well all the owners said the hell with that and stayed with the pets in the gym over the time we were there. The pets were freaked out enough, if we left them alone it would have been worse for them. We took our two cats, they were scared to death, my sister stayed with them. The many dogs that were there wouldn't stop barking at each other, it was a long two nights. - should had pasted out tranquilizers to the pets - or the owners. Here's our cats, their sisters, they huddled together the whole time.
We heard the storm got weaker as it went over Punta Gorda, turned out we would have been okay if we stayed, but we just couldn't take the risk with the information we had at the time. My mother and sister and myself are fine now. When we got home on the 11th around 10 am, power was out, hooked up our generator to two fridge's and chest freezer. We were able to save all the food. Ran cords to each bedroom so we all could have lights and a fan.
Power was restored on the 12th at 1:30 am. Today, the 15th the cable/internet was restored.
The house and cars were undamaged. I was able to remotely access our security cameras. I could see the level of the water in the canal came about a foot from the top of the seawall.
It's good to be home again. Thankful that we didn't have the same damage as when Charley hit us.
Hope old lar is doing okay.
