SURVIVAL POLL: What was the most.....

[siobhan222]

If you've never been through a hurricane before, you have no idea how scary it's going to be. Prepare to be very very very scared. Get your ducks in a row early and GET READY.

Prepare early. Don't wait. By the time they're saying "prepare", it's already too late. Have your supplies BEFORE the storm is coming your way. Otherwise, you may not be able to get them.

Get your gas early. When you have no air, a few minutes in the car with the air turned on high is perhaps the most important thing to help save your sanity.

Buy lots of batteries. You can NEVER have enough.

Buy candles. After the storm, when you have no electricity and your batteries wear out, they're really critical to help you survive.

If you have no water, BABY WIPES are so important to just help you feel "sort of" clean.

Board the windows if you don't have shutters, it does help. If nothing else, it makes you feel better.

If you have sliding glass doors, get sandbags or at least, put towels down inside of them. That *absorb* some of the water, if not all.

You cannot possibly buy enough bottled water. Get all you can and get it early.

Fill the bathtubs in case you can't flush the toilet. This was really helpful for us with several days without water. It would have been much more embarassing and difficult for me if I couldn't have flushed.

Tuna in water in a can is nutritious, filling, and tasty. It's also cheap. Stock up on it. Especially if you have cats. They'll love it as well as you and it will help keep the morale up.

After the storm, if you can get out and go to a hotel, do it. It is a huge boost in terms of mental health. Cooked food never tasted so good and hot showers are awesome. Start calling and driving around the hotels in your area. Some are chains and will call their other hotel areas to see if there are rooms close by. They appear to be conscious of the situation and charge decent rates. We went 5 days without power and then were able to get gas and get a hotel. I'm epileptic and I'm really not sure I would have made it through without going to a hotel. It wasn't cheap, but it made me feel like living again. It was well worth it.

If you have a Sprint PCS cell phone and live in South Florida, it almost certainly won't work (I did and it didn't work ... and none of our neighbors' Sprint phones worked either). Verizon *might* work if you stand on one leg and stand in a certain place -- but you may have to drive around (and for several days after the hurricane, you can't drive at all so it may be a while). AT&T is about the same as Verizon. Expect to have to drive around to find a place with a signal. None of our neighbors with Mobile One had service. Cingular appears to work well in Florida in spite of the hurricane. I can't speak about other companies because these are what our neighbors had and the only ones I experienced. This is not a Cingular ad -- it's based on my experience. Needless to say, I just got a Cingular phone. I want contact with the world after the hurricane! And if they're the co. that can give it to me, I'm going to be with them! On Day 1 after the hurricane, their service was "iffy" but text messaging worked fine. On Day 2, service was perfect and I was literally begging all our neighbors with Cingular to let me use their phones.

In times of crisis, neighbors are awesome. Don't be afraid to socialize with them even if you don't know them well. We're all in the same boat.

Hope this helps.

Siobhan (a Frances survivor)

[ncbird]

Instead of buying several different appliances that will plug into the car cigarette lighter, why not consider a DC to AC power converters. Before we could afford a generator we bought 2 of them (one for each car) and ran extension cords into the house. Great for running things like small fans, the computer, lights, keeping the fish tank pump going and other small things. They are also great to have on hand to use at night instead of the noisy generator. We bought ours from our local car parts store for about $25.00 each. They are also much safer for the laptop as you don't have the power surges from them as you do with a generator.

[feederband]

Most impotant thing ...LOTS OF AMMO !!!!!!! Do not wait for looters to break down door. With new law in Florida will allow you to just take screens out of windows and take them out in your yard...Also don't forget in between wind gust go out and make sure you finish them off , don't want any live ones coming back and tring to sue your butt. Butt all jokes aside find out if there are people staying in your area get there phone numbers and give them yours and tell them you are leaving and their should be no one on you property. I got looted in frances and neighbours saw a van in are yard but didn't think much about ,they just thought we stayed.

[bevgo]

I learned how to make cornbread in a frying pan on a gas grill with a side burner, and how to make campfire coffee. Life saver when there is no power. I amazes me how smart my mom can be.

[OuterBanker]

Buy a generator. Lost over 1,000.00 in game fish (tuna, dolphin, wahoo, etc) which would have paid for a generator all in itself.

Just how much we don't associate with our neighbors. Amazing just how neighborly we all become during a crisis. We swear afterwords that we won't let that happen again, but it does.

Just how many stars there are. The milky way explodes before your eyes when the power goes out.

Local, network, national, cable news. What's going on, and what are they reporting on your situation.

Other than news, just how much I didn't miss television.

Just how much the police, national guard, emergency services, etc. help and the countless hours they spend helping and protecting us. Curfews, limited travel restrictions may be a pain but they also provide a sense of security.

Air conditioning, hot water, ice.

What a mess flooding is, smells you hope you never experience again.

I could go on and on

[cajungal]

If you are going to evacuate, do it early. We wasted so much time deciding to leave for Ivan that it was too late. We stayed at home. Even though, I knew Ivan was going to miss us. I knew Gulf Shores was the target even before it hit. But, I could not convince my parents that. They were hysterical.