AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums The Cayes Ambergris Caye Hurricane effects Sth End?

Amanda, thanks for those official words.....just call me a rebel!
by the way black market dark Caribbean was $20.us a liter during Keith and very abundant, The BDF themselves where looting.
No one came up here and prevented or helped with anything. I stay and fight.I've found that's the best thing for me.I agree get the wimps, whiners and helpless hysterical masses off the island.
It all sounds good and practical on paper but that's never reality.

You need to learn to shop Elbert!

Hey Elbert, I hear you. I doubt I would leave either. But of course we are prepped, generators, extra fuel, food and water for a month etc. etc.

Saw an awful lot of helpless folks right after Keith.

First thing I did after the all clear was get a nice fresh tetanus shot and a hot cup of coffee.

I'll stay through a 3 but will consider evacuating if it goes to 4.
My biggest concern is that I will not leave my dogs.

Remember Keith? It was supposed to be a tropical depression.When they decided it was growing the seas were so high that the police stopped the boats from leaving on CC, probably saving many lives.Not even the most fearful and mobile of residents were able to evacuate Caye Caulker.
Sitting around waiting for them to guess at numbers might prove to be less than ideal in terms of saving oneself and ones pets.

Yep, I remember alright. That was a frightening experience that I would be happy to never experience again.

Do you remember the evacuation for Mitch? That was hairy too. Luckily we weren't impacted too badly and we did a mass evacuation of San Pedro - over 10,000 people moved over 2 days. It was incredible.

Indeed Keith was one for the record books. We practically watched the Tropical depression go by way past the reef to the east, little did we realize that it was going to loop above us and return over the Bay of Chetumal.

If a cat 4 hurricane is coming you may not know it until it is too late. Keith was a Tropical Storm that evolved into a Cat 4, very quickly and switched its heading in a manner that had not been tracked or predicted. It was too late to leave.

If you plan to evacuate 4 dogs you need to be moving days before the forecasters can even semi-accurately pinpoint the possible dead centre location at any given time. The speed of the storm won't be very accurate until it is 24 hours out.

Iris was a cat 4 predicted to dead center San Pedro, during the course of a couple of hours it changed course by only a few degrees and ended up decimating Placencia, which is 100 miles south of San Pedro.

Most shelters will not accept pets. Boats and planes for evacuation purposes will not allow you to travel with animals. Most hotels will accept a pet or 2. Trying to go somewhere with 4 dogs will be a serious task. You will need your own boat, your own helper, you will need to carry food, water, etc for your whole entourage - and you need to find a vehicle that can carry them and then a place to stay. It won't be easy. I would highly recommend that you make your plans now.

I remember Mitch all to well (as a tourist), I was sitting in a restaurant over on CC (the shack right on the edge of the water) drinking a Belkin and eating when a hurricane update came on and everyone in the place froze and went dead silent. Within about 45 seconds everyone in the place, myself included had a look on our face like oh s**t, what are we going to do. I got on the pay phone called my folks and got them to buy an emergency ticket (flat broke college kid at the time). Found the first water taxi out and thought I had beat most of the rush, that is until I got to the airport.....

I would describe the experience as ultimate hell by the time I finally got home, and I was one of the "lucky ones".

Having personally ridden out Alicia, Charley, T.S. Allison, and evacuated for Mitch, Rita, and Ike (we lost our home in Ike, the surge got us). I have developed my own set of takeaways for hurricane preparedness:
1. You are on your own, possibly for a very long time
2. You can never have enough booze
3. Life without power after 4 days is trying after two weeks maddening and after a month unbearable
4. Your life savings may not be enough to purchase fuel to keep a generator running after a storm for a month
5. You will quickly find out who your real friends are if it hits
6. Almost everyone will try and steal from you
7. The insurance company will screw you blind
8. If you stay in a low area you very probably will die (Bolivar Peninsula over here is an outstanding example)
9. If you decide to leave and the winds are already picking up you waited too long
10. If you have pets, as we do you can double the difficulty factor of everything.
and most importantly...

11. No matter what item or possession it is, nothing is worth your life it is all just "stuff" in the end. It took losing basically evereything for me to really figure this out.

I love your list. The only thing I disagree with, from my personal experience was that here the insurance company paid up within 1 week of my claim, which was submitted within one week of the storm. So I had a really lucky experience.

But don't talk to me about health insurance!!!! That was a whole different story. READ the fine print and live with it by the letter of the law.

I wish we could get that kind of response, sometimes less is more. After you fight your way through the state and local level government, you then have to deal with a federal disaster in itself, otherwise known as FEMA. All this comes into play in trying to get permits to repair your home, and before your insurance company will talk to you. Basically, they want to know if you got any "freebies" from FEMA. I too could go on about this one for a long time. We submitted our claim 1.5 months after the storm (ever tried to list every single thing you own it is very hard, especially when all you have is a slab and photos for reference) and finally got a check an additional 7.5 months later after negotiating/threatening/irritating our insurance company.

I too know the insurance code for homeowners like the back of my hand, you are definetley right about the fine print........

awesome discussion...