3 Steps of Hurricane Prep - Step 1: Find Your Shelter in Place Space
Growing up in the midwest, we were no strangers to the dangers of fast moving storms: hail, lightning, and possible tornadoes. Like most children of the 1980s, we knew to just go to the nearest inner hall, sit criss-crossed and put a book over our head. As non-native Floridians, we were unaware of the extent to which we may need to prepare for a hurricane experience.
Growing up teens of the 1990s, we watched along with the rest of the country as Hurricane Andrew (1992) left much of the Southeastern US without power and a huge mess for quite some time. For Florida, it was the costliest hurricane of the 20th Century. We watched again in 2005 as Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Louisiana, Mississippi and much of the south again, becoming the costliest hurricane in United States history ($200+B). Once we moved to Central Florida in 2008, we learned about the hardships of the 2004 hurricane season with multiple named hurricanes ravaging the resources by striking one after another and of the damage of sustained water, flooding, weeks of power outages and more. However, when we went to buy our first house in 2009, we had yet to experience a significant cyclonic storm, so we weren’t sure what to specifically look for in a house or how preparation is different than the long, sweeping air-stream style systems coming from the great white north into the midwest.
Our first home had a beautiful open living space downstairs with double-sash windows facing east and north, a beautiful double sliding door also facing north. It also had a lovely two-story entry way with a stair case and four single windows facing south with more single windows on every side the house on the second floor. It didn’t occur to me when we bought the house on the corner with tons of daylight, a nice big yard and easy neighborhood egress that storm debris from every direction could become projectile and find it’s way into the unblocked windows or that in the case of a significant storm threat or tornado situation, we had the tiniest half-bath available as our best (only) space for a storm shelter area for the two of us plus however many children, pets, guests, supplies times however many hours, days, . . . (blame the overthinking on storm anxiety and mama worry.)
As Hurricane Irma approached in September 2017, we now found ourselves in an unfamiliar situation with a 15-month-old toddler, a 16-year-old cat, and an 11-year-old dog. Thankfully, I’m a super-stocker on most things, but we wanted a few extra gallons of water, including baby-water for bottles. While we managed to obtain 1 gallon of baby water, others in line were not so lucky with getting the pre-storm supplies they needed due to rationing and shortages. As the storm shifted paths, we decided that Josh’s parent’s house - Mom & Dad ResortTV1 - would be better suited to “hunker-down” (the official, unofficial term for the period of time to shelter in place). This way Jenna and Dale could help with the storm, the child and all the animals plus we might not be as exposed by the danger of debris to the windows in our open living space as well as the noisy volume of the storm that would echo through the whole house because of the openness. Here, you can see our pre-hunker-down Irma stream. (See more Irma Hurricane Streams below.)
Thankfully our first home never suffered the damage I feared. While I loved this house for its open spaces, carpeted floors, ideal location and, of course, the memories it offered us in the 10+ years we lived there, when we went looking for our next home, I had some more thoughts on what I would like to find as far as storm shelter and supply storage.
STEF’S 3 TIPS FOR FINDING YOUR STORM SHELTER IN PLACE SPACE IN YOUR NEXT NEW HOME
1) IS YOUR SPACE IS THE PROPER SIZE?
I didn’t know why only having a half bath for our space bothered me so much until I started researching for this post. When Hurricane Irma went through Central Florida, we had 4 adults, 3 dogs, a 15-month toddler and a cat in one guest bathroom in the center of the house. We all had enough space to be comfortable for the limited time that the eye of the storm passed near the house and we were fine until we thought we lost power…but just kidding, someone bumped the light switch. lol. I’m pretty sure Jenna and I had that bathroom packed with all the essentials necessary for a 3-day weekend hike on the Appalachian trail: a case of water, a bag of snacks for each of us to last til lunch, coloring books, trucks, dog and cat food, pillows to sit on and whatever else we could think we might need to survive the worst of the storm stories we’d seen on TV. Thankfully, we managed to only be up through the worst of the storm until about 4am. Our son would have slept through the whole thing if we hadn’t woken him up when we sheltered in the center bathroom to wait out the worst of the storm.
But the guidelines in this article when I began researching this today are what I found most helpful. For a storm shelter space, you might want to consider standing room verses sitting room, allowing 3 square feet per person for standing room and 6 square feet per person for sitting room. There is a special note on this link saying that hurricane shelters must allow 7 square feet per person. In all cases, it is recommended to have additional space for pets.
2) DOES THE STRUCTURE OF THE WHOLE HOME FURTHER PROTECT YOUR SHELTER SPACE?
The commonly shared information is to choose a space that is protected with limited windows and doors. Many, if not most, of the homes we looked at when we were searching for our homes either had a long wall through the center of the space to offer center support to the trusses for the roof or across the center of home in the midsection to offer similar support. In our current home, we have a large walk in closet that is protected by the long center wall. It is a main support for the roof and it is also inside a bathroom. While there are some challenges with any floor plan, I found that this feature is one of the things I appreciated about this house from the very beginning. It had a ready-made shelter in place space. I noticed it on our first walk-through of the house and I also noted that it gave me a peace about the whole space that I hadn’t even noticed was missing until I felt it.
While the floor plan of the home offers some help, I realized that this time around, I didn’t want to be the house on the corner. This offered us an opportunity to affect how neighbors and visitors that viewed the overall appeal of the neighborhood and Josh didn’t mind the upkeep of the larger lawn, but when we moved we realized that the hours taken to keep this to his level of perfection could be spent on other things - like family time. So we opted for something in a row of nearly spaced homes.
One of the other things we preferred this go-around was a single story home. I’ve never been a fan of stairs, but I managed okay in our first home because they were not all in one flight, we had 3 shortened flights with 2 landings. That seemed different enough somehow. While we love the openness of the 2-story and other floor plans may offer more sanctuary in the inner protectiveness of the spaces, we were moving with a small child and I was done agonizing over the danger of the stairs both for myself and for my family. In addition to that, I also realized something else while living in Central Florida over our first 11 years; bottom floors are made with concrete cinder block while top/upper floors are stick-built. I don’t know a ton about building houses but if “This little piggy” taught me anything, I’ll take the bricks with a storm closet, please.
These are just my opinions based on the time we moved, Florida building codes, building materials themselves and insurance demands for coverage here has all been improved over the years to provide more sound confidence in our structures to avoid or minimize damage. Our first home with all the open space never even had so much as a broken window, leaks or damage from any of the storms or years of wear. The blessing was I had changed, our situation had changed and it was time for something different.
3) DOES THIS SPACE OFFER SOME BASIC STORAGE CAPABILITY FOR YEAR-ROUND EMERGENCY SUPPLIES?
In our tiny half bath, I think we had a crank weather radio, a flashlight and maybe some batteries and bandaids if we were lucky. Now in our closet we have a whole large tote of random survival equipment that we’ve acquired over the years including battery operated fans, long-burn camping lanterns and probably knowing Josh some kind of ninja battery to plug in every Nintendo and laptop from the 20th Century for at least a month.
A word of caution on the size of the space though…
Bigger isn’t always better; the fortunate hazard with this particular closet we have is that it also kind of serves as our “basement”. The items in there would be in a basement if we were in the midwest, which ironically would probably also be our shelter in place space, but we don’t have basements here. While many people choose to use their garage for storage here, we have found that during a serious storm, the garage fills up just as much as the closet and it is useful to protect the cars along with all the other outdoor items. So throughout the school year, this poor closet gets tossed around a bit and at the beginning of every hurricane season, we find we have to “Marie Kondo” the whole closet just to get back down to our hurricane supplies, our mainstays and the room for our shelter in place space that we had envisioned when we first saw this space as a beautiful empty giant closet that seemed so spacious.
PRO-TIP FROM STEF
Set a reminder on your phone for the first weekend of every June or another specific date that you want to observe as your Hurricane Space Prep Day. Use this day as time set aside to clean your space, check supply quantities and reorder necessary items. Often at the beginning of June there are tax-free days to help support stocking up on items that often have shortages when a storm is approaching.
If you are new to Central Florida or to hurricane prep in general, I’d love to know what you found helpful about this article. Below are some links to some of the resources from this blog as well as more link to our Hurricane Irma Experiences for the ResortTV1 family. Check back next week for 3 STEPS OF HURRICANE PREP - STEP 2: BEFORE THE STORM.
More IRMA Hurricane Streams
Magic Kingdom after Irma
Animal Kingdom after Irma, Stream
Epcot and Hollywood prep for Irma
MORE RESOURCES
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/dcmi.pdf
https://universalproperty.com/most-and-least-hurricane-prone-areas-in-florida/
