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Originally Posted by Kahuna32162
Looks like Dorian is turning East and will only skim the Florida coast sometime Tuesday or Wednesday. With Rec centers, golf courses, pools and entertainment all cancelled, do you think TV pulled the trigger too soon?
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Yup. It's ridiculous that they closed all the rec centers and pools on Saturday when, if it did hit us, they were talking about Tuesday or Wednesday.
I had some guy from the district walking around my neighborhood handing out papers and refrigerator magnets on how to prepare for a hurricane on Saturday. My first thought was, "What a waste of money." Four to five days before this thing might have hit they are doing things like this. In addition, if people don't know how to prepare for a hurricane I don't know what they've looking at. It's all over television, radio and the internet.
People were lining up for gas on Thursday and stores sold out of bottled water and bread on Friday.
Impact was predicted (possibly) Tuesday or Wednesday and not the thing has moved north which was always a possibility.
Yesterday the weather channel revised their forecast to have the thing loving more north and everything returned to normal.
I've been living in The Villages for over seven years now. In that time we've had about ten hurricanes that could have possibly hit us bad. The only one that did was Irma in 2017 and the damage and effect was really minimal. We lost power for about three days. A few street were impassable for about a week but there is always alternate routes in TV. In may neighborhood there are a lot of manufactured homes and some did lose their carports and sustained damage to their lanais. But there was no widespread serious damage. The fact is that hurricanes seldom impact areas this far inland. I would much more concerned if I lived near the coast.
That being said, everyone should be prepared so that they don't have to run out at the last minute to buy bread. (Why bread by the way?). You're better off having a bunch of non perishable food items.
We have battery powered lights and radios and plenty of spare batteries. We have a propane grill to cook on and I always have two bottles of propane. I make sure the cars a filled up and I usually have five gallons cans of gas on hand for the mower. I charged my iPad and Laptop with the car. We never lost water, but we always have three or four days worth of bottled water. If the forecast shows the storm really heading toward us a day or two before, we fill up a bunch of buckets with water to flush the toilets and clean up. We also have a plastic bin full of canned food and first aid supplies on hand all the time.
In 2017 we were fortunate that a friend who has a generator allowed us to borrow it. I thought about buying one and even tried to buy one a few times when we had warnings. Then I think, seven years, one storm that impacted us, I don't know if spending $500 to $1,000 on a generator that we may never use is worth the gamble.
Yes, I think that they pulled the trigger way too early and they cause widespread panic every time there is a little tropical depression in the South Atlantic. Every year a hurricane seminar is held and everyone should go to that when they first get here. If you do, you'll learn to be 90% prepared all the time and don't have to go crazy if one actually does hit us.
As I said, I have lived through a lot of warnings and seen the panic when we were never impacted. Hurricanes don't like land. They need to suck up water to when there is a large land mass in the way, they usually turn to avoid it or weaken when they hit is. I feel that although we are pretty safe this far inland, we need to be a bit prepared, but we shouldn't be closing pools, rec centers and golf course 4-5 days before impact is expected.
It's a beautiful sunny day right now and the next couple of days are supposed to have a little bit of rain and wind. Yet several of the resident clubs that I attend are not meeting because the rec centers are closed. So yes, they pulled the trigger WAY too early.
Sorry for the rant. It's just my take on the whole thing.