Central Florida Hurricanes Frances, Jeanne, Charley Ivan Property Damage Home and Area

Central Florida Hurricane Season 2004

The Hurricane Page

- = Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne = -

hurricane pic from space - GOOD RIDDENCE!

Damaging to people, homes, dreams, business, plants, animals, trees and minds!

No thunder, no lightning, but 3 (4 for some if including Ivan) back to back gigantic and magnificent storms have taken its toll on us and many others, leaving us financially and emotionally drained. Our much loved oak hammock has been diminished to a skeleton and now the shady protective covering has been replaced by the hot sun. Our family has lived here in Central FLA our entire lives and have never witnessed anything like this before. Just when life was beginning to get back to normal after Charley....-= ! slam ! =-, another message from the governor telling us to evacuate! The despairing news coverage (while the power was on) prior to the storms was 24/7, and nothing but talk of doom and destruction headed our way! The police drove around before each storm and use their short-quick siren to get our attention and then the loudspeaker to tell us to get out ASAP that this area is dangerous to be staying in. Some took it lightly, some did not. I've never taken a hurricane serious until a few weeks ago. Many people in our area lost their homes and businesses... if not all of it, not less than 80%.

Some our local beautiful oak hammocks that were 100's of years old, that once lined the highways and roadsides for the local ferneries to grow their livelihood were taken down with seemingly no effort. Those huge old trees, will take another 40-60 years (a few maybe 200 years old? - at least) to get to the sizes they were if planted soon with new Florida #1 grade 10" caliper trees. Many will not be able to replant/rebuild and I already know a few who have lost 100% of their business and are looking for a new means of income. A very hopeless feeling came to overwhelm when the news of Ivan aired, but thankfully we were spared from Ivan and only caught the outer bands for a short while. An even more hopeless doom came when they announced that Frances had intensified and was on the way straight for us. And yet even again when only having power back for less than a week we were notified that Jeanne was going hit the same place as Frances but only stronger. Life will not be the same around here for a while if it ever gets back to the place it was. I suppose a good way to look at it is that our family is alive and it brought us all close together during these times and we spent the days of the storms (believe it or not) swimming in the pool and playing games at my parents home. My parents' area only saw about 40-50 mph winds/gusts from Frances. Other areas saw 80-100 mph wind gusts.

Something to Think about

Should we stop planting trees or cut down the ones we enjoy so much? Really, do you think so? Even the 80-150 year old Live Oaks just because a storm MIGHT come your way? We haven't removed any trees. We carefully trimmed what is left what we were happy to have and cleaned the debris. No one can predict that a storm will your way and even if one does, no one can predict if the trees will even fall. In a couple photos below you can see a large pine tree. This tree is now about a 21" caliper, very tall and very large. It is within 20 feet from our home and still doing great. It even survived a southern pine beetle invasion unscathed! They left. I am not a full fledged tree hugger but it takes a VERY LONG time to grow trees to this size and to take them down out of fear is a waste of many years of pleasant growth in my opinion. I have had many folks tell me that their insurance companies refuse to issue them insurance while they have any tree that can damage their home for any reason. I have also had some folks pay to take down those trees only to learn that the insurance companies refused them anyway.

If you do some research you will learn that the insurance dished out a lot of money from that year and then the next with New Orleans tragedy. But you know what? They Actually MADE MONEY all those storm years! That is correct. They reported earnings in the Millions anyway. So for them to now pull out of Florida is actually stupid for them. They are losing a lot of business and it is still rare that we get this magnitude of damage from storms. Sure it will happen again. But When? Who can predict the future? No one can. So why live in fear of these types of events? And why remove your old oak trees for the simple reason of, What-if? Many Many trees did NOT come down from any of those storms. Only about 10 percent really. If you live in an area where it is a common yearly occurrence of storms this damaging, then I would feel differently. But in the area we live in , it is just rare to have them do much damage if any at all. usually we just get the outer bands and those storms are actually normal to this area on a daily basis here in summer. All the trees are still standing every afternoon when the sun comes out again.

Believe it or not, the whole thing was fun. Here is why.

We were told to evacuate so we went to my parents home that doesn't have any trees that can land on the house. They have nice old trees just not where they could harm us. So we went there. My sister and her family stayed there for a few days until they got power back. We all had to live without power for quite a long time and learn how to make do with what we had. We actually played in the pool while Hurricane Frances was going over our heads. It was only windy and drizzly, no real downpours of rain and no thunder. It was unbearably hot and we felt bad for the babies who were sweating inside the house. that's why we played in the pool, to keep cool. It worked. We got to be with each other and enjoy each others company WITHOUT television! That was actually an experience that was great! We played games, cooked out on the grill, became a closer family and it just seemed like a vacation more than a series of storms.

Was it all good? Of course not. At first it was scary, not knowing what was going to happen to our lives and family and property. It was annoying while we were sweating to death in the middle of humid summer and couldn't shower or cook on the stove or go to the store, get on the internet, fill orders and whatever else is normal living. The clean up afterwards was painful as well as the damage to our home, but in the end, I would not have changed a thing about this summer.

Charley: Hits - August 13th-14th

Hurricane Charley Path

Charley only caused us loss of power and water for 3+ days after it smashed into us. Thankfully we only lost a lot of small twigs, dead wood in the trees and only a few larger limbs were ripped from their stable place on the trees. Ironically, many west coast and southern living Floridians and vacationing tourists evacuated to the east coast and Orlando only to be battered worse than they would have if they had stayed at home by Charley. Gas was gone from every pump in every town at every gas station within 100 miles on the day before the storm hit. Water, lamp oil, candles, generators, plywood, batteries and most foods were depleted as well at every store. I've never seen that before and we have had storm scares in the past. Not much to show as far as pictures go but was scary none the less. Less than 5 miles away in at least two directions from our home was extensive damage like the storm hit dead on. Most likely from spin off tornadoes, but who knows? We are thankful that all we suffered was minimal. We didn't evacuate since there have been many, many threats in my lifetime and none ever hit any worse than a normal heavy duty afternoon Thunder storm.

Frances: Hit - September 4th-5th-6th

Power out for 11 days from Frances.

After almost 2 days of sustained winds in the 60 mph and gusts to 100+, we lost many tree tops a few whole large trees and just wiped everyone out in the area, draining us all of our mental strength. Much work is still left un finished (as you could imagine) from Frances even now as we try to catch up on business and get back to normal life. This storm prompted the largest evacuation in Florida history with the count being over 2 million. Yes, every road and major interstate was jammed bumper to bumper as they tried to escape this one. It took my Aunt over 24 hours to get to Toccoa, Ga from Daytona Beach during Frances' evacuation. It's normally a 9-12 hour trip.

The Paths of just Charley and Frances... "X" marks the spot!

A few pics from Frances..

There's actually a house behind that large oak and under what's left of that old oak.

Our House and front yard under the tree Tops -=east view closer=-

Our House under the tree Tops -=west view=-

Hurricane Damage

Me Looking at the damage on the other side of storage trailer... crushed truck, no room to walk.

Our Entire property looked like this and were still cleaning up... and will be.

Yep, that was a storm.

These Ladyfinger Bananas stayed put. Talk about Wind Resistant! Only the two on the left were pushed to the right into the others. They were under the trees and probably protected from the major winds, but thought it was amazing to see them standing.

These are Strong Bananas! Ladyfingers

The two bananas on the right only had broken leaf stems, they were already growing at an angle because they were trying to reach sunlight from under the hammock. The other two on the left are actually growing straight again and only suffered a shredded look to the leaves.

There should actually be very little sun on the ground there in the background, but now it's opened up.

My Hair, My Hair!

Hannah 9-16-04

That was FUN! Lets do it again!

A house on Little Brown Church Road I pass by regularly

The tree barely missed total destruction to the house. They've since removed a few other large Oaks and raised the canopies of about 5 others that you can see in the background.

This guy didn't heed the warning signs

This was about 5 days after the truck went in. After the storm, the road was completely under about 6-12" of rushing, gushing water from the nearby creek on a stretch about 2 miles long. This area has only flooded like this that I know of one other time in the last 30 years. Even with the normal rainy, summer daily storms.

Normally that drainage ditch is only a trickle. It's still full but has receded about 3-4 feet back since Frances hit.

Frances took out about 130 feet of the Flagler Beach Pier by continual battering waves and winds, a favorite fishing spot for locals and tourists alike. It's also a favorite spot to watch the fireworks on Independence day. I have a feeling that next year wont be as great a show due to the financial burden on the county/city. Normally they last for a spectacular 20-30 minutes. There is a major firework maker's shop nearby named Santore and Son's that supplies the pier with some of the best firework shows I've ever seen. It's doubtful that they will add the length back seeing as this has happened in the past for other piers and were never replaced. Only the ends were repaired.

Flagler and Daytona are two of the very few beaches in the world that it is legal to drive on. Lately the Environmental/animal Activists are taking (have taken) away that right due to the protection of sea turtles that nest along these two beaches and are taking away a much coveted freedom for the local humans of the area. It was reported that these three storms have totally wiped out any possibilities of turtles hatching this year along the east coast of Florida. But the parent turtles are alive and there are plenty of other beaches to breed on that are barely traveled on and I'm sure they will be fine in our ecosystem.

Just noticed this while preparing for Hurricane Jeanne! I'm hoping that Ms. Jeanne doesn't finish it off. Thinking about notching it before it hits. This is really getting scary to live in Florida. It's not normal for Central Florida.

The split's at least 14-20" deep into the tree. I think its coming down and the Tree is only about 6 feet from the corner of the house.

Jeanne hit: - September 25th, 26th, 27th

And then came Jeanne supplying us with constant 60 mph winds with gusts up to 80 in our area. About the same as Frances. Jeanne made landfall and began to tear us up almost exactly 3 weeks to the day after Frances! Thankfully again, we only lost this tree that sadly supplied the back area and over our home with shade. This will take a few weeks to get to clean up. If I didn't already believe in miracles, I certainly do now! This tree stood about 70 ft tall and approx4-5ft in diameter at base and should have destroyed our home. Instead it was twisted in two places up the trunk when it fell and sort of "cupped" the rear of our home and not even one branch hit the house hard. The tops fell at the east side of the house and even missed the LP tank. The large tree trunk sunk about 3-4" into the ground it hit so hard! The tree obviously was weakened by Frances and taken down by Jeanne. There are still MANY hanging large limbs in what's left of the trees that will come down at their will unless I get a tree crew out and pay big bucks to have them removed. A few were tossed down on their own, but I can see that some are really stuck up there until they rot. There were limbs on our power line once again and we notified the power co. but they ignored our call and turned on the power to our home and everyone else's anyway only to the demise of a quite a few of our electronics, microwave and even the baby monitor. We had to wait an additional 3 days for the power company to return and fix this simple problem due to the mass power outage in our area. They fix the stores and other places that supply needs first, understandable.

Power Out for 6 days after Jeanne.