post Hurricane Wilma

Hi Everyone!!!

I am finally getting a quick moment to say hi. Things here are pretty ugly. Weston looks like a bomb went off. There are so many trees down!! The oak tree on the side of my house is gone, the oak tree in front of my house sheared off mid-trunk and sailed almost to my neighbor's house. To get out of my driveway, I had to chain it to my truck and pull it out of the street. Pieces of my screened pool enclosure are sitting in my pool. Luckily, it appears that all major home structures are intact here and we have electric, but there's a lot of damage and definitely a change in scenery.

Unfortunately, many of my rental properties have extensive damage. One property had the entire roof blow off in practically one piece and it is now sitting in the neighbor's yard next door. Another had the roof turbine covers blow 200 feet away, taking pieces of the roof with them. Shingles and roofing gone and wood showing on many, many places & water damage.

Here's the worst part; where many of my propertys are located, all electric is out, there's no gas & there are no supplies. For example, one flat roof is stripped completely down to the wood beams. However, there's no propane, so there's no way for the roofer to heat the tar kettles to get hot tar to redo the roof. There's no gas, so you have to carefully choose where and when to drive as well as having enough to run generators so compressors can charge for roofing guns. I have spent the past 2 days tin-capping tarps to roofs to minimize any more damage inside and prevent more water from leaking in on the tenants and more cielings collapsing.

Today I was lucky enough to get supplies to get a roof done. Good thing I had cash, since no-one is taking checks or credit cards; Including the roofing supply company (which is anticipating 4 weeks for additional supplies), roofers and roof workers.

This really sucks!!! To put it into F-chat context, even IF I could get repairs done quickly, with a 2-3% hurricane deductible on EACH property, reparing everything will probably add up & cost me more than buying a Ferrari. I feel sick.

 

Well Fred look at it this way, you're lucky to have power. Weston is the only place in Broward.. I think because most of the lines are underground...

Man, people are standing in lines for hours for ice and water....

Fix the place, boost the rent, buy a new car

 

Hey guys, glad to hear everyones ok. Just got my lights back about 2 hours ago here in Kendall, heading to work tomorrow( in Weston). There is a gas station on Kendall Drive and 127th. ave. a Mobil that'll be open at 7:00 am tomorrow Thursday if your'e interestede.

 

Fred,
Sorry to hear the news. I posted a pic of the view from my front door. Boy the environment has changed. But before you know it, the streets will be cleaned up, and it will back to Close to normal before you know it. That is what is so great about south florida. This is one lush green area! Hopefully the Royals will come back strong.

We were EXTEREMLY lucky, we are in the process of closing 20 condo's within a couple of weeks and we started closing home in Delray that consisted of 57 homes. Both communities had NO damage. Not even a roof tile, very very little landscape damage. WOW - It was like the wind just went around the communities. The other development just broke ground and we drove by and I was expecting to see the construction trailer turned on its side because while we were driving most of the adjacent homes had MAJOR damage. When we got there; the trailer was still standing but the port-o-pody was thrown atleast 200 yards. Good thing that we are not developing port-o-podies

Atleast we are healthy and no one got hurt. We will just have to save a little longer to get those F-cars!!!

I looked at my overhead for employee's that will not be working because we have no power in Delray Beach, Fl. I figured for atleast 2 weeks, **** that hurts. Well what do you do, not pay them??? I can't do that!!! It's all part of business!!!

 

thx dale. my dad looked into it but his insurance deductible is $16k for wind, so he is stuck. besides that he now wants to wait and get a cat generator next year and have it installed professionally.

still no power in naples. but at least fema dropped off some ice ! had to laugh though since this about the only thing my parents have gotten for their tax money in the last 40 years - i told my mother she better appreciate it coz each cube was worth about $100k !

 

Ross:
I heard FEMA is paying for the generators. Not your insurance.
Damage, yes...you are right.
I have a construction site with 3% deductable and during Katrina we had walls that blew over because they had no columns to hold them. Total damage $24,000, deductable $30,000. There goes a 308.

Fred:
I have a few more plastic tarps in the warehouse if you need them. Call me. Actually I have 2 here in Weston in the truck. Big ones.

As for Weston, I am living at the Towncenter parking lot right now. Close to Tarpon Bend. If anybody wants to come by and say hello
Publix is open and has nice fresh bread. So breakfast is secure.

Weston is nothing compared to the rest of Borward and Dade. It is ugly. Had to go to Deerfield yesterday and in that street there were only 2 homes with roofs on. The rest gone.

My warehouse faired well but the sister building to the north had the roof torn off. It was a tornado since there is a path from neighboring buildings in a straight line. The UPS facility has no more roof as well. There is a power pole in front of my warehouse street so I can not get in with a car. powerlines on the ground. They will hopefully come today to cut the lines and move the pole. Power will probably be out till mid Nov.

I guess having a motorhome is not that stupid after all My One Bedroom, One Bath with a detachable one car garage has water, power, generator, great view and if I don't like the neighbors I can move without packing

 

Heres some photos of the hurricanes aftermath:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/photos/12971969.htm

 

Martin - If you're still there Sun I'll swing by. Want to take the car out and stretch her legs via the 95-575-75 loop. If not, not biggy, just want to go out run for about an hour or two.

 

martin, thx will tell my dad to ask fema.

hearing all of what happened, it is scary to think about life without power. this is the way it was about 150 years ago. no aircon, no cars, not much light, restricted movement, dodgy communications etc. imagine what would happen if we suddenly had some kind of major event that would wipe out our power sources for longer periods or forever.....

 

Hey Martin , I work down the road on Weston and Indian Trace, I'll try calling you tomorrow.

 

I'm glad to hear you guys are okay. What a mess. I think it would have been worse if Wilma didn't hit Cancun first. From what the news said Wilma set the all time record for a huricane. Fastest recorded winds, and lowest pressure.

 

Hello from Palm Beach.
Should of stayed on the boat in Jacksonville. Just got power back aftrer 4 days. FLnP ROCKS! Lots of damage here but my home was left unscathed.
Have to pull the car out tomorrow and drive to Fort Lauderdale. It has a full tank and the other car is up north in Vero. I can't wait for the looks from people. He driving a what?, LOL.

 

I live in Weston, Fl. and it was some of the strongest wind I have ever experienced in my 25 years living in Florida. During the backside of the eye wall I went into the garage to check on my 360 and the garage door was bowing in from the pressue. I thought for sure my car was toast.

 

Things just got worse today. Another ceiling fell in on another apartment. Thank G-d no one was hurt. Very scary stuff.

Martin, thanks for the offer for the tarps!! I may take you up on that offer if things don't get better by Saturday. I used plastic visqueen (sp?) today in the hopes that it won't rain and the roofers can get propane and supplies quickly.

Frank, I would love to meet up with you at Martin's place on Sunday for a ride in the Lambo! Let me know what time you're planning on coming to Weston. That would at least be a great end to an aweful week!!

Robert, glad to hear your stuff escaped unscathed!


It seems like gas is the big shortage now. Today I saw a lady try to cut off a line of people wating for gas. 15-20 people started honking horns, then 6 people jumped out of their cars to pound on her car windows. Luckily for the lady, she left before she was linched. People in the 'hood' are offering me gas at $10-15 per gallon. I need it to power the generator, tools, drive back and forth, etc... If only they could supply it in containers that didn't look like they have water, dirt, etc... in them.

 

Got power and phones back at home today. Still no power at the office.

My house isn't too bad lost a few trees and a bunch of decorative stiff around the house. Had to cut through 4 trees to get to my garage door.

At the 'Rents house - the covers that protect the hurricane shutters when they are raised pulled off the side of then house and blew away. The MaMa's new Awning caught the wind and took off like a kite - taking the entire pool enclosure with it. we found a few of the bigger peices about 5 houses down the street.

The office is a different story. The neighbors steel roll up door failed. The wall is partially collapsed and what is left is teteering precariously towards the cars. At first, I couldn't move anything, as my door had bowed out about three feet - but held. hopefully, the negineer will make it over tomorrow to advise as to what it will take to secure the wall. Then it is time to detail and evaluate any damage to to vehicles.

UGH. not sure that the business model can handle this loss.

At least I've got lights and A/C again. The girl at Publix says we should have 'normal' food service tomorrow.

If you weren't here you wouldn't believe the damage. Telephone poles snapped at their base. Concrete telephone poles broken in two. Almost every traffic signal stripped from its wire or pole. No food or gasoline available, Trees EVERYWHERE. What a mess.

Scottie

 

I have about 80 gallons of gas in 5 gallon cans and will be willing to drive over to east coast with it if any of you really need it and things have not improved.

Let me know and I will make the trip Saturday.

Paul
941-302-2575

 

Do any of you know how the N.E. 20th Terrace area in Ft. Lauderdale made out? I've been trying to reach some friends down there and can't. Thanks.

 

So I found out that if you have DSL AND a home phone from the same company (in my case, BellSouth), that one might work while the other does not. So I've had internet access for a few days, but only realized it last night.
I must say, I've enjoyed my forced vacation. I got to meet the neighbors as we all BBQ'd our perishible food. Oh, and our power was back about 48 hours after the storm I'm glad my neighbors pay lots of taxes!
Does it amaze anyone else that the power grid can be so poorly organized? Maybe there's some aspects that I have no idea about, but I played SimCity!! You need to connect all of the buildings with TWO power lines in case one goes out!
If the power grid didn't suck, then within 48 hours, much of the area would be "business as usual." It is amazing what a lack of electricity does to a developed nation.
And a window breaking during the storm had a good side in my case. The girl in the bad window room crawled into bed beside me at 4am :-D That made it a Rick sandwich!!!

 

Well, electrically we call the "circuit a" and "circuit b" .....redundancy!

As far as the sleeping arrangements, we call you "lucky dog"........LOL!

Glad to hear everyone is OK.

The problem with the grid is in high end development it goes underound and is safer, but still somewhere upstream it'll go to exposed high lines and those usually suffer heavy damage....

 

Agree about the "blackout"....

During Rita that was the worst part..I was up all night with Booker's and Willie Nelson tapes....while Valeria slept..

The trailer park bums up the street knew we were there......and I knew they were "out there"

*shotgun racking*

Only a few hours 'till sunrise...

 

I'm about to go crazy......

As if things weren't bad enough now (see my previous posts), some guys got into a fight in front of one of my buildings and landed on my new Tundra, which resulted in my front 1/4 panel getting dented in fairly bad - so bad that the driver's door lightly rubs against the panel when I open/close it.

One of the 2 guys fighting was a guy that had been helping me clean stuff up, tarp up, cover roofing and secure buildings, who just so happens to be the son of one of my tenants & he had just begun to live with his mother there. So, I then had to fire him and explain to his mother that he was no longer welcome in my building. This resulted in me having to do even more work by myself & dealing with tenant issues all day long. This week has most definitely SUCK*D

F-YOU WILMA.....................

 

I'm in Palm Beach Gardens and I was lucky. Just lost a few roof tiles and they crashed thru my screen enclosure, ripping up the screens.. A lot of trees downn on my street, but we managed to clean them up. I just cant drink the water yet. Luckily I am on the same grid as the VA hospital so my power is on, and I have phones, but no cable.

I filled up both cars with gas last week and only drive 4 miles to work, so I dont have to worry about gas. Seeems like the North faired better than the south.

If the person in Tequesta wants to send me a PM with their address, I can go and check out their place and let them know if everything is ok. I also have a 3 car garage and can park my daily driver outside, so I have room for 2 other cars if anyone needs a place to keep them.

Tom

 

I got killed here in Lauderdale. I live on the beach and had 2 cars totalled. My building had many sliders, windows and walls blown out. Luckily my unit faired well....nothing broken and the F430 is fine.

Here's some random pics of my parking lot and up the street on S Ocean Blvd.
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oh, and yes, that 3rd pic is a stretch limo.....