[kkingston57]

Originally Posted by Lea N

I've read some, not all responses so forgive me if this is a duplicate.

If you have old photos and are staying for a storm put them in a bag, you may want to wrap them up with towels to protect them. Include your name and contact information in the bag. Or, place them in your empty dishwasher or dryer. Same goes if you have a few small sentimental breakable items.

When we lived in SE FL after Hurricane Francis we were without power for 14 long, hot days. We had dogs and a cat. We still had the storm shutters on the windows and sliders after the storm, so all of us slept outside on the lanai. We made a makeshift bed out of the patio furniture cushions. We slept on the lanai with our pets. We were sleeping and it was about 4 am. I heard looters walking in the empty woods next to us, crunching the leaves as they walked and were talking. But it blended in with my dreams. One of our dogs made the most evil sounding guttural noise. Whoever they were stopped in their tracks, stopped talking and never made another peep. She didn't sound like a dog but like a wild animal and the way the noise traveled it was hard to tell where she was.

I was concerned about the heat and our pets being indoors while we were out. I called our vet and he suggested taking a wet towel and putting it on our dog's backs. We had a generator that we were able to use for the fridge and TV. We wet down the towels, put them in the freezer. We had a big cooler and ice. When the towels were cold we put them on our girls. This lasted about 4 hours. We had other towels in the freezer and rotated them.

We had big girls so we used bath towels. If you have smaller dogs, or cats you can use a hand towel or wash cloth. Our dog's left the towels on, our cat didn't tolerate it. Our vet told us that if our dog's became overheated to put their paws in cool (not cold, or freezing) water. This can quickly bring down a dog's body temperature.

This may seem a bit much but my husband even took down the blades of the ceiling fans on the lanai. They could fly off if the storm is bad enough and do a lot of damage.

Keep an eye out for any of your neighbors who may need a helping hand preparing.

Try to keep a full tank of gas during hurricane season. I try not to get to under half a tank.

And after that storm and Hurricanes Jeanne and Wilma almost everyone bought generators which sat for years and were useless thereafter due to gummed up carburetors.