Here comes ANOTHER hurricane to sunny Miami Florida and I have the house all shuttered up for the third time. I am still missing half my shingles from Katrina and my wood privacy fence is still in pieces so that those will make fun projectiles if Wilma comes to visit.Wish me luck. The Ht room is like Fort Knox right now

i wonder if i had some kind of premonition 3 years ago when i left florida,seems like you guys have been gettin it ever since.i talked to my buddy in daytona,on cell phone,2 times while he was getting hammerred,and i was watching the weather channel.

lot's of luck 'nut.

hey, i just noticed:i'm a desperado.

Good luck!

It's only going to get worse as the seas slowly but surely get warmer. I finally got tired of the exponential insurance premium increases and sold my property in Ft. Lauderdale a few months ago.

When I finally decide to retire somewhere warm, I think it'll be someplace like Aruba which is out of the frequent flier path for hurricanes.

Better start stocking up on twinkies and beer! 8-)

Cheers,

Wouldn't you think anything in the Gulf/Caribbean basin would be pretty vulnerable? If I were looking for someplace warm on the East Coast, I don't think I'd go further south than Savannah, and I'm not real confident about that.

Wingnut--I saw the devastation after Andrew first hand and that got South Florida out of my system for good. Hope things work out really well on this one--let us know how you do.

Thanks for the wishes

I was actually in Homestead for Andrew. The house I was in was totalled. My family and I were under a mattress in the hall and stuff like 2X4s and other debris were flying in through the roof. Andrew literaly sounded like a freight train running between my ears. It was amazing and pretty frightening and thankfully, we were all unhurt.

we evacuated 4 floyd. long hard process

floyd flooded me and put a tree through the roof.andrew caused little damage outside the storm.in my area/
actually,i was awake (and sober) when "andrew" came ashore.

the storm was so far south...i got off easy

Katrina flooded my surrounding neighborhoods just West of me and a lot in Homestead but we were fortunate that way with no flooding in ths house. We did lose about half of our shingles and all of our wood privacy fence which enclosed our back yard--about 340 feet worth.

The roofers are so backed up that my job is not even scheduled to start for three or four weeks from now.They are replacing the whole thing soI guess we se what Wilma does. The fence not until January or so.

I am ready to move...any suggestions?

Pretty soon we will have snow/ice/sleet/slush....brrrrrr But NO hurricanes

Plus, we have LeBron James and "Next year" the Indians may even make the playoffs!

Don't EVEN get me going on the Browns

Wingnut, no place is without its environmental "issues." But if I were really going to start from scratch and didn't have to think about jobs, family, close friends, etc., I'd be thinking about the Shenandoah Valley about 60 miles west of where I live in Virginia. None of the big environmental disasters seem to bother them (except maybe the Civil War), the climate is mild, the scenery is beautiful, some good universities in the neighborhood, Washington shopping and culture is not so far away.

Boston Hub of the Universe Jim

I'm with Mike. I grew up in Lynchburg, VA and the Shenandoah Valley (a bit further north) is downright purrrfect.

Cheers,

Shenandoah sounds nice. Memphis, on the other hand, has good barbecue, a variety of music, plenty of bad drivers, a good number of thunderstorms and tornado warnings each year, and the potential for a huge earthquake one day.

How is the real estate market in VA? I am going on a road trip from Miami to Boston next month so maybe I will take some detours. I just bought this house so I probably would not actually move for a year or two if I decided to. My job is a little difficult also to just up and move from...but I have been thinking... Miami is not what it used to be for a lot of reasons. I have been here for 34 years and it has been going downhill pretty speedily for the last 15 or so.

Wing, just look at the bright side. In Miami you can really bone up on your Spanish. 8-)

The real estate market in Virginia is pretty depressed unless you're talking commutable distances from D.C. Then it becomes rather expensive...increasingly so as you approach the city.

Cheers,

Hey Wingnut (and the rest of you Floridians), how'd you make out? I've been thinking about you folks (and various other friends and relatives in your neighborhood).

Hey guys. Well I lost the rest of the shingles on my house and my fence is totally gone but other than that everything is ok. No one hurt. I have been on the Bravo shift at work 13 hours a day so I have not been able to visit here. My computer service at home is not up now either but the power did come back on yesterday.

Gas lines are long and the neighborhoods are dark and we have caught a few looters -mostly commercial.

I am really surprised by the lack of preparation by the people around here. You would think that they would have stocked up but now they are complaining that the government is not supplying them with the things that they should have gotten in the first place. We were given plenty of notice and so many people do not want to take responsibility for their lack of preparation.

Thank you for the good luck...oh and most importantly... My HT is totally safe!

Hey there!

Glad everyone is OK. Property can be replaced, but lives are precious.

Yeah, I don't get the media harping on the people sitting there expecting "the gummint" to rush in and do everything for them. Wilma literally sat out there for days and the news was blaring that it was going to hit Florida so people should prepare. And now people are crying because they don't have the essentials that they could have picked up in any convenience store in 10 minutes prior to the storm. Go figure.

They should deal with the looters harshly. That is the lowest of the low...preying on people who are already suffering like that.

Cheers and hope for a speedy recovery,

wing,glad u ok.