Evacuating from Orlando vacation!

[RSKY]

We flew to out of Louisville to Orlando last Saturday the 5th with one daughter and two grands. Supposed to spend a week at SeaWorld and Discovery Cove. Due to Hurricane Milton we had to leave after three nights at the resort. Couldn't get a flight change to get out so we changed the location of our rental car return to Nashville ( SIXT doesn't have an outlet at the Louisville airport ), drove there, spent the night, and rented from Enterprise to drive to Louisville to pick up our car. The normal 12-13 hour drive from Orlando to Nashville took over twenty hours and this was one exhausted granddaddy. They were allowing travel on the left shoulder and at times I was keeping up with traffic at 80-mph ON THE SHOULDER. Pucker factor was high but we were passing miles of stalled traffic. Then all traffic would slow down to 10-mph for a half hour or so. Very frustrating. My son-in-law picked my daughter and grands up in Nashville and took them home but we still had to drive to Louisville to pick up our car. That was all on Tuesday. After spending the night my wife and I drove three hours on Wednesday to get to the Louisville airport and pick up our vehicle. Then we visited with some friends and I took an hour nap. We then made the four hour trip home.

The rest of the story.

During the drive from Orlando to Nashville we must have met over a thousand electrical bucket trucks and tree trimmer trucks. Tried counting but it was impossible. There were just too many. Every motel we could see from I75 had a parking lot full of bucket trucks. The state government in Florida was on the job preparing and pre-positioning all the help to get the state up and running as quickly as possible. The preparation we saw was impressive.

RSKY

 

[oosik]

Good to hear that all are safe. I just can't imagine living in an area and being constantly under the cloud of a tornado or hurricane.

 

[not2old]

Good to hear that all are safe. I just can't imagine living in an area and being constantly under the cloud of a tornado or hurricane.

I had that same feeling, then we had last year's wildfire here. Seems like no place is totally safe.

 

[Alan W.]

We were in Myrtle Beach when Floyd came through. No evacuation because they thought it wasn’t going to hit. At the last minute they declared an evacuation. I had already gassed the truck up and had a spare 5 gallon full in the bed.
We left as people lined up at the pumps. It was ugly crawling along then as it opened up 80 to 90 mph. People would pull to the side of the interstate then set there with their signal on waiting for a nonexistent opening. They should have sped up in the side then merged.
We were 18 hours getting from Myrtle Beach to the Pigeon Forge exit where we had called ahead and booked a room to finish our vacation.

 

[oosik]

Yes - there is the threat of wildfires here. I've been most fortunate. Only one got close. And then the wind changed direction and the local farmers with their big tractors were able to get it out.

 

[not2old]

We were away with our trailer and they wouldn't let us come back. We only have our home because a bunch of the locals risked getting arrested to save most of our neighbourhood.

 

[Jstpssng]

Everytime there's a big storm predicted, I see convoys of bucket and auger trucks with New Brunswick plates headed down the interstate. A few weeks later I see them headed back up through, no doubt exhausted.

 

[gsganzer]

I was caught in New Orleans last month during hurricane Francine. My rental car ended up under water in the hotel parking lot. I'm dealing with that hassle now, through my credit card company.

I was supposed to oversee some power plant outage work near Orlando beginning next week and through most of November. They moved their outage to January now.

I think you're going to start seeing an exodus of folks leaving Florida. Get ready TX, I suspect the majority will be relocating to the Lone Star State.