Hurricane_Irma_Report
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00:00:29.800 | Thank you to so many of you who have sent your inquiries inquiring after our health
00:00:38.440 | and safety and status following the path of Hurricane Irma through the state of Florida
00:00:43.560 | in the past few days.
00:00:44.920 | Thank you for your care and for your concern.
00:00:47.920 | This audio file will be a relatively brief after action report for you sharing our status
00:00:53.880 | and welfare and just a little bit of our experience and just my thoughts of what I learned from
00:00:59.400 | the storm.
00:01:01.680 | The next episode which hopefully will be released concurrently will be back to regularly scheduled
00:01:06.720 | personal finance programming.
00:01:09.280 | I'm not entirely certain as to the release schedule of these episodes as we're currently
00:01:15.400 | experiencing significant problems with the internet connection, both my primary lines
00:01:21.280 | and also my backup plans.
00:01:22.720 | Neither of them is working well.
00:01:24.620 | So we're going to go to the plan three in order to release the episode.
00:01:28.840 | But hopefully this will get out on the same day that I'm recording it which is Tuesday,
00:01:31.960 | September 12, 2017.
00:01:34.600 | Unique thing about the internet issues is they all came out after the storm.
00:01:38.440 | I didn't have any problems with the internet connection during the storm but here in afterward
00:01:44.040 | having internet issues and when you run a business like mine, it's a significant impedance
00:01:48.680 | to your work.
00:01:51.540 | The short version of this report is we are well.
00:01:54.120 | I am well.
00:01:55.120 | My entire family is well.
00:01:57.400 | We have experienced minimal problems as a result of Hurricane Irma.
00:02:04.240 | Personally we experienced no damage to property.
00:02:08.240 | None of our personal property was affected although the property – my landlord's
00:02:12.440 | property was affected.
00:02:13.760 | I had some tree limbs blow down, blew some fences down.
00:02:17.680 | So that's a frustration but nothing significant.
00:02:21.560 | Health-wise we are all well.
00:02:22.840 | The major cost of Hurricane Irma for us personally has been the frustration of essentially a
00:02:28.440 | lost week of work.
00:02:30.560 | In total thus far about eight days of lost productivity for me personally which is frustrating
00:02:36.720 | but in the grand scheme of things, obviously I have nothing to be ungrateful for and much
00:02:43.340 | to be very grateful for.
00:02:45.760 | Not all of that lost work week was due specifically to hurricane activities although a good bit
00:02:51.600 | of it was.
00:02:52.600 | Whenever a hurricane comes to town, there are a number of things that need to be done
00:02:57.040 | in preparation for the storm.
00:03:00.520 | The most obvious one is the personal acquisition of necessary supplies.
00:03:06.280 | That's where the stores are filled with long lines of people lined up for water, for
00:03:11.200 | food that is not going to be spoiled if you lose power, flashlights, et cetera, things
00:03:16.320 | like that.
00:03:17.840 | That process can take a good amount of time, extra time because the lines in stores perhaps
00:03:22.600 | lines in gas stations, et cetera.
00:03:26.480 | But realistically speaking, it should only cost perhaps a few hours of time.
00:03:32.880 | The significant cost of time in preparing for a hurricane is the cost of preparing your
00:03:39.560 | property.
00:03:40.560 | So, that includes the obvious things like putting up storm shutters or putting up plywood
00:03:46.840 | over your windows to protect your windows from the hurricane winds.
00:03:51.120 | Incidentally, it's specifically the reason you do that is to protect from anything that
00:03:55.840 | might be blowing in the wind.
00:03:57.800 | Hurricanes will pick up all kinds of stuff and throw them at your window and knock right
00:04:00.720 | through.
00:04:02.080 | And then there's also the time spent of preparing your property, bringing all your furniture,
00:04:06.480 | whatever you can't bring inside, you strap down, you go around and pick up any debris
00:04:12.360 | in your yard and try to get all that stuff in the garbage and thrown away from your property
00:04:15.720 | as quickly as possible.
00:04:17.200 | So, that's very time-consuming.
00:04:19.280 | And then also the time-consuming aspect is just keeping an eye on it and figuring out
00:04:23.120 | what the right thing to do is.
00:04:25.640 | Should you leave?
00:04:26.640 | Should you stay?
00:04:27.640 | If you're going to leave, where are you going to go?
00:04:28.640 | What direction, et cetera, and then preparing for that event.
00:04:31.360 | And of course, my wife and I, we have three children under four years old and two dogs.
00:04:37.160 | So, we're not as nimble as I once was when I was moving just by myself and I could come
00:04:43.100 | and go without any restrictions.
00:04:47.080 | And in fact, just my family responsibilities were for me the biggest cost of the last week.
00:04:53.520 | And that's what resulted in so much lost productivity for me personally.
00:04:56.560 | My wife and our youngest child, our baby, both became pretty sick.
00:05:03.720 | My wife very sick for a couple of days.
00:05:05.640 | She really wasn't able to do much of anything, stayed in bed most of the time, et cetera.
00:05:10.520 | So that meant that I was functionally a single father with three children under four trying
00:05:17.160 | to do hurricane preparations as well.
00:05:19.480 | I thought I had a respect for the challenge that single fathers and mothers face in the
00:05:24.000 | past, but my respect has been refreshed.
00:05:26.360 | I have a new level of respect for how challenging it is to get anything done when you are caring
00:05:32.760 | for several little children.
00:05:36.160 | Little children are wonderful creatures, but productivity is not something that they're
00:05:42.840 | generally helpers with.
00:05:45.740 | You wind up doing most of your work twice over because they undo your work unintentionally
00:05:49.800 | and of course sometimes sweet and sometimes obnoxious ways.
00:05:54.760 | But they just – even in the best of times, they slow everything down.
00:05:59.080 | Maneuvering with three small children through the store.
00:06:02.800 | I shared on the previous episode about going to Costco.
00:06:07.120 | I was in the lines with three small children and everything just gets slowed down.
00:06:12.400 | Everything becomes more challenging when you are maneuvering with several people.
00:06:16.720 | I simply wasn't able to get anything done except constant work with caring for my children,
00:06:23.600 | caring for my wife, making sure that she was cared for and then bringing in around the
00:06:28.440 | edges the necessary hurricane preparations.
00:06:30.680 | That was very time-consuming.
00:06:33.800 | So that just sucked up quite a bit of time.
00:06:36.680 | Certainly I had big plans for the last week in terms of what I wanted to get accomplished
00:06:39.720 | and I was disappointed to not get those things done.
00:06:43.840 | Put me behind on all of my schedule, but I have – I should probably not even bother
00:06:49.660 | to say anything about that compared to the challenges that so many people face with destruction
00:06:54.880 | to property and small destruction of life.
00:06:58.280 | Thankfully, the impact of Hurricane Irma seems to be significantly less than what was expected.
00:07:04.760 | Hurricanes can be unpredictable in that light.
00:07:07.120 | Several of you have asked since I led the last show, "Should I stay or should I go?"
00:07:11.400 | If we chose to evacuate and if I chose to follow my own advice about evacuate the trouble
00:07:16.040 | zone and do it early.
00:07:18.360 | In this case, I hope it's not hypocritical to report that we did not.
00:07:22.480 | The big factor was simply my wife's health and then the health of our baby.
00:07:27.120 | It's not that nothing was life-threatening, just simply that functionally it was a hard
00:07:32.320 | thing to imagine putting her into the car for multiple hours on a multiple trip if it
00:07:39.480 | could be avoided.
00:07:41.960 | In terms of the evacuation plan with – Hurricane Irma was unique.
00:07:47.160 | Many times with hurricanes, they come in from the coast, the west coast or the east coast
00:07:50.960 | and they'll cut across the Florida Peninsula or they'll be moving in that kind of direction.
00:07:55.800 | So it's relatively easy to get out of the path of a hurricane.
00:07:59.120 | Fifty miles south, fifty miles north makes a big difference.
00:08:01.280 | Even fifty miles west makes a big difference.
00:08:03.480 | But with Irma, the forecast track made it challenging to figure out because the entirety
00:08:08.400 | of the Florida Peninsula was within the cone of probable approach for much of the days
00:08:14.120 | preceding it.
00:08:17.360 | At one point for several days in a row, where we live was directly right in the center of
00:08:23.120 | the forecast track, in the center of the cone.
00:08:26.240 | So in order to get out of that path and in order to get away from the other people, I
00:08:32.560 | couldn't see any solution, any evacuation route that would make sense other than to
00:08:38.560 | go significantly to the north.
00:08:41.200 | By my calculations, North Carolina seemed to be about the closest place that would be
00:08:45.360 | reasonable where you wouldn't wind up essentially possibly running – probably running from
00:08:50.840 | the storm.
00:08:51.840 | I know a few people who first went to the north and then to the east a little bit and
00:08:56.680 | moved three times to try to get out of the forecast path of the hurricane.
00:09:01.560 | So we had potential plans to go to North Carolina or Alabama or something like that.
00:09:06.120 | But with my wife feeling so poorly, it wasn't something that I really wanted to do if it
00:09:11.840 | weren't necessary.
00:09:13.560 | The risk for hurricanes is often minimal compared to the way that it's reported.
00:09:19.080 | For those of you who are observing the national or international news media as your primary
00:09:23.520 | source of information regarding hurricanes, it's not that the reporting is inaccurate
00:09:30.240 | necessarily, but often it's overhyped and overblown.
00:09:34.720 | My own experience with being a Florida native and hurricanes just simply being a fact of
00:09:40.600 | life is you do need to be careful with hurricanes, but there's no reason to freak out.
00:09:48.840 | I saw a significant amount of probably over – just too much freak out with regard to
00:09:56.160 | Irma, especially with the people.
00:09:57.320 | I didn't feel that – I don't have any complaints about the work of the emergency
00:10:01.880 | officials.
00:10:03.440 | I think our local emergency management officials did a fine job.
00:10:06.840 | Governor Scott, the governor of Florida did a fine job.
00:10:08.800 | I have no complaints there.
00:10:10.200 | But the way that things are reported is often very confusing.
00:10:13.200 | For example, people talk a lot about evacuation zones and it's easy to get the impression
00:10:17.500 | if you consume national media that everybody who's within a cone of error needs to evacuate.
00:10:23.280 | I think everyone here down in Florida was pretty much on edge as well after watching
00:10:27.040 | Hurricane Harvey for the last week.
00:10:28.960 | Many people were jittery and not logically jittery but just emotionally wound up and
00:10:36.560 | emotionally jittery because of what they had observed.
00:10:39.640 | There was a lot more fear rather than rationality guiding the day.
00:10:46.200 | I'm not saying that the storm was not big.
00:10:48.520 | It was historically large, historically powerful and powerful for a historic amount of time.
00:10:55.040 | It was an impressive storm and certainly it needed to be and was taken very seriously.
00:10:59.960 | I took it very seriously as we should take everything, every significant event that can
00:11:04.300 | cause damage to health and property.
00:11:07.920 | We should take those things seriously.
00:11:09.320 | It's an awesome – storms are awesome.
00:11:13.400 | They're overpoweringly overwhelming and we are essentially impotent in the face of
00:11:20.000 | them.
00:11:21.000 | It's a reminder of our own humanity and essential smallness when compared to the power
00:11:26.400 | of the cosmos.
00:11:28.320 | And yet just because a hurricane is headed your way doesn't necessarily mean that freak
00:11:32.960 | out is always warranted.
00:11:34.960 | So if you're interested, a few thoughts on that, especially it would be helpful to many
00:11:39.760 | of you who are not from Florida.
00:11:41.640 | The category of the storm makes a huge difference.
00:11:43.480 | My understanding of the impact of a windstorm is that there is more of an exponential effect
00:11:49.360 | of the damage as the winds increase, not just a cumulative effect.
00:11:55.720 | A category five storm is not 30% worse than a category three storm in terms of its potential
00:12:01.720 | damage.
00:12:02.720 | It is – it's much, much worse in terms of what those higher winds can actually do
00:12:09.600 | to structures and to property and to lives as well.
00:12:13.880 | So on that account, Hurricane Irma was a very strong storm and needed to be paid careful
00:12:17.800 | attention to with regard to that.
00:12:20.560 | But even so, as a category five hurricane, the major risks for hurricane damage from
00:12:27.480 | winds really only comes to people who are in poorly built structures.
00:12:32.460 | So there are a few people who have to pay very careful attention to wind loads and those
00:12:37.720 | things are number one if you live in a makeshift structure, live in a mobile home, live in
00:12:42.760 | an RV or live in a poorly built or old wooden house without any of the modern windstorm
00:12:49.560 | construction methods.
00:12:50.920 | For example, strapping of roof trusses, proper – just things that are done to hold the
00:12:55.600 | house properly together.
00:12:57.560 | Here in Florida, we – all of the trusses are fully strapped to the walls on new construction.
00:13:02.320 | There's a – all of the codes as far as the number of nails that need to be held in
00:13:06.880 | an asphalt shingle are significantly higher than they are in other states.
00:13:12.040 | And so if you live in a modern structure, you can be confident that the house is built
00:13:16.820 | for a higher wind load than an older structure.
00:13:20.900 | So when I looked at our own situation and tried to make that fresh decision of evacuation,
00:13:26.680 | the house that we live in is not necessarily the newest and the greatest but it's not
00:13:30.580 | a weak or poorly built structure.
00:13:32.800 | And so the primary plan was just simply to change from where we are to another structure
00:13:38.640 | of a friend or family member that is newer, more modern, built out of concrete instead
00:13:42.620 | of out of wood, et cetera, meets all the current hurricane codes.
00:13:46.420 | If you do that and you're not in a zone of concern with water, in general, you can
00:13:53.000 | ride out just about any hurricane.
00:13:56.360 | At any point in time, you may have some tornado threat that comes in a hurricane.
00:14:01.360 | But much of the major damage from hurricanes, it happens either in poorly built structures,
00:14:06.400 | rip a mobile home park apart for example, or from tornado damage on one side of the
00:14:11.360 | hurricane.
00:14:12.360 | A tornado damage is very hard to predict.
00:14:15.000 | So the first layer of hurricane concern, of wind concern for me is always am I going to
00:14:20.880 | be in a structure that sound given the size and power of the storm?
00:14:26.400 | And I have a number of friends and family members who have new modern structures that
00:14:32.000 | are perfectly adequate to take shelter in.
00:14:34.120 | And that was what we were planning to do as a primary course of action.
00:14:40.240 | So my point is if you live in a modern house, not in an old or weak or inadequate structure
00:14:48.080 | like a mobile home for a hurricane, if you live in a modern house, hurricanes aren't
00:14:52.600 | quite so terrible as they're often reported on the national media.
00:14:58.520 | Second thing reflecting wind concerns has to do with the width of the storm.
00:15:03.160 | A hurricane when it talks about, when they talk about a category five storm or something
00:15:06.360 | like that, the actual impact of the hurricane winds, those highest of winds is severe.
00:15:12.440 | But it's only the most severe in a relatively narrow swath close to the storm.
00:15:17.400 | I think the hurricane force winds of this storm only went out something like 70 miles
00:15:23.360 | from the eye, something like that.
00:15:25.280 | So realistically, it's a relatively small area as the storm moves at which the hurricane
00:15:32.520 | force winds are the highest and the most intense.
00:15:37.000 | Where I live here on the East Coast, we were affected by the hurricane winds, but not affected
00:15:42.120 | by the strongest of winds.
00:15:44.160 | And so when you're thinking about a hurricane evacuation plan, it's important to keep that
00:15:46.760 | in mind.
00:15:47.760 | 30 miles to the north, 30 miles to the east, even in this storm, it made a 20-mile jog
00:15:52.240 | that made a big difference in its impact to the property over on the West Coast of Florida.
00:15:58.480 | So these small movements can make a big difference in terms of any danger.
00:16:03.360 | The other aspect of hurricanes is always water and the water is twofold.
00:16:07.880 | Number one, it's rainfall and flooding events in areas that are prone to flooding.
00:16:12.720 | If you live in an area that's prone to flooding, a neighborhood that's prone to flooding, that
00:16:18.000 | needs to be taken carefully because flooding kills more people every year than almost any
00:16:21.880 | other natural disaster.
00:16:23.520 | So this would be what would apply to a city that is built in a low-lying area, a city
00:16:28.200 | like a Hurricane Katrina, a city like New Orleans or a city like Houston or any other
00:16:32.800 | city that's low-lying and is prone to flooding.
00:16:35.720 | That needs to be taken seriously.
00:16:37.920 | Or if you're in a neighborhood that's in a flood zone.
00:16:40.600 | The other aspect of hurricanes is storm surge, water that's pushed in from the ocean, pushed
00:16:45.360 | in from the lake, pushed in from the waterways and rises to a high level and gives localized
00:16:51.640 | flooding.
00:16:52.640 | So if I lived in a flood zone or if I lived in a storm surge zone here on the East Coast
00:16:58.380 | of Florida, then I would always leave.
00:16:59.760 | I would always leave that property because that's hard to defend against.
00:17:03.600 | It's one thing to get an adult out of a flood.
00:17:06.760 | It's another thing to get three small children out of a flood.
00:17:09.320 | So those things don't apply to us and those were some of the reasons why we didn't evacuate
00:17:15.080 | immediately.
00:17:16.640 | As we watched it, as my wife became – started to feel better and as we watched the storm
00:17:22.600 | track, we wound up actually just staying right at home.
00:17:27.440 | And for her comfort and for our children's comfort, that wound up being the best decision
00:17:32.120 | and I'm satisfied with it.
00:17:34.080 | We were ready to go.
00:17:35.080 | So I felt confident that with being ready to go, we could be on the road and we could
00:17:38.200 | – if we needed to get out, we could.
00:17:40.980 | But given the constraints at hand, I think we made a good decision.
00:17:46.240 | Feel like I had to give that defense because I felt a little hypocritical doing a show
00:17:48.920 | on evacuation and then a week – and evacuating early and a week later, not evacuating.
00:17:53.880 | But I don't see any inconsistency.
00:17:56.440 | I'll have to listen to both my shows and make sure that there's nothing in my commentary
00:18:01.560 | that is inconsistent.
00:18:03.760 | I did learn some important lessons for myself and some of my own – the holes in my own
00:18:09.400 | planning and preparation for hurricanes or events like that and kind of did a little
00:18:14.680 | mini after-action review to understand what went well and what didn't go well.
00:18:19.280 | Probably the biggest impact for me, the biggest lesson I'll share with you – of course,
00:18:22.600 | some lessons are private.
00:18:23.600 | I don't wish to share them publicly.
00:18:25.240 | But the biggest lesson that I learned is one of the benefits of being prepared for an event
00:18:30.840 | like a hurricane in advance is it allows you to have more margin, more capacity to handle
00:18:39.080 | when things are really tough.
00:18:41.320 | It was really tough to have my wife sick and generally, I have a good amount of support,
00:18:48.200 | family and friends that can help out.
00:18:49.400 | But of course, with the hurricane going on, everyone else has their own responsibilities.
00:18:53.560 | We don't often get to choose the – we don't get to choose the emergencies that hit us
00:18:57.640 | and we don't get to choose sometimes how the emergencies pile up.
00:19:03.360 | Being sick is ordinarily an annoyance but it's a much more severe annoyance if it
00:19:10.840 | comes at the time of a hurricane.
00:19:13.360 | So I underestimated the impact of that and I was glad that I wasn't caught entirely
00:19:20.040 | red-handed.
00:19:21.040 | I wasn't caught without having any hurricane preparations in place.
00:19:25.000 | So I was able to care for my wife and I was able to care for our children.
00:19:28.880 | I also learned a lot about just the impact of tiredness.
00:19:33.840 | Our baby – there's nothing life-threatening about his sickness but he's not sleeping
00:19:37.640 | well.
00:19:38.640 | So you put him down in his crib and he doesn't stay asleep even with multiple times.
00:19:42.240 | So we wound up for two or three nights just taking shifts of sleeping with him in a chair
00:19:49.120 | and I don't sleep well sitting upright in a chair and that leads to tiredness.
00:19:54.960 | Crankiness and that's where I'd be very careful.
00:19:57.560 | Am I still making good decisions in the middle of being tired?
00:20:01.280 | And so it just made me realize that oftentimes the value of having money and financial preparations,
00:20:07.960 | the value of having an emergency fund is often not that you can't get through an emergency
00:20:12.480 | without money but you can get through an emergency with less stress.
00:20:20.720 | People get through their emergencies all the time even when they don't have money.
00:20:25.600 | But the stress is often very, very impactful and that stress has a wearing effect.
00:20:30.160 | It has a wearing effect in their own lives, their own health.
00:20:34.400 | The stress causes health problems in the long term, has an effect on their relationships
00:20:40.160 | and on their general sense of life.
00:20:43.840 | And so having something as simple as an emergency fund lowers the stress level and it doesn't
00:20:49.960 | mean that you don't go through the problems but it means your experience of problems is
00:20:53.080 | often different.
00:20:55.360 | Similar thing with something like hurricane preparations or maybe it's winter blizzard
00:20:59.240 | preparations.
00:21:00.240 | If you have hurricane supplies on hand at the beginning of hurricane season, then the
00:21:05.200 | experience of the hurricane is less stressful.
00:21:07.760 | I had actually planned that I was going to have a very productive week even with all
00:21:11.240 | the hurricane preps.
00:21:12.240 | Yeah, a few hours here and there but I had planned to have a productive week.
00:21:17.560 | That was just simply shot by the sickness in my family.
00:21:22.800 | Would have been far worse if I was stressed about picking up a case of water to ride out
00:21:28.400 | the storm in that context.
00:21:31.320 | And so I realized just afresh that a lot of times the reason it's important to prepare
00:21:34.880 | for something like a hurricane is it maximizes the enjoyment, allows you to focus on things
00:21:41.160 | that matter.
00:21:42.160 | And if it's not enjoyment, at least it allows you to minister to the people that you care
00:21:45.400 | about, allows me to care for my wife to the best of my ability and make sure that she's
00:21:50.680 | well cared for.
00:21:53.240 | And I always have to use the opportunity to talk myself down off the wall.
00:21:58.040 | I'm a very kind of output-focused person.
00:22:00.400 | I want to get stuff done, check stuff off.
00:22:04.120 | I don't enjoy just being.
00:22:07.320 | I wasn't able to turn my computer on for about three days because there was no opportunity
00:22:11.480 | to do so.
00:22:12.480 | I like to work on my computer when my children are around.
00:22:14.720 | And so just was with them, caring for them.
00:22:17.400 | And I just was reminded afresh.
00:22:19.680 | It's one thing to talk about, "Hey, I want to spend time with family."
00:22:22.600 | It's another thing to say, "Okay, I'm going to spend time with family even if it costs
00:22:26.120 | me, and I'm not getting the things done that I had planned to be done with."
00:22:31.260 | So that is my report for you, my friends.
00:22:33.640 | I share that out of a sense of personal camaraderie, knowing that many of you will enjoy that,
00:22:39.760 | enjoying hearing a little bit of what I've learned and to share a little bit of my story.
00:22:43.480 | Thank you for listening, and I'll be back soon with regular Radical Personal Finance
00:22:47.180 | personal finance content.
00:22:50.060 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.
00:22:55.680 | Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com.
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