Avast maties, batten down the hatches!!

Back in the days of square rigged sailing ships, whenever there was a storm or bad weather, the Captains' cry was to "batten down the hatches!!" This involved actually covering the deck hatches with heavy canvas and then wooden strips of boards like firing strips crisscrossing the hatch and then tying it up securely with ropes to keep out water and debris. Well in our modern day we don't use canvas and wooden strips but we do use other methods. I won't be discussing those here today.

Here we are quietly halfway through the hurricane season (June 1st to November 31st) and suddenly we are looking down the barrel of hurricane Irma. With the enormity of this particular storm people are more seriously looking at preparing for the possible impact of this force 4 natural event. All of the home improvement stores are running out of plywood, batteries, and generators. Gas stations are running out of gas. Supermarkets shelves are empty of food and water and those who are in the possible direct impact areas are crowding the highways to get out of the way, turning four lane interstates into long lines of stopped/parked vehicles. Hotels and motels as far as several states away are booked up with reservations of those fleeing the storm zones.

We may yet be several days away from the actual hit of Irma, but with todays technology, weathermen have the ability to narrow down the possible paths of destruction as the storm gets ever closer. As it looks now, the storm may very well just go up the east coast of Florida and then up into Georgia or South Carolina. It could also make landfall in south Florida and go right up the middle of the state, but at this point it looks as if it might not turn into the gulf which means that there is a good chance that Panama City will be spared. That is important to me because that's where my sweet wife and I live. Of course we feel relieved but there is a nagging in the back of my mind that we are woefully unprepared, even if we didn't take a direct hit, for the devastation that could result. Those poor people, and I don't mean "poor" as in financially poor, but poor as in devastated by the storm, in Puerto Rico may be without electricity for as long as 4 months!!! How do you cook and eat or wash and live without power for that long? That's alot of scratching and scraping to get by and just stay alive. This even doesn't take into consideration injury and disease. Where is all that technology without electricity to run it?

With all our technology and advanced lifestyles, many, if not most, people don't have the skills needed to survive, let alone get by anymore. Those are the vague memories of our grandparents not of our own. With all of our societies advances we still are living at the mercy of nature. For all the fancy shining and glittering dodads and thingamabobs with their buzzing and whirring, we have thrown away the old ways of getting things done and the self reliance of our pioneer forefathers. There is a saying that was used around the turn of the century late 1800's early 1900's, went like this,"Keep the old as long as it is good and only take the new when it is better". I do believe there is an argument there for the old ways of survival that we seem to have cast aside in favor of the new fangled thingamabobs. Just my $.02.

With my hatches battened down as best I can, and keeping a weather eye out, ....

Geoff