Hurricane Irma September 10-11, 2017

Hurricane Irma was heading our way! First indications were that she would come up the East coast but she changed direction as she got near Florida. It then looked like she was going to go up Florida’s west coast. She got to Ft. Myers before turning inland and by 11 PM was heading directly for The Villages. By the time she got to us, she had gone from Cat 5 to Cat 3. I made up a bed in our closet and slept like a baby, through the brunt of the storm. Arne kept watch.

While people in the southern part of the state were told to evacuate, we decided to stay. We had spent September 9 getting the house ready by moving all lanai furniture into the garage and sealing up the front door against possible flooding. As we went about our neighborhood on September 11, we saw that we were very, very lucky with hardly any cleanup to do. Our neighbors with large oak trees had a huge mess. We didn’t lose power although some areas east of us were without power for up to a week. The only damage we had was peeling paint from the front door as we removed the duct tape and plastic Arne had used so well to keep water from coming into the house.