• Please be sure to read the rules and adhere to them. Some banned members have complained that they are not spammers. But they spammed us. Some even tried to redirect our members to other forums. Duh. Be smart. Read the rules and adhere to them and we will all get along just fine. Cheers. :beer: Link to the rules: https://www.forumsforums.com/threads/forum-rules-info.2974/

Florida Hurricane Update

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
As the other thread was dedicated to the almost "One-OFF", rare as hens teeth Kitten, I opted to finish the Hurricane report in a less used area.
IMG_0050_Moment.jpg

Einstein steinmetz tesla.jpg
I took this rather unique power line tower photo where? about 2 years ago. The 3 ruffians in the old photo, you should be able to guess their names, at least one or two.

OK, you should have gotten "Mickey Mouse", that's the substation for Disney World. It survived the hurricane nicely. I checked on my way out.

And the three "Old Dudes"? Einstein, Tesla, and Charles Steinmetz, 3 genuine electrical wizards. Gandalf and Harry Potter got nothing on these dudes. These guys are the real deal when it comes to electrical. I believe the picture was taken in up-state New York at a Westinghouse facility. Steinmetz is the "Hunch-back".
 

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
There was a "Parking Lot" on Interstate 75, North bound of people trying to leave Florida, 3 days before the Hurricane hit. I was driving south, smooth sailing. The traffic jamb went from the intersection of I-4 at Tampa all the way to Naples. At my step mom's place in Naples I had installed a 15 KW, 3 Phase Generator with a 50 gallon tank. The house itself, and the guest house were built to withstand a hurricane, built up higher with elaborate Tip up and balanced tip down sections made of 2 X 4 and 1&1/4 inch decking. They feed a bunch of the wildlife and have a regular cast of half a dozen squirrels, a couple family's of Raccoon's, half a dozen species of birds, an occasional Possum, or Rabbit. I had to replace one of the feeders a couple of times because a Black Bear tore the previous ones off.
IMG_0052.jpg

IMG_0184.jpg

IMG_0189.jpg
 

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
They have their own well and the Genset originally had a fully automatic transfer switch and starting panel. The commercial service to the house is single phase, but in order to get every last KW out of the genset it switched to 3 phase when running on the generator. It runs both refrigerators, one of the two Central Air units, the water system, most of the lights, the TV and Computer. When I originally installed it, it was up to snuff with a Hospital or Firehouse. When the power went out it started right back up within a minute. Over the years service men have managed to defeat all the fully automatic features so it's pretty much manual now. It has it's own hurricane shutter, a steel roll-up affair that can be seen in the picture with the fuel tank. The ATS (Automatic Transfer Switch) came from a Submarine base here in Washington, I built the starting and monitoring panel and integrated it all into a working system about 20 years ago. The house builders Electrician didn't understand the system, so I shipped it to Florida, had him do the installation, then I flew down and finished the job. IMG_0262.jpg

IMG_0263.jpg

IMG_0264.jpg

IMG_0265.jpg

IMG_0266.jpg
 

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
Naples gat struck dead nuts on center by the hurricane. The two days before while I was getting everything ready, cars fueled up, food stocked in,.... that sort of stuff, we went to a few places like Home Depot and "Sprawl-Mart". The shelves were empty. No water, no gas cans, no batteries,,, and major lines at the gas stations. Most folks were in Panic Mode. Come Friday afternoon all the places that were normally 24 hour were all closed and boarded up. It stayed sunny and nice right up until Saturday. That's when it hit. We were briefly Cat 5, and it was pretty noisy. I snuck out of the house in the "Eye", water was about a foot deep in the driveway and there were at least 300 trees down on their little 5 acre patch of land. IMG_0281.jpg

IMG_0284.jpg

IMG_0286.jpg
 

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
It rained hard. The street out in front of their property was entirely underwater. After it subsided I started clearing their 1/4 mile long driveway with a pair of hedge trimmers, a double bladed axe, a steel Rake, and a carpenters hand saw. No Chain saw!
Florida has 50 species of snakes of which 6 are poisonous. Water Moccasins, Copper Heads, Coral Snakes, and 3 species of Rattle snakes. Being as I'm originally from Florida I know to watch where I step and where I put my hands. But I was still leery as there was no way to get to a hospital to get the anti venom if I got bit. After 2 days of cutting and raking I had all but the biggest trees out of the way and a neighbor and his kids came over with a chain saw and a 4 wheeler and helped me clear out the rest. I got sunburned on my back and was definitely feeling my 64 years after two 10 hour days of dragging brush in a foot of water. The 3rd day after the storm I got up to find that 3 more trees had come down overnight and had a bit more to do before we could drive out. Naples was a disaster. No power anywhere, which meant no street lights, no stores, no gas stations. From the look of it I estimated that it might be as much as 2 to 3 weeks before they got power restored. So we started rationing fuel. We only ran the generator for an hour 4 times a day to keep both refrigerators and the water system up. Still we were in a lot better shape than a lot of the rest of the population.
IMG_0287.jpg

IMG_0291.jpg
 

Lyndon

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
I was supposed out fly out of Orlando that Tuesday, but decided to move my flight back a day. It's a good 300 miles from Naples to Orlando and I met over 150 bucket trucks and line crews heading in the opposite direction. I counted 44 Generator sets on flat bed trailers, and met 3 military convoys. Pretty much the entire state was in the dark. In Orlando the area around the airport just got its power restored about half an hour before I got there. I must have passed 2 dozen gas stations that the big canopy roof had blown down. I later read that close to 100,000 lineman from Florida and the rest of the states were employed in the power restoration. Hats off to the IBEW. 100,000 Lineman,... a person isn't likely to meet that many people in a lifetime, well maybe if your the Rolling Stones, or Elton John,... The payroll alone for that could easily be Ten Million. Amazingly they had much of the power restored in only 10 days, but there are still some folks out of power. Sounds like it's worse in Porto Ricco.
IMG_0292.jpg

IMG_0293.jpg
It's pretty hard to tell that this is the driveway going out to the street. What looks like debris on the ground is actually debris floating on a foot of water. This picture was taken shortly after the Hurricane passed.
Saw snow on Mt. Rainier a couple days later with Jim Van Trojen. Good to be home, where all we have to deal with is Fires, Earthquakes and Volcanos.
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
Lyndon I found out several things about Florida because I had 3 people who could not return home due to the hurricane. They came up for a funeral, while at the funeral were notified by United Airlines that their return flights were cancelled so they stayed with me for 8 days. And #1 is a shocker!

#1 ... if you have solar panels in Florida they must be DISCONNECTED after an emergency if the power grid is down. Seriously, FPL lobbied for this and houses with solar panels must be grid connected when the grid is running and must be totally disconnected when the grid is down. And by 'totally disconnected' it means cannot even run your own home in an emergency.

#2 ... My niece in Orlando only lost power for less than a day. My cousin in Sarasota lost power for a full week and only got power restored the afternoon prior to his return flight.

#3 ... the people of the state, as reported by several relatives of mine who rode out the storm, generally seemed to have a 'get out and fix it yourself' attitude. Rather than waiting for utility and street crews to come out and clear roads, citizens went out and chainsawed trees that were in the streets, cleared roadways of debris, etc.
 
Top