All those hurricane mitigation features built into their house paid off. No damage to the home itself. The "cage" as they call it, over the pool, took a glancing blow from a falling tree (they lost two in the storm), but that is the sum of the physical damage they have found.
Now, four days later, they continue to clean up a mountain of debris found in the yard and blown up against their home. Besides losing power and electricity, after the storm passed, they lost water, which was turned back on Wednesday with a boil-water order in place, but no electricity with which to boil the water. She said some people were starting to get sick because they had drunk contaminated water.
While they have a hard-wired generator, there are only three rooms in the house with air conditioning, two bedrooms and an office. And, it has been very hot and humid in the days following the storm. One set of friends is coming over and sleeping in the extra bedroom at night.
With power still out, there are freezers that are thawing out, so they have had some fantastic dinners as they cook up steak and seafood that would otherwise go to waste. The stove in the home is propane fueled and so is their gas grill. Those two things and a microwave have allowed them to cook.
They are spending their days cleaning up the outside of the house. Dinners are by candlelight outside on the patio since it is so beastly hot inside the home.
All of the above shows that preparedness and mitigation pays off, although I'd note that when it came time to get their extra batteries out, they found that they were all dead. Everything expires eventually, even batteries with a 10-year shelf life.
