[hotpotato]

I lived in Port St. Lucie during Francis and Jeanne. It is now too late to do much of anything pre hurricane except pick-up stuff around your yard including the house sign. You may also want to take off the window screens as they may fly to the next county over and they offer no protection to the window.

My best observation for during the hurricane is to just stay in your house, the houses are built to a hurricane code,( apparently approx 110 MPH in 2002 code going up to around 140 MPH in latest code but measurement methodologies and applications changed so not necessarily apples to apples) they are not going to fall down, and any falling tree, oh yes they will come down, you would be better inside than outside anyways. The garage door also has high wind code rating and should be fine without any additional bracing. Taping the windows does nothing, actually in Port St. Lucie I saw surprising few blown out windows, and the winds were 110 mph to 120 mph and a lot of these were pre-code windows. So just stay in your house, drink some fine wine, and chill.

Also you cannot walk in hurricane force winds anyways. You will do a Mary Poppins.

If the eye goes thru remember to get back inside if you go outside. Both of "my" hurricanes went thru at night, so running around as a howling maniac in the pitch black mist is an experience worthy of my bucket list, even if your wife threatens to have you locked up. But damn, those wind come back quick, I mean quick.

After the Hurricane expect to feel weird and disoriented. My neighbor described it as "Everyone was a zombie for 3 or 4 days". Not a good time to make immediate financial decisions.

Expect every sleeze in world to come thru and try to hustle you. They come in from all 50 states and most of them are CON artists. Some of them are slicker that others. Just say no. I cannot stress this enough, it is not a joke, this is NOT an exaggeration, they will come thru, and they will come thru in LARGE numbers, and they will rip you off.

Also, if you see your neighbor being preyed upon, please go over and do something. Do not expect the cops to do anything as they will be overwhelmed. And I believe Community Watch has no real powers.

There should be groups set up, typically church groups, do do things like blue roof and minor repairs, typically for free. And sometimes, even the government will step up. Check out you options. Dont go with the first guy or gal who shows up in their pickup.

It may take weeks, but things will get back to normal. Most injuries are self-inflicted.