[accessally_has_any_tag tag_id=’4998816′ comment=’Has Access: Workshop 4: June 2024 Hurricanes and Cash’]

Transcription

**Note: this has not been edited at all, and there are surely several mistakes, so keep an open mind!**

 Okay. Welcome everyone to our hurricane preps slash emergency cash workshop. Um, I wanted to combine these because honestly, with the emergency cash situation, the only replies I got were from people who. experience that because of a hurricane. And hurricane season started June 1st. So this is a topic that I really wanted to cover anyway.

Last month, we covered power outages, which is right down the hurricane alley. Um, so I hope that this is okay and helpful to combine it all. I thought it would be fun to, not fun, but I thought it would be very instructive to hear people’s actual experiences. Um, Thank you. And I will just start by saying I lived in Alabama, um, for a couple of years and.

We experienced Hurricane Ivan, um, but we weren’t like in the direct path. And so, you know, we lost power for like two days, um, but really it wasn’t a big deal. I mean, the city was trashed, you know, I mean, there were trees everywhere, roads were blocked, all of that, but honestly, like our area was very lucky.

And so I can’t really claim to know what it’s like, you know, I mean, we were, we were right in there and we were really close and it was the biggest storm I’ve ever, ever experienced and all of that. We did a lot of prep for it. But when it comes down to like, The real, um, the really, really crazy things that happen.

We did not experience that. So I wanted to get some better firsthand experience with it. So, um, we’ve got two ladies here who agreed to come and just kind of talk about their experience. So first I’m just going to have them. Um, each introduce themselves and just tell like, you know, about your life now, anything you want to tell, um, and then just kind of tell the story of your experience with the hurricane or hurricanes, if you’ve been through multiple, or if you just want to focus on the worst one or, you know, just one of them or whatever, um, and just kind of tell us the story and then we’ll kind of get into some nitty gritty details.

So Francis, would you like to go first? Sure.

Um, my name is Francis McGrath. I currently live near Dallas, Texas. Um, we have nine children. They’re kind of scattered now all throughout the United States. Um, We went through many hurricanes while we were living down in Slidell, Louisiana, which is across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.

Um, at the time of Katrina, we just had our two youngest sons living at home, but we had several married daughters that lived near us in the area. Um, the rest at that time, one was on a mission and others had married and gone other places. Um, we, Um, we would sort of prep, but we didn’t take the hurricanes very seriously.

And a lot of that is because I was telling Melanie, they would veer at the last minute and go somewhere else. And so we just, you know, we kind of, it made us complacent. We thought, eh, you know, we might as well just ride this one out. Or if we did evacuate, we would go for just one night and then come back the next day.

And so that’s sort of how we approached Katrina. Yeah. We didn’t think it was really going to land near us. Um, Katrina was in August, on August 29th of 2011. And, um, so we kind of waited until several of our kids kept calling us saying, get out of town, you know, you need to leave. And we waited till like the 11th hour and only took what we needed for one night because we were super convinced we would be back the next day.

I even left my cat who was not very happy. We usually would drive six hours North into Mississippi and stay with our married son there in a town we used to live in and to our horror, after watching it all night, we realized that Hurricane Katrina landed somewhere between Slidell and Waveland, Mississippi, which was just to the East of us.

I know you think it probably landed in New Orleans, and that’s just totally wrong. That was a byproduct of storm surge that ruined the levees, but it really landed, like I said, right by us. And so, from 6 hours away, we saw all of the destruction. That was caused to the area, and in particular our town of Slidell.

We were warned not to come back until we got word. And after four days of waiting and reading about homes in our town, and even in our neighborhood, being commandeered by people searching for a dry home, we decided to go back anyway. So we left our two sons with our other kids, and we loaded our van full of loaded gas cans.

And a shotgun that we had to go purchase because we were told we would need to defend ourselves, and we were told to defend ourselves, if necessary, um, we had to take a very secure circuitous route because of all the tornado damage that is a byproduct of hurricanes and that might be too, uh, Melanie, what you had in Alabama was the tornadoes that happened because of the hurricane.

When we neared slide L, we found back roads into the city near our neighborhood and had a very, very hard time navigating the roads as they were littered with cars and boats and power lines and just about anything you can imagine. Our home was on the windward side of the storm and we had. 100 foot tall pine trees all over our yard.

And five of them had come down through the roof and let rain water down into the house. Um, at this time, the power had been off for about almost five days and it was a hundred degree heat. And it just seemed like it was about a hundred percent humidity. It was so humid. Um, we had two refrigerator freezers and one loaded freezer, and it was Um, because the power had been off for so long, we had to dig a trench in the backyard and bury all of the perishable food from the refrigerators, which was a lot because even though I had married kids that had moved away, I still was shopping for 11 people.

It seems like and I still do. My husband says, um, And then anything that was still cold from the freezers we packed in coolers and we we either put some right away on our gas grill, or we donated in big coolers to the first responders to cook for the firemen and everybody else. Um, we were lucky that we had gas in the grill and we were lucky that we had natural gas in the house.

In fact, any other people that were coming back to check on their homes would ask if they could come and take showers at our house because they could get. Heated water, but didn’t really want to take a hot shower. Um, my husband, um, became the acting bishop of our ward. We’re LDS. And so he was asked to go check on all of the members homes.

And that was a very, very devastating drive. First of all, it was very hard to get around. Secondly, it was just hard to see all the destruction. All the bridges were down. There were so many homes that were just. Full of water demolished. The school I worked at was demolished bridges were down. So my husband was, would not be able to get to work across the lake in new Orleans East, uh, at Lockheed Martin.

And you would even see caskets that had been raised up and taken, and they were in ditches on the side of the road. It was, it was very traumatic. Uh, the school I worked at had had 27 feet of water in it. It eventually had to be demolished. So when we did go back weeks and weeks and weeks later, we had to platoon at another high school that hadn’t had as much damage and we had to go to school in the late afternoon and evening.

Um, let’s see. Now, when we got back to town, there was nothing open, nothing, no banks, no gas stations, no restaurants, no grocery stores, nothing, no infrastructure at all, no garbage pickup, no power, no cell phone service. Nothing. We did still have water coming into the house and, um, I don’t remember if we boiled it.

We did have a lot of water storage at our house. A lot of water storage. Um, we, um, so there was, you know, you talk about cash there. There wasn’t any way to even use cash because there was nothing open to use cash for. Um, so after about five days back in our home, the state president advised us to go back to where we had evacuated to and we were there for another, um, I think it was a total of eight weeks after the storm hit that we were able to come back to our house because they told us the power was back on.

We got back to our house. And the power was off. And so we went another two or three days with no power. By this time, there was one store open. It was Walmart, and it was open for four hours a day. And that was because they couldn’t get anybody to, um, that was willing to work. Because why work if you’re getting government subsidies?

FEMA was paying, um, I believe it was 2, 000 on a card. Uh, the Red Cross did 1500 on a card and then of course the National Guard was passing out water and M. R. E. S. And baby supplies. I will say that in our town, a guy shot his sister because she got to the water before he did. That’s how desperately they needed water.

Um, there was still no garbage pickup. It was a common sight to see refrigerators on the side of the, you know, the front of a yard, uh, wrapped with, with, um, secured with chain. And most people had not done what we did and they had left the food in their refrigerator. So when responders did come and take those refrigerators away, they had to be in hazmat suits because of the nature of what was left in the refrigerator.

Um, So, uh, that was, that was my experience. It was not fun. And it took, it took a long time to get back to normal. I’m talking years.

I don’t know what to say. It was an experience. I’ll tell you.

Yeah. I, I have so many questions. I have so many questions, but I don’t know if we should wait for Tiffany to give her experience and then kind of double back. Um, wow. Some things that you mentioned there, like caskets.

Yeah.

These are things you just don’t think about.

I will tell you this. It was interesting how unprepared first responders were and how prepared our church was. First responders had to come to our, our church where we had a satellite phone. They didn’t even have a satellite phone to be able to call out for help. Our church provided first responders with body bags.

And with chainsaws and with, you know, all manner of, of, uh, food and equipment. So it was, it was amazing. And our church was ready on the border pretty much with loaded trucks ready to swoop in whenever they could get there. So it was amazing, but I was very surprised at how unprepared first responders in the area that gets this all the time.

Yeah, or

interesting. That’s really interesting. Okay. Tiffany. Are you ready to.

Okay,

there we go. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah Um, wow, um, my story does not compare So that sounds wow No, I I understand that. Um, so There was like one main hurricane that I wanted to talk about but i’m gonna age myself and go backwards. So when I was young, um I was a young mother. We lived in South Florida and we went through Andrew.

I believe is which one it was and that it wasn’t supposed to hit us at all. It’s supposed to go north and it just turned. Um, and that was. It was horrible. That was where, um, you know, there were boats in these, um, you know, the tall buildings stuck in and, um, we lived in an apartment, um, luckily, a few blocks away from a Publix.

So, after it happened, And I wasn’t really prepared. I was young and, you know, you really don’t think about that. We were able to just walk, um, to Publix and the Red Cross was already there. Um, and we had family, um, you know, like an hour away. And so that wasn’t, it was horrible going through the hurricane and seeing the devastation.

But I can’t say that that I was very blessed to have, you know, what we had around us. Um, and then at one point, um, it did go through a flood. It reminded me, um, Years back where it was a storm, but literally it flooded. We just happened to be out running some errands and we couldn’t get back into our subdivision.

And we had water. Um, I think it was like six feet high in our house is what the insurance said. And we lost everything, like everything. So we couldn’t even go back to our home. So we ended up, um, Staying at the community center for like one night and, you know, our kids were young. So it was like, okay, let’s see if we can find somewhere to stay.

We didn’t have family. So we ended up staying at, we live in a small town, a motel, and they had no power and that went on for a good week, um, give or take. So that was, um, that was kind of crazy. Just kind of losing everything, going back in and, um, You know, just trying to save as much as you can, especially when you have kids and our cat actually was home and our cat survived because she climbed up in above the kitchen cabinets.

Um, you know, that little space, we had a space there. Um, so she survived that, um. But right now, oh, and I’m Tiffany. Right now, um, I live on the coast in Southeast Georgia, and, um, we get quite a few hurricane scares, um, you know, like Melanie said, hurricane season just started on the 1st, and, um, We had one a few years back and it was kind of it was the scariest since we’ve been here.

Um, we’ve had a couple evacuations say over the past eight years for this one. We didn’t leave Um, we thought we would be okay. I think it ended up hitting us at a three um And we did lose power But we had water and um, I wrote some notes about that. So at that point, um, Usually what I do and I did at that point was as soon, I keep an eye on the weather.

So as soon as I see that we’re in the cone, um, I start preparing. So I’ll go fill up all of our cars and we keep it full. We, um, fill up a couple of gas cans. Um, you know, I make sure I feel like do all my wash, make sure all the dishes are clean, just kind of. Top off everything, um, kind of look, do I need more snaps?

And at this point, um, there is, there’s no panic. So you can still go to Home Depot and get like plastic if you need it. Um, and then once the news picks up on it, and we were already okay, um, so let’s see. So when this hurricane happened, um, we lost the power. We had no power, I think, for like, 8 days. Um, we had a daughter still in the house.

She’s still here. Um, and the thing with the cash is at that point when we saw us in the cone, we did go and get some cash from the ATM just to have. We ended up not using it. Um, I want to say at that point I probably had like some extra, Dry goods, extra water, stuff like that, just because, um, where we live, but I wouldn’t say I was very organized.

So. At that point, um, you can’t get in and out, you know, of our city because we were mandatory evacuated. So, we couldn’t really go anywhere to a grocery store. We had a grocery store, they were closed, um, so we never ended up going in to get anything. I know at some point, I believe they opened up and just did cash.

Um, but I don’t know how that went because we were okay. I mean, we were okay with our pantry items. Um, we immediately started, um, grilling. Um, that’s what we did. Um, now we do have a gas grill. Um, and like I said, we had water. Um, we had to boil it, but. You know, it’s still nice to have water in the bathroom.

So that I think made a huge difference. Honestly, when you have water, um, I really think that’s really important. I think that made us feel a little more normal. If that makes sense at all, once they open up the roads where you can go in and out, if you lived here, my husband and I were just like, okay, let’s go.

Get some more stuff, just, you know, some more snacky stuff stuff that, you know, we really enjoy and, um, we ended up the next county. Wasn’t bad. They had power. It didn’t go inland. So, but what we ended up doing is we ended up going to have been about an hour and a half from where we live. And the reason being is that we knew it was going to be chaos at the grocery stores that were closest to us.

And my husband said, We’re going to end up waiting that long anyway in line. We’re going to have to fight over food and water. Let’s just go far. And we kind of knew, you know, that area. So we drove probably an hour and a half or two hours, stopped up at Walmart, came home, um, but that hurricane was really scary.

Um, I kind of skipped over the during part. Um, We have a lot of trees in our yard, and I don’t know, I feel like it helped us. We had a lot of damage, um, we didn’t have any water leaks, but we had to get a new roof, we had a lot of landscaping damage, a couple of trees down, um, toppled part of our fence in the front, um, but there was one point, I remember, that it got a lot better.

Really bad. And I remember thinking to myself, should I have left? So, um, there was that one moment, it was just sounded like all the trees were going to crash on top of us. Um, so it was really scary, but, um, let’s see if there’s anything else that I missed. Um, and I know you were going to ask us questions too.

One thing we also, um, had sandbags. You can get sandbags. Like without the sand in them at Home Depot. So we had luckily before that purchase some and filled them with sand. We still have them to use. Luckily, our house is above, like, you have a few steps or like three feet above the ground. Our neighbors are right at level.

Um, So I think we felt a little bit safer because. Um, from flooding. So, um, I think we did have a generator. I think that is, um, when people ask us, especially around here, like, what would I suggest getting? And I’m like, if you have just enough food for a couple of days and water. I would suggest instead of expanding past that to get a generator.

The generator really made a difference in our lives. Even if you just turn on a box fan, um, it gets really hot. Um, you know, we rotated our fridge, um, I think it was last year or year before when we had just a little hurricane. It didn’t hit us, but you know. You still, you’re kind of out of work in school for a day or two.

Um, and we lose power here and there during those times. So we were able to keep our food safe because we were able to, you know, plug in that generator.

That’s my experience. Woo! I hope I didn’t ramble too

long. No, no, that was great. That’s why I didn’t want to just like fire off questions. I just kind of wanted to hear the whole, you know, the whole experience and then kind of get into some details. She made

me think of several things. Like the time to get a generator is now not that you might be in the cone because there will be no generators to get

right now.

There were generators. I will say that. I think, um, you know, a lot of people, because generators are expensive. When I talk to our neighbors, they’re like, oh, we’re going to wait. There are, um, it’s really interesting. Home Depot and Lowe’s here, I think maybe now so, but they’re so good. Like, they brought in trucks of, before it was even, like when we were just hit the cone, Home Depot and Lowe’s had, you know, pallets of water and generators and batteries and all of that.

So, um, I think that, you know, if, if people listening can’t get a generator, don’t want to invest, even a small generator, um, just if you pay attention to the weather and catch it before it gets crazy

and not just having a generator, but having enough cans of gas that you need to feed, right?

Right, right.

And that’s why, yeah, that’s why I mentioned, like, as soon as we hit that cone, we fill up, fill up our cars and gas cans and get extra water, um, because then you’re going to beat the crowd, right?

Yeah,

Frances. I was going to say, the other thing, as you can tell, what I, from my story, perishable foods didn’t do us much good.

We had to throw them all away. I wish that we had had more home canned or store canned goods, um, more freeze dried or dehydrated foods because. Anything perishable, you know, in a short term food storage kind of scenario didn’t do us any good.

The

other thing I didn’t mention was that we didn’t have cell phone service, but I did find out that we could have texted.

I didn’t know. I didn’t know you could text when you don’t have the ability to call.

Yeah, and the cell companies around here, I’m going to say, um, even before they opened up. So people come back in, they already had little spots like hotspots that you could go to, um, and use their phones or, you know, um, use the Internet.

I think, um, I think our city is just really maybe because we’re on the coast that they’re really, you know. Yeah, it sounds like we’re experienced.

Yeah. It was very different from like, you know, yeah, it sounds like your area for whatever reason is way more on top of it than what Francis. I know. So, and so what year are you talking about, Tiffany?

Um, so this, let me think. Um, I’m not good with dates. I want to say it was like 2018. I think it was Matthew. Um, if I’m not mistaken. So it wasn’t that long ago. Um, and it seems like every year we almost get to the point of either evacuating or almost evacuating. I know this hurricane season they’re saying it’s going to be pretty bad.

So I don’t know,

but you never know. I’m laughing because my husband has had this, I don’t know if it’s a midlife or late life crisis, but he bought a, uh, classic. It’s a yacht that he’s restoring and it’s down in Galveston Bay and I’m like, are you out of your mind? Are you really out of your mind? Because I’m looking at the hurricane season thinking now I’m going to be freaking out every time there’s any storm because we have this big boat down there and he’s down there on it restoring it.

Wow.

Wow. Wow. You know, another thing that, um, We keep is we now have late car covers because we have extra cars. So we cover them up and we kind of know where to, I mean, you know, if it got so bad, but we were hit with, um, you know, a 4 or 5, it’s not going to really matter, but kind of strategically place your cars, you know, not under trees and, you know, as soon as hurricane season hits, um, you know, we make sure our gutters are kept clean more so than in the winter time.

Something

else that came to mind was, um, depending on your bank, like when we evacuated, we were with a national bank like Wells Fargo. So we could access our account when we were evacuated. We could use our cards and everything. But one of my daughters banked at a local bank that didn’t have branches elsewhere, so they couldn’t access cash.

And so cash would have been great for them when they were evacuated, not when they were back in town, but when they were evacuated.

Right, that’s a really good, that’s a good point. Okay, so I want to circle back to like some specific questions, if that would be all right. Um, so cell coverage, I just kind of want to like get a full, were you, so Francis, you said no cell coverage, but you could have texted.

I didn’t find that out until Weeks later that we could have texted. I had my, when we were evacuated, my son’s mission president in Southern California got found us some, you know, at my son’s house, he was able to get ahold of us and he said, I have a very worried boy here. He wants to know if you’re okay because he couldn’t just

call

our cell phone.

And so, yeah. Yeah. Um,

maybe I’ll just turn it off.

Okay. Maybe

not. Um, sorry, I don’t know what just happened. Um, okay. And then for you, Tiffany, your, um, it sounds like you had cell. Like the spots that you can use? Yes, how long did it take for them to get those up? So like during the actual event, did you have coverage at all or I

think we lost coverage Um, i’ll be honest.

I don’t remember but I feel like we lost it, but we got it back pretty fast Um, we have verizon And um, and you know I think also part of preparing is I did call family members. I called my sister, I called my mom and I said, look, we’re going to stay, we’re prepared, we’re going to be fine. So if you don’t hear from us for a few days, don’t panic.

So I think maybe, I mean, I’m sure they still worried, but for us, it helped us to not worry about, Oh my gosh, we’ve got to call this person. We got to call this person. So. We didn’t really worry whether we had self service or not, like, it didn’t really matter. I mean, we were all together, um, you know, nobody else in our family were in, you know, hurricane area.

So, it was kind of something to take off our plate by letting them know in advance, if we don’t have self service, don’t worry, you know, we will get in touch with you. Yeah, okay.

Um, Okay, you mentioned Tiffany getting plastic at Home Depot and bags and things like that, right? We get, um, Oh, go

ahead. No, no,

no.

Just talk. Okay. Talk about that. Um, because if someone is new in like a hurricane prone area, Right. These are things that you don’t think about, right? No. So,

right. And the sandbox, um, you know, we didn’t have them a while back, so now we keep them and they just come in a big pack and they’re, they’re really inexpensive.

Um, and we had sand leftover. Um, we. An addition, so we had sand leftover from our brick, our masons, so we kind of, um, filled them up with that. Um, and because, like I said, we’re off the ground, our main home, but our addition is like right on the ground to go in the door. So that’s where we use our sandbags.

Um, you can also get, um, really cheap, the playground sand. I think it’s like a 50 pound bag and Lowe’s and Home Depot, they carry that all year. So you can go and get your sandbags at any time. Plastic. We just get, um, it’s interesting. Um, I’d like to really get manageable sizes of plastic and they come off.

Orbs

for the roof or,

Well, no, I’m just talking about the plastic. Um, like you would cover something just clear plastic. And we have those, um, along with, um, um, The really heavy silver tape, um, in case a window cracks in case, um, you know, we have lots of windows on our house. So if a branch or anything breaks that we can immediately put up the plastic with the tape.

Now, we do also have tarps. And, um, and one storm. It’s interesting because a lot can happen, not just in a hurricane. And maybe that’s something important. Um, I want to emphasize is that you can just have a really bad storm and you can have trees fall and you can lose your power. We had just a regular. Bad thunderstorm and we lost power for four days.

So it does not have to be like a storm.

Houston just had straight line winds a couple of weeks ago with that huge storm that went through. My husband was down there at the time and it killed seven people.

My gosh.

Yeah, it was good.

So we keep tarps and, um, you know, we’ve had to use one before, um, like I said, we have a new roof and so far everything’s been fine.

But prior to that, you know, we had damage and we, my husband got up on the ladder and put the tarp on. And I think also it’s important to kind of like. I don’t know, kind of think it through. It’s like, if you’re going to buy plastic, we’ll make sure you have tape. You know, if you have a generator, we’ll make sure you get an extra can of gas, you know, like really think those things through.

Um, and then the sandbags, um, they’re really easy to store. Um, But they, I think a lot of it, um, other than like with Andrew was really bad. And when I went through the flood and we lost everything, um, that’s so traumatic, but I think it really does help when you feel like you’re prepared. To a certain degree.

I mean, we never know what’s going to happen, but, um, I feel better about this hurricane season. It’s like, okay, I know the tree falls on our house. We know what to do. We have a ladder. We, you know, we have everything in place. Um, so,

yeah. Um, so when you, so back to sandbags, do you store them full of sand year round?

Um, you know, we do have, um, we have three. We just have it off on the side of the garden because we use them, um, sometime in the winter. Like there’s just like tons of rain coming and we weren’t really sure how that door was going to, you know, hold up and like, you never know. So, um, We do have 3 stored and the rest we don’t.

Um, we’ll probably get another bag of playground sand and just put it. You know, um, whether it be in the garage or, you know, on the side of the garden, um, and the other thing is the grill. I really wanted to mention. Um, when we went through Andrew, we just had a regular Weber grill. Now, we have a gas grill, which we have gas stove inside too.

Um, and I’ve never had the gas. Turn off or the water turn off. So like I said, that’s really great. But you know, there’s a lot you can do like you can make oatmeal on your grill. Um, and if you have a generator, you can plug in your crock pot. Um, so the food I get now is food. That, you know, like picnic food, like the dry stuff, um, or snacks, um, things like that.

And then I make sure we have, like, puzzles and games in the house. Um, and that way it just feels, even though you don’t have power for a week or so, Um, it just feels a little, I guess, like normal, like, you know, camping or such. Um, And that’s one reason why I’m going to repeat it. It’s like when we’re in the cone, I make sure like every day our dishes are clean and, you know, like all the washes done because then everybody is a little more comfortable.

I think that’s helped us a lot to kind of feel not as scary when a hurricane is coming.

Yeah. So last month was about power outages specifically. Yeah. So we covered a lot of stuff like that. You know, like, yes, run your dishwasher even if it’s not full, because you never know when you’re gonna lose it. And, you know, and keep up on the laundry and the vacuuming and just anything that requires power.

It’s not do or die, it’s, you know, it’s not gonna save your life, but it, it will make a difference in your comfort level. And that’s. Then that affects mental health and everyone’s attitudes. And you know, you just don’t need that. Yeah. Starting out with a clean home is really helpful. It really is.

Cause when it’s 95 degrees and the humid is so high, you know, it’s, and you have no air conditioning.

I mean, you know, you can get grouchy. Um, so it was interesting. Yeah, it’s true. It’s interesting that when I was thinking about this, um, when You know, I knew I was gonna come here. Um, most everything I thought about Didn’t have to do with cash and that really surprised me Um, it really surprised me that it’s just like well, you know, we didn’t really use it I know I know there were some circumstances where we would but I was telling my husband today at lunch like You know, I guess we would really need cash, um, honestly, if it was like a catastrophe, and there was like no one coming for two weeks, and you had to like, you know, hey neighbor, can I give you five bucks for this, or, um, And maybe it’s because life is so modern now.

I, I don’t know, but um, I didn’t find this really using cash. So it was just interesting when I reflected back.

I will say, so just, just for those, I mean, that is actually the topic that won for this month. So I am just going to insert here. That it sounds like you’re, I mean, everyone’s experiences are different, right?

Right, of course. Um, I was very shocked to hear there, there was a family who lived on an island that got hit. Um, and so when you’re, you know, you’re talking about, um, evacuating somewhere else, there’s nowhere to evacuate to.

For people

on an island. And so it was a very different experience for them. And I wished I could have gotten ahold of them, but I couldn’t.

And

they had several thousand dollars of cash and they ran out way too fast.

It

really does it. So I’m not, I’m not trying to say, well, your experience, you know, I do just want to make the caveat here that just because you didn’t need cash doesn’t mean that another situation wouldn’t, that wouldn’t be their number one thing, you know, for them, they said our number one takeaway is cash, cash, cash.

And if you think you have enough, you don’t, you know? And so it does depend on the situation. Um, so I’m glad you guys didn’t need to use it, you know, but they were in a place where once they did get, um, in fact, Francis, you mentioned Walmart only being open four hours a day. They were living under a curfew.

Everything was only open for four hours a day. If you were out of your house. You were breaking curfew and all of those places, the gas station, the grocery stores were only accepting cash. And so they lived like that for months. Right. Because

again, there was nowhere

for them to evacuate to. Right. So, So, yeah, so I’m, you know, it really does just depend.

It does,

yeah. Or, like, if you lived out in the country, um, you know, and you just have a small store, gas stations nearby. Yeah. You know, that, that is true.

There’s something to think about, too. With food storage and water storage and all that. Um, a lot of people, especially older folks, um, tend to live like Europeans live.

They go to the grocery store every day. They buy food for maybe two or three days and that’s it. And that was the case with our next door neighbor when we came back to our house. He had not evacuated. He had sat through the storm in a bathroom with a gun, one bottle of water, and his dog. And he didn’t have food and he didn’t have water.

So we were able to take over a five gallon thing of water for him. And, um, we gave him some of our food storage and I was glad that we were able to help our neighbor. You know, it’s not necessarily just for ourselves. It’s for, it’s for those around us too. So. And the thing about Walmart that was hard being open from I think it was from 12 to 4.

The problem was that when we were able to go back to town and our school had decided to try to open up and platoon at a different high school, we were going from 1 15 until 7 o’clock at night. And so I couldn’t go to Walmart unless it was on a Saturday when everybody else was going to Walmart. It was horrible.

So I learned to use my Crock Pot because any food that I did have, I had to make in the morning so we could eat when I got back from the school at night and it was not fun.

Wow. Yeah. But if your hours

don’t line up with what’s open, it’s better to

not

have to go, you know, if you don’t have to, for sure.

Interesting. Um,

okay. Sorry. I’m just looking at my notes here to make sure I’m, you know, whatever. Um, with, with the, um, evacuation, how has that gone for you? And so, Francis, you were evacuated for weeks.

Yeah, we, we went that first night and stayed a couple more nights. And that’s on the fourth day, we came back illegally.

Really? We were told not to by the city. Um, but we snuck back in, stayed about four or five days and then left back and went back and we were there for now another six or seven weeks. And for the first couple of weeks we were with our son and daughter in law and then, um, We were told that a hotel, and this is six hours north of where we lived.

Um, that, uh, uh, there was a hotel in town that would take evacuees and they could stay there for free. The government was paying for it. So we went and packed all of us into one hotel room and, um, it was, you know, It was a hard, it was hard to do, but that’s what we had to do. And we had to go ahead and, and register our kids, our two boys for high school.

Um, ironically at the same school I had worked at when we lived in that town. And, uh, so at least they were able to, you know, have some continuing education. And then when we did get back to town, um, they had to live in that platoon situation and, uh, with the other school. And it, you know, it was just, uh, it was hard.

We had to, we had to change our, with the post office, our address so that all of our mail was getting to us. And then go through that again when we came back from evacuating. Um, there was just a lot of facets that we hadn’t really ever thought about. And how about your, you know, things you

lost?

Yeah,

well,

we were lucky.

Um, we had a good insurance company that had a company there doing our roof really fast. We saw people that were very angry and they would write hateful things on their garage doors about their insurance companies and stuff, but we, we liked ours. Um, it was, it was, uh, Very trying, um, dealing with the lack of people willing to work at the, um, you know, convenience restaurants and, and grocery stores and things like that, because it just made so that nobody could get what they needed, you know, they had, and I’m still finding that to this day that because of a lot of government handout, people just aren’t willing to work, but it’s not as tricky.

But yeah, evacuating was, that was, that was hard. And it was hard because the stories that we had heard about people commandeering homes was true. There was a family, a couple streets over from us that we found out they had, uh, They had come back to their house and suddenly there was this other family living in this house next door.

And they said, what are you doing? And they said, well, we’ve commandeered this house. And, um, the police said to be very careful. They, they truly did tell us if you’re going to come back, you need to be able to defend your, your home and family. And we had, we’re not. We had never had a gun. We had never, we’re not hunters, you know, whatever.

It was a very hard thing for us, but my husband went and bought a shotgun and. You know? Wow. So,

Tiffany, how about you for evacuation? Were there things you wished you had ready to go? Did you feel prepared to evacuate? Did you learn anything? Um,

well, for the hurricane that I’ve talked a lot about, we didn’t evacuate.

Um, we just decided my husband didn’t want to be away from our home. Um, and one thing, um, that Frances mentioned, we had a neighbor, um, because it was the You know, there’s a good amount of time before they let anybody back in. And we had a neighbor who drove past the zone to go to the store and came back and the police wouldn’t let him back.

And he said, but I stayed at home. I mean, you, you know, you probably saw me pass through this road. He, they wouldn’t let him in. So he had to go and he said he drove around for like 45 minutes, trying to find a way in.

And he

eventually did. Um,

yeah, that’s what we did. Yeah, yeah,

right. So, um, you know, I, I think it, um, it was not, I want to say it was nice to stay, but we knew we just felt comfortable that it wasn’t, you know, so dangerous that the strength of the storms, but it did get stronger.

So it was a little scary when we went through that. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Well, didn’t you mention that you evacuated before and you lost everything?

Okay, that was, no, we, we went through a flood and we just happened to be out of our home. It was one of those Oh,

so you didn’t leave because the storm was coming.

No, it was like a

torrential storm, like just a rainstorm, but it rained so much within a short period of time that I remember seeing cars like floating. You know, like where the, um, you have like a little area on the roads. It was so scary. Um, and I think the worst part that still affects me now is I lost a lot of pictures, family pictures.

Um, I still, I was able to save some, I even, you know, still have them where there has a little bit of water damage on it. Um, so now, When hurricane season starts, I make sure I have all my picture albums of like my great grandparents and, you know, um, just a lot of pictures. I’ll put in those bags. I get the fireproof, wet proof bags.

Um, and we keep our documents in there now. That’s something new we do. Um, we, that’s where we keep our cash. Um, you know, so we, we try to, you know, Keep that together. Um, and we talk about now, would we evacuate, you know, I think we would if it was. like a five, you know, if it was something like a Katrina coming, um, and it was pretty close that we really might could get hit.

Um, like with Andrew, it was, it was not supposed to hit us, but then it just turned and boom, you know, so you never know.

With, um, the first house that we had in Slidell, Louisiana, when we first moved there was in this place called Eden Isles, and that was On waterways that fed out to Lake Pontchartrain.

And when we evacuated for hurricanes at that time, we would put our stuff up into the second story, any of our valuables, our pictures, all that stuff. However, when we went through town, when we lived at our other house and we went back after Katrina and we were asked to go and check members and we went to Eden Isles, the water level was at the top of the second story.

So anything that we would have done if we’d still been living there would have been ruined.

Right. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that’s, that’s crazy. I mean, obviously it’s hard to lose everything, but yeah, the pictures, the memories, all that.

And I was going to say too, you know, we’ve, we’ve sat through hurricanes and not gone.

I’m glad we weren’t there when those five pine trees came through our roof. Yeah. My cat was still there. And when we came back four days later, you know, after leaving our cat thinking we were going to come back the next day, she was sitting on my dining room table and the look, if looks could have killed, my cat would have killed us because she was very upset.

Oh my goodness. I mean, can you imagine how terrifying it would have been? Down through the roof. Right.

And, and I make sure now too to, um, make sure we have pet food and water for our pets. Mm-Hmm. , um, that’s something that we do now. Yeah. That, you know, we hadn’t thought about in the past.

Yeah,

yeah, for sure.

Um, one thing I will mention, I mean, it’s great to, to move things to, you know, a higher floor, but like Francis said, you know, sometimes that’s not even enough. Um, and if. The waterproof bags were again, if it were that high. And they just floated away and the surefire way to do it would be to digitize everything.

So, in fact, I have a, um, a company I can, I’ll, I’ll link it with the replay of this. Oh, that would be great. You send your pictures, you send your videos, whatever it is, anything, you know, physical and they digitize it for you. So you just literally send it away. Because I think a lot of people. Myself included things.

Okay. One day I’ll scan all that myself and I’ll get, you know, I’ll get a great scanner or, I mean, there’s apps now that you can just like basically take a picture of your picture and it’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing, but the time that it takes to do that, you know, are you really going to do it?

You can literally just send it away and it comes back to you on a flash drive. Like you can decide, you know, do you want to. A flash drive. Do you want it on the cloud? Like they have all these different options. It’s very cool. That is pretty

neat.

Yeah. So that’s, that’s the ultimate, I guess, preparation for it.

If you, if you want to, you know, take the time to gather your stuff once, it’s nice to have that done. So, and I don’t even live in, in a flood zone or hurricane. I just feel better having it done, you know?

Yeah. I think that the thing that I, that I learned Best was to take every warning seriously and not just blow it off.

Not just think, well, you know, it’ll probably veer off.

Well, and on the flip side, if you’re not in the path now, all these, I want to bring people’s attention to the fact all these times you guys have said, Oh, and then it veers last minute. Well, so if you’re not in the path, it doesn’t mean you’re safe because often they do veer so, you know, it goes both ways.

If you’re in that area at all, just, gosh, just be prepared to be on top of it. It’s not going to hurt, you know.

And, and speaking of being prepared, I know this was about hurricanes and cash and all that, but when we lived in Mississippi, we shortly after we moved there from California and never had lived where there were, you know, weather events that, you know, took us by surprise.

We were at church one day and suddenly we got word from the bishop. Everybody needs to go home. We’re getting a nice storm. And we had no idea what that meant. No idea. And so we went home. We thought, okay, we’re getting a nice storm. And, um, it was too late at that point to get food from the grocery store or, you know, perishables or whatever you needed to, you know, go through this.

And our power was out. For about a week and everything was frozen over. It was very hard hard to drive on the roads. Um, there were, we had six acres trees are crashing, you know, branches were crashing down all around our property and and it was it was, you know, it wasn’t a hurricane, but it was, um, another weather event and it would have been nice to have.

More of the things we needed already ready to go, you know, food storage in all the different kinds of, you know, whether it was dehydrated freeze dried canned or perishable,

you know,

so that we had what we needed and not have to rely on going to a grocery store that wasn’t going to be that would have anything on the shelves, you know,

Also, um, I wanted to mention like with the cash, um, what we do now to is make sure we have little bills.

Um, because I know when the store was open, um, you know, an hour here or there, you walk in with a big bill and they, they have no change. So it’s like, either you leave it or, you know, so we make sure that we, you know, just in case, um, have the smaller bills.

Yep. Smaller bills. And, um, that’s right. I wanted to come back to cash since that was technically the top, you know, one of the topics here today.

Um, It’s not a bad idea and we can, this doesn’t have to do with hurricanes necessarily, but, um, but you know, evacuation, absolutely. Um, I can’t say, you know, here’s what you should do or here’s how much or anything, but things to keep in mind are what if you are away during an event,

um,

and an event happens where you’re out on vacation or, you know, whatever.

Um, it would be really great to have cash in your car. And again, I know cards can get stolen and broken into, and this is something I’m not saying, yes, do this, or no, don’t, or whatever, but it’s something to think about, um, and it does become a very real thing in, um, An EMP situation if you’re, if you’re gone and electromagnetic, um, anything like that.

So in fact, I just, I mean, I feel comfortable doing this. It’s not, it’s not like it’s a huge amount or anything, but I just, it’s summer here now. And I took my two teenagers out who have cars. And, um, we just kind of did a car check, like, okay, do you know how to use your jumper cables? Do you, you know, and I have those printables that I made and we put, we made sure they still had those in their glove box with a pen to write things down if they get in an accident, or, you know, we were just going through different things.

And. We put together an envelope of some cash with small bills. And I just said, if you find it, you know, my daughter’s going to college, I want you to be able to get home. I want you to be able to buy, you know, if you’re on empty and you, you find somewhere that, you know, the, the fuel is still pumping, but they don’t accept credit or debit right now.

You know, if they’re using their backup generators for the fuel pumps and not the credit card machines, I don’t know, just, you know, I want you to have it or if you need a hitchhike if you you know what I mean, like We don’t want to think about this stuff, but you know what it francis didn’t think Well, no, she’s gone for eight weeks.

I mean, it’s just, it’s so crazy. So I feel better about having just a couple hundred bucks of cash in my kids cars, you know, for them to get home from wherever they’re at or to have something wherever they are, because wherever they are, their car’s going to be.

So. Well, and you know, our kids always joke and say whenever anything, whenever the poop hits the fan, they’re just gonna go to my house to mom’s house because I have all the food storage.

We had the ice storm in Texas. My daughter literally could not drive here from San Antonio like she thought she could because the roads were not passable.

That’s something to think about too. So you do kind of need to, you know, it’s a great plan if it works out, but if not backups, you know,

and the, um, the ATM, I turned off my video, but the ATMs, um, can also run out of cash.

There was a time here where, um, the hurricane was coming and we were just, we had some cash. My husband was like, stop and just get it a little bit more just in case, you know, just in case. And we didn’t get hit by the hurricane at the, you know, that year, but I went to the ATM and the ATM was out of money.

So, you know, that’s something to think about too, is, you know, kind of, if you can have that before something is coming.

Yeah, we, oh, I’ve got to go because our Q& A is at one, but, um, something I mentioned, we were actually talking about this in the Q& A last month, because we were talking a little bit about cash, and I just brought up the idea, and of course this depends on your dynamics and your finances and everything, but I now have kids who are making money, my daughter works at a restaurant and she gets cash tips.

Um, and you know, when my, my other daughter babysits and brings home cash, they always just want me to put it in their checking account. I’m like a bank deposit, right? And so I take their cash and then I just transfer the money from my checking account to theirs. Um, and now I have this cash and I try to keep it in my home.

It’s just a way to accumulate cash little by little. And I don’t ever have to go to an ATM because I’ve got kids bringing cash in all the time. They get 50 bucks for a birthday or, you know, I mean, from grandma and grandpa or graduation money is coming, you know, just. So if I can pay them out and not have to deposit that cash into my own checking account to replenish it, it’s been a really great way for me to build up our cash in our home.

Um, so that’s just a thought instead of taking it to the bank and depositing it, trying to, trying to keep it, or again, putting, you know, bringing it out to your different cars or whatever. So that’s an idea to just kind of build it up little by little, kind of like food storage, you know, So, okay, I’ve got to hop on over to the other call.

Um, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Sure. Thank you, Melanie. Okay.

Bye guys. Bye.[/accessally_has_any_tag]