I haven't written in a while!! The past month has been so crazy. We started keeping track of hurricane Irma when it formed at the end of August. As a category 5 hurricane it was very powerful. It was scary to see it as it neared Puerto Rico. I was worried for my family. I was relieved when it passed PR but then we had the threat that it would come here. It kept changing the path and as we were watching the news, 4 hours before we got hit with the worst of it here in the Orlando area, which was supposed to be tropical storm winds and rain, they said on the local station that it changed course and the eye was now going to go right over us. That was super scary to hear. Alison and Kevin were here with us. We had everything set up for us in the hallway away from windows. The Sound outside was scary. Water was coming in through the front door and the back door in the rec room. We kept putting towels but those were getting soaked, good thing we never lost power and I kept putting those towels in the dryer and reusing them through out the night. We were finally able to go to sleep around 3:00 AM. The next morning we went out to see what damaged our house had sustained, we feel blessed that it was only these things:
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| The X is where we live more or less |
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| Lost part of our roof tiles |
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| Debris everywhere. We filled quite a few trash bags. |
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| We lost lots of the screen panels of our pool enclosure |
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| Screen panel in the pool |
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| One of our front trees fell |
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| The playground tarp broke |
Brent checking the roof. I was not happy he was up there, it scares me.
Hurricane Irma was huge!
Then hurricane Maria happened. It was probably one of the worst times of my life. Seeing it getting closer to Puerto Rico and knowing what it was capable of doing. I was sick to my stomach as I watched it getting closer and closer to PR. I spoke with my uncle and my brother on Tuesday and then by some miracle my brother was able to call me on Wednesday morning prior to the worst of the hurricane going over them. After that I didn't hear from him until Sunday night that he was able to call. I knew he was fine because his ex wife had heard from my niece Ivy that she was fine and told her to tell me that they were good. My niece was able to call from a Satellite phone, her cousin is a police officer and she took the phone to her so she could call. Later that day my brother heard his neighbor across the street talking. Yvonne lives alone so he asked her who she was talking to. She said that her all fashioned land line phone worked. My brother went over and called me and luckily the call went through. They had no electricity, no internet and so they had no idea what was going on outside of Ponce. Facebook was exploding with all my friends in the States trying to find out about there family members in PR. The images coming out of Puerto Rico were heartbreaking. I felt like someone had punched me on the chest and my heart hurt, I felt like I had hole where my heart is. That is the only way I can explain my feelings. I cried for so many days. I was in shock to see my island devastated and completely destroyed. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't fly there and help. There was nothing I could do.
These are pictures of Ponce
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| Part of Avenida Las Americas is by my house. |
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| La Guancha |
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| This is the baseball stadium right by my house. |
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| That tree on the right, if you turn right before that tree (you can't see the street) that takes you to my house. We walked to the stadium all the time to watch the baseball games. People would park in front of my house and walk to the games. That is how close we live to it. It is less than a 5 minute walk. The street was flooded but thank goodness our house did not flood and there was no damage. |
