(CNN)We have our children; we have our pets. Everything else can be replaced.
The first time my wife and I evacuated for a hurricane, it was Floyd in 1999. Forty-eight hours out, it looked like we would take a direct hit in Ormond Beach, where we had just bought a cute old house less than a mile off the beach. Plywood was hard to find, so I drove 40 miles away to a Home Depot that still had some, then came back to a hardware store closer to home to buy screws and a power saw.
See Hurricane Matthew churn from space
Our oldest was only a year old when we returned after Floyd to find the one window we didn't cover, a small one in the laundry room, blown out, and Floyd hadn't even come ashore in Florida. Today I pick him up from his dorm at the University of North Florida, take back roads to where we live on Amelia Island, and set him about bringing in lawn furniture and coaxing the cats into carriers to take to my parents' house 25 miles further inland. Our middle child lived through Floyd in utero. Today he's a high school senior, worried only about his car being pulled safely into the garage, his drum kit packed in a closet, and his girlfriend riding out the storm with her family on the mainland. They will Facetime and Snapchat for the next two days, or as long as she still has power. The youngest has never left home without certain knowledge that it would be just as she left it when she returned. A few years ago we sat through a tropical storm as it passed over the house with gusts at around 70 mph.
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"If that was just a tropical storm," she tells me, "I don't want to be here for a hurricane." Exactly.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/06/opinions/second-worst-thing-to-do-inhurricane-matthew-twiggs/index.html
Fleeing Floridian: The second worst thing you can do in Hurricane Matthew Free PLR Articles Click Here
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