The hurricane dilemma

Well, Florida has become pretty famous with our last couple of hurricane seasons, and I think a lot of people living here have had a bit of a wakeup call about them as well. I was pretty blase about the idea myself. I moved down here in '91, and we have had a few close calls, but nothing damaging. Never had to face the prospect of actually having to evacuate the area. And I was thinking, "hell, it's just water and wind, what's the big deal?"

Well, a couple of years ago, I had a show I was doing in Daytona Beach, and just so happens that hurricane Charlie decided to cross completely through the state and hit Daytona Beach on Friday night when we were there. We were on the 12th floor of the Adams Mark (it's since changed hands). The wife and I were beat from setting up for the show, so we went back to the room and just crashed. We woke up to the sound of hurricane force winds blowing through the open glass door overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and feeling the building rocking. Long story short, is that this was JUST a cat 1 hurricane and it knocked the stuffings out of Daytona Beach. And I have since been to Punta Gorda and surrounding areas and saw the damage there.

So yeah, matter of time before Tallahassee gets the crosshairs on it.

Which brings up my dilemma. We have four vehicles. The Z06, a Z71 pickup, a Chevy Astro van, and a Jeep Wrangler. If we SHOULD have to evacuate, which ones SHOULD we drive out of here? Logic and emotion are at war here because I KNOW what I should do. The Z71 and the Jeep all have four wheel drive, so if the roads are a little bit "messy" to get back home, those would be the best bets. But if we are looking at a MAJOR hurricane, maybe the van would be the better bet because we could throw at least some of our more valuable belongings into it in case the worst happens. But man, it will break my heart to leave the vette behind. Our land is heavily wooded, so downed trees are a given. I think I would lose it to see a big old pine tree laying over the vette. But no matter what, I can't see the logic of choosing it as one of the escape vehicles.

I thought about moving it, but where? Where else would be any better? Out in the open with no trees as a danger leaves it wide open and exposed for debris driven by maybe 140+ mile per hour winds. Not to mentioned the spawning tornadoes that you can certainly expect.

Anyone else had these thoughts run through their head? I'm not really much of a worry wart, but I think some planning is in order regardless. Heck, I already know that if a major hurricane hits this area, I will probably lose my business completely anyway. I have an automatic generator to keep power running for about two weeks, but that won't do me any good if the buildings are just blown away or crushed by trees. No way I can evacuate all the animals, so I just have to cross my fingers on that one.

So this is going to be the first hurricane season that I have to worry about what to do with the vette in a hurricane. Oh, we have one of those detached metal car port things I am sure you have all seen. Open all around and basically just a roof overhead. That won't last 15 minutes in 100 mile per hour winds and would probably collapse on anything under it. It is NOT a strongly designed structure at all.

Anyway, just thinking out loud here. Hurricane season IS coming........

I don't think I could leave without the Z. Fortunately, my wife and I only have the two cars, so that's not an issue. If I were you, I still couldn't leave the Z behind. It's not just monetary value, it has sentimental value as well.

When Charley hit, we were supposed to get the direct hit. That yellow cone of future destruction was aimed at Pinellas County (Clearwater, St.Pete) all day. We were very lucky that it shifted early. It was a compact storm. We didn't get anything but a little breeze from a couple of the bands.

I've been in Florida since 1989. The last two years have been the worst I've seen for hurricanes in the state. It is a lot different for me because I've only been a homeowner for the last three years. It worries me a lot more now that I have something of value. I guess that is what insurance is for. As long as you take all of your irreplaceable things like pictures. Every thing else can be replaced.

I was just reading an article about homeowners insurance in the state today. Because we are so close to the coast, no one is writing policies in the State of Florida except Citizens, the State run company. They did a rate hike in 2005 for 23.2%. They are in the process of collecting a 16.9% increase this year, even though it has not been approved yet. They are now requesting a 45% rate hike. This sucks. Apparently, Citizens is required by law to have the highest rates in the state in order to discourage private insurers from limiting coverage or leaving the market. Yeah, that strategy has really worked well. With that and the gas prices, I'm gonna have to find a few places to cut back a little....after my headers of course!

It doesn't seem to matter where you move, there will always be some natural disaster waiting. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados and blizzards, oh my!

Scott

Don't count on insurance too heavily. I personally know people who got their homes and businesses destroyed by hurricanes and they had to sue the insurance company they had in order to get the REAL value paid to them. And even then, it took months to almost a year before the check finally showed up. In the meantime, you are screwed.

Our home owner's premium with State Farm has skyrocketed lately. And it is all for the hurricane premium. Yet they won't allow us to just drop the hurricane part of it and only have the other coverage. That is what we really want to do. Our premium is something like $2,000 per year and there is a 5 percent deductible. Seriously we are thinking about dropping the coverage completely. We figure that over our lives so far, we have probably paid around $50,000 to that company and they keep on trying to dig deeper and deeper into our pockets. All the money we paid over the years SHOULD count for something.

Still, if my goal is to take as many of the irreplaceable items as possible with an impending hurricane, it still boils down to taking the other vehicles. I can replace the vette. Some other stuff I have could not be replaced or else would cost me MANY times what the vette would cost.

I would probably be driving the van, however. No WAY my wife is going to leave her truck!

Park at my house i have alot of room and open field.

The major thing i have learned through the years of owning Vettes. Make sure you have "Agreed Value" coverage on them. "Stated Value" leaves the option up to who ever they send out if your Vette is a total loss.
Most appraisers will low ball you on the value of your Vette, and you have no recourse.
With Agreed Value coverage, they cut you a check for that amount, no questions asked.
I have my 04 Z, Agreed Value for $40.5K, 0 Ded.
My 75 Vert., Agreed Value, $30.5K, 0 Ded.

I have them both insured with American Hobbyist Ins.
They automatically increase the value of the Vettes, 2% per year at policy renewal time.

When i evacuate, only thing i take, my ins. policies for cars and house and personal papers and pics.

The rest is insured and can be replaced, lives can not. So, check your policy for Stated or Agreed, could save you a big hassle if their is a total loss.

Hope i never have to use it, but, i know i will recoup my Vettes worth plus a few.

Jack

Speak of the devil...........

At 6:46 p.m., National Weather Service radar showed a developing tornado over northeastern Wakulla County. The Wakulla County Sheriff's Office had not confirmed whether it touched down in Crawfordville by press time.

"Some of our officers have been talking to folks who saw it," Capt. Jim Griner of the Wakulla County Sheriff's Office said. "I've heard that some civilians have a video."

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Well there certainly WAS a tornado! And it was about 2 miles from my house. One of my employees actually saw it and took pictures with his cell phone camera. He said the road I live on was blocked by fallen trees from the tornado. Power was out here begining around 5:30pm for almost 8 hours. So my automatic generator finally proved it's worth today. Without it, I would have been scrambling to get a portable generator cranked up to keep the mouse building from going into thermal overload.

This is the second close call with a tornado in about a month or so around here. They both took about the same path but this last one was a bit closer. Of course I didn't hear or see a thing. We are completely surrounded by heavy woods, so if I were to see a tornado, that means it is right on top of me!

Would have been darned inconvenient to have the house and buildings blown away, I suppose. Not to mention seeing my vette flying through the air might have been a sight to remember as well. Not exactly a GOOD memory, but certainly one I would remember the rest of my life. :ack2:

That was close Rich! In my 17 years in Florida, I have yet to see a tornado or water spout. Good thing I guess.

Jack, any idea if regular insurance companies have agreed value? Or is it just collector type companies? I can't see the value of my car going up if I'm putting miles on it. It is my daily driver.

The original reason I got into photography many years ago was because I was on the beach at Englewood and saw a couple of water spouts WAY off on the horizon and wished I had the capability to get them on film. So I bought the equipment to do it. And since that time I have only seen ONE waterspout, again at Englewood and was able to get a couple of pics of it. Didn't reach the water, but what the heck.

Now that I have a camcorder, I would LOVE to get some footage of a tornado that way. But no, I'm not about to become one of those tornado chasers you see on the weather channel. I don't know why they fascinate me, but they certainly do. Wouldn't want one in my living room, but I would like to see one close enough to get some good shots of it.

I was just under the impression that with insurance, you aren't going to get anything better then blue book value on a totalled automobile, so I just never thought about anything else being an option.

Rich Z said:

The original reason I got into photography many years ago was because I was on the beach at Englewood and saw a couple of water spouts WAY off on the horizon and wished I had the capability to get them on film. So I bought the equipment to do it. And since that time I have only seen ONE waterspout, again at Englewood and was able to get a couple of pics of it. Didn't reach the water, but what the heck.

Now that I have a camcorder, I would LOVE to get some footage of a tornado that way. But no, I'm not about to become one of those tornado chasers you see on the weather channel. I don't know why they fascinate me, but they certainly do. Wouldn't want one in my living room, but I would like to see one close enough to get some good shots of it.

I was just under the impression that with insurance, you aren't going to get anything better then blue book value on a totalled automobile, so I just never thought about anything else being an option.

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I would love to see your picture. I'm recently getting into photography myself. In all my spare time! I have hardly any! I'm currently looking at buying a new digital camera. I've narrowed it down to a couple. I'll probably wait a little longer, maybe June.

I am a huge weather freak. I have several weather books, weather calendars. Even when I used to live in NY, I would really get into hurricane season. I'm constantly checking up on weather maps, every kind there is. I especially love the NOAA maps. I'd have to say if I were to do things over again, I'd actively pursue meteorology. I mean I still could now, but obviously it's a lot harder to change things. After seeing the movie Twister, I really wanted to be a tornado chaser. I've smartened up since then! I'm going to really start taking lots of pictures of clouds and would love to snap a picture of lightning. I have lightning pictures all over my house. My wife's not too happy about that. I can't buy any more, lol. Here is one of my favorite lightning shots I found on the web.

That is one damn AWESOME photograph!

I remember a long while back when the wife and I were down in the keys, we stopped in at some restaurant and there was a photo on the wall that took my breath away. A boat with a waterspout nearby AND a bolt of lighting all captured in the same shot. If it had had a price tag on it, I'm pretty sure it would be on my wall right now.

Did you ever buy any of those tornado videos that the weather channel used to sell? I've bought a few of them but don't see them advertised any longer. With camcorders being so popular I would imagine that there are LOTS of good videos available these days on weather events.

Heck, I used to love it when my wife and I could vacation in September and would go down to Englewood. I got some really nice photos of lightning on the beach. But it does feel somewhat dangerous doing that. You have to put the camera on a tripod, then hold open the shutter until you THINK you caught a good flash and HOPE the exposure was OK. But there you are, the tallest thing on the beach with a metal camera and tripod while lightning is flashing all around. Probably not a real smart idea. I think now a high resolution camcorder where you can snip out separate frames would be about the best way to do this.

I'll have to see if I can find some of those shots I took. But they are going to be on prints or slides, so I'm not sure what kind of time I would have to convert them to digital images.

I had bought one of those tornado videos a long time ago. I don't think I have it anymore. I do catch the shows every now and then. That's one of the things I love about cable now. Discovery channel, Weather channel, National Geographic channel and Science channel. I think there are a couple of other ones. But those are my favorite. One of my favorite shows is Modern Marvels and How It's Made.

Have you looked into a camcorder for weather photos? I think this would be ideal. I just got into this recently and I think anything where there is movement would be much better displayed in a video. Of course, it's a hole 'nother ball of wax to learn. I fretted over all kinds of details and crap and I'm still not sure I bought the best one to have. With stuff like this, you normally don't know what it is you really should have bought until after you buy the first one and learn all the stuff you didnt know beforehand.

And then there is the software you need on your computer to massage the videos so you can do something with them. For instance, those before and after videos of my headers, I don't think I have the format right. I used a widescreen format to take the videos, but my car looks squatty as if the program on the PC converted it to a standard format screen. I was mostly interested in the sound, but still, it drives me buggy to LOOK at it.

MADN3SS said:

Jack, any idea if regular insurance companies have agreed value? Or is it just collector type companies? I can't see the value of my car going up if I'm putting miles on it. It is my daily driver.

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Scott

You have to ask the company your insured with. Mostly, just collector ins. policies write Agreed Value Coverage.

Jack

I have decided that the vette goes for us. My wife will pack it to the hilt and head north to family out of state. I gotta stay here. If I can get a trailer I'll use the p/u or a Uhaul to pull it, but it goes. In the past I parked it at a major airport (Tampa Int) in the parking garage. I figure their built to withstand the wind, and it's well above flood stage in the 3rd and above floors. If I get a real serious one coming I'll by a ticket for the wife and leave the car in the garage at the airport. Maybe their insurance will cover it if the garage collapses.

You know, you have to wonder about the "global warming" hype. There seems to be two warring camps about this issue. One side saying the sky is falling, and the other side saying it is just a temporary blip in global weather. Is one of those sides, or neither one correct?

There are DEFINITELY signs of change that are visible if you look. When the wife and I first moved to the Tallahassee area back in '91, we would have a few nights every winter where it got down into the high teens. In the last few years, the temps have not gotten below 25 degrees.

I don't know how political the National Geographic magazine may be, but there have been recent stories in that mag that definitely point to a dramatic warming of the earth.

The issues may be profound. A fundamental change taking place that we have no concept of what the final results may be. Who is to say what the absolute upper limit of the size and power of a hurricane can be? Why can't tornados become several miles across and take place in areas that never really had them historically?

Insurance companies are really the ones to watch. They pay people a LOT of money to try to determine their financial risk, so they will probably be on the front line of figuring out what is really going on. They were the ones that clued a bunch of people in on the risk of nuclear reactors. They just flat out refused to insure the things because of the overwhelming risk. With the insurance companies basically pulling out of Florida, I think maybe they know something about the likely future. And it ain't good news.........

Actually I was planning on installing my Shaner throttle body today, but just took a look at the weather map and there are some REALLY nasty storms heading this way. So I guess I don't want to be outside, even under the car port with the hood open if that is going to mean some horizontal rain. Ahh, even hear thunder right now. Sheesh, hope we don't have another close brush with a tornado again! I saw the trees knocked down at the end of my road and it looks like it had to be some right powerful winds to knock over those rather large trees. Saw some minor damage to some buildings as well.

Oh well, the thunder is getting closer so I need to go unplug my home theater stuff. I have surge protectors on most of it, but as one tech pointed out to me once, "do you REALLY think some $3.00 circuit is going to save your equipment from a direct strike by lightning?" Good point......

Shesh, send some of that rain south. Were gettin pretty dried out in central and south FL.:sillyme:

Ah, Murphy's Law did it to me again. The storms just went around me. Got a little bit of rain but nothing to write home about. So I could have installed that throttle body today after all.

I was just reading an article in the local paper about the drought conditions in the state. Actually this is pretty typical for this time of year around here. Maybe a little bit earlier then normal. May has been the driest month around Tallahassee, but the last two years were unusually wet, comparatively. I remember my wife and I used to take vacations in May and go down to the Englewood area. MANY stretches throughout Florida had ongoing fires and in some cases route 95 would be closed because of the smoke.

We live about 3/4 of a mile from the Apalachicola National Forest, and without fail, the wildfires in this area would be caused by prescribed burns that the forest service did and it got away from them. I remember one year we had smoking embers falling into our yard and I got REAL nervous about that. Fire trucks were driving around and the roads around our place were closed to traffic. Sure didn't give me a real warm and fuzzy feeling, I'll tell you. It would be even worse now, because now I have to worry about my plastic car melting..

Rich Z said:

Ah, Murphy's Law did it to me again. The storms just went around me. Got a little bit of rain but nothing to write home about. So I could have installed that throttle body today after all.

I was just reading an article in the local paper about the drought conditions in the state. Actually this is pretty typical for this time of year around here. Maybe a little bit earlier then normal. May has been the driest month around Tallahassee, but the last two years were unusually wet, comparatively. I remember my wife and I used to take vacations in May and go down to the Englewood area. MANY stretches throughout Florida had ongoing fires and in some cases route 95 would be closed because of the smoke.

We live about 3/4 of a mile from the Apalachicola National Forest, and without fail, the wildfires in this area would be caused by prescribed burns that the forest service did and it got away from them. I remember one year we had smoking embers falling into our yard and I got REAL nervous about that. Fire trucks were driving around and the roads around our place were closed to traffic. Sure didn't give me a real warm and fuzzy feeling, I'll tell you. It would be even worse now, because now I have to worry about my plastic car melting..

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It would be a warm feeling, but not to fuzzy!:rofl1:

Yeah, no doubt! :ack2:

Living in the middle of the woods is fine and dandy until you start thinking about forest fires. If you have ever taken a couple of deep lung fulls of pine smoke, I think you realize what kind of world of hurt you could be in. Where I live, a couple of fallen trees in the wrong places and we are STUCK. Actually even just one across my driveway and we would have to get out on foot.

Oh well, nobody said that life would be perfect.