2016 Hurricane Hermine

Its impact on our neighborhood

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, September 1, 2, and 3, 2016

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Florida State University closed at 12 Noon today due to the impending Hurricane Hermine's arrival around midnight. Most of the people left around 12 Noon. I and VtS had to finish some essential work and left bit latter than 3 PM. The skies were clear most of the day but started to rain occasionally after midday.

We tuned to radio and TV and watched the Hurricane slowly approach the Gulf Coast and it was expected to cross the shore around 1 AM and becoming a Hurricane from a Tropical Storm.We went to bed with power and cell phones working.

When we tuned to TV at 12 Midnight, Tallahassee has already experienced power outage for about 35,000 households. We had power and cell signals.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Around 1 AM there were couple of power flickers and we still had power. But may be around 1:30 AM we lost the power completely. The entire neighborhood was without power. We could hear howling winds outside our home. The tall pine trees behind our house was shaking badly and small branches started to fall down. Our neighbors front yard trees were shaking very badly. The rain was coming down hard.

We woke up around 7 AM to find out our neighbors tree had fallen down taking a road sign but not damaging any vehicles. We started to help clean out the tree by cutting small branches. It was humid, hot and tiring. VtS and I did some help in clearing it. I needed some rest.

We had running water and gas service. So showered in the morning. We had to use either a match stick or lighter to start our stove. Bhanu cooked food using the gas stove and had nice hot meal

Finally, with several folks help, the road was passable. We then went to FSU to asses the damage to my unit and VtS' work. Only some signal lights worked, so went very cautiously. Most of the people were polite and careful! There was no power in any of the buildings in FSU. Our unit's generator and VtS's building's generator were working keeping essential instrument/samples safe. I noticed lot of water leak through emergency doors. I cleaned up as much as I can in all four floors. I met with couple of people asses the damage and updated people via e-mail which was still working. I had good cell signal via T-mobile but spotty signal via Virgin Mobile. My home landline was completely out. FSU's WiFI was working (as per my colleague). Even WFSU was (NPR) not working in the afternoon (it was working at least until 11 AM this morning).

We then went home by 4 PM. Since we had running water and gas stove we prepared meal for the night. We opened the fridge sparingly to avoid the food from going waste. We had showers multiple times since it was sticky with no A/C or fan.

In the evening it became cloudy and started to rain again and so we had to finish all our eating by 7:00 PM. We kept updates via web using T-mobile 4G service and battery operated radio. There multiple bouts of rain showers throughout the night. It became clearer around 12 Midnight.

We then heard people working on a tree removal around 8 PM. We walked to Weems Road and noticed the utilities crews were working on the tree that had fallen on the power cables along the East side of the Weems Road. So we hoped that power could be restored soon.

Finally, around 1:45 AM on late Friday night (actually Saturday morning) the power was restored. It will be a lucky break for us.

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Sat, Sep 3, 2016 morning >67,000 people didn't have power

Around 1:45 AM early this morning we got our power back. So essentially we were without power for almost 24 hours spanning two nights. I woke up and plugged all our phones and devices for recharging (our Anker 79AN7925 power bank helped our devices powered up during the storm).

We woke up around 6:30 AM and Bhanu had to go to EOC around 7:45 AM. We had our breakfast since we had now power. The skies were still cloudy with occasional bursts of sunlight.

As we went through the day we found out large swaths of Tallahassee residents were without power even as late as Saturday afternoon. FSU announced that they will resume operation only on Wednesday, September 7, 2016.

My unit didn't have power as of Saturday afternoon. We requested refill of generator fuel and was delivered at 11:45 AM.

Saturday, September 10, 2016

One week later only <100 people didn't have power