Saw help heading north on I-75 today

[KeyLargoDave]

I left a motel in Gainesville at noon today and drove on I-75 back to the Keys. I saw a good sign: several long convoys of both utility trucks and military vehicles heading north from central Florida. There were easily more than 100 utility bucket trucks and other repair vehicles. The military trucks were personnel and equipment vehicles, which may have been returning evacuees to the Panhandle. At places I stopped, there were also FEMA and insurance vehicles heading to the affected area.

Here's hoping there's a flood of help to get people back to some kind of normalcy as soon as possible. I'm sure Entergy in NOLA will be able to send a lot of personnel and equipment thanks to the light damage in the city.

If anyone has heard from Cape San Blas area, I'd like to know anything you can report. I think the area from Carabelle to Panama City might have fairly extensive damage from storm bands and surge. The surf was getting very high Wed. morning, low areas were flooding when I evacuated and the radar looked nasty Wednesday night.

[dixiebreeze]

Very good news!

[yzerfan]

Cape San Blas is an extremely erosion-prone peninsula. The 'elbow' of CSB where the rip-rap is was seeing overwash already before dark yesterday. Probably road damade there, and sheriff's office said they were going to lose at least some vacation houses.

It sounded like Mexico Beach didn't do too badly. Port St. Joe had a tornado or two in the vicinity, but I haven't heard of much damage from there. South of Port St. Joe the elevation is so low that there was probably minor flooding.

[seaswing]

I also saw vehicles heading north on I-75 early this morning. Must have been 20 Search and Rescue vehicles with a semi tractor trailer as one of them. The military vehicles have been all over as well as Red Cross. When I went to the grocery store today (haven't had much in the frig since Frances), there was two Red Cross vehicles parked in the lot giving out bottled water. I must say that after Frances, I was impressed with the response of FEMA and the Red Cross. A lot of people were without power for 5 days or more around here. Inland, we have lots of big trees and many came down and brought the power lines with them. The Red Cross and FEMA were around our area giving out ice, water, and MRE's and there were long lines. I can now say firsthand that without there help, things would have been worse in terms of recovery.