I’ve decided I’m a tornado kinda girl. I mean, if I had to chose a natural disaster I’d pick tornadoes. You can detect a storm is brewing, you have a little while to hunker down, usually have time to run to the basement, and only have maybe a half our of anxious uncertainty then, it passes, you’re done. Devastation is usually isolated.
Earthquakes give not enough warning and hurricanes give to much. Too much? Well, enough time to baton down the hatches but unfortunately enough time to be overly optimistic. 
We first heard about Irma just about a week ago. Wednesday I went out and bought extra water and food. Thursday (five days ago) Trevor and I seriously weighed our options and, since he works online and needs consistent internet access, decided to leave the island. At 10:30 Thursday night we bought tickets to Atlanta.
It was an expensive decision. One that I anticipated my friends scoffing at.
Sunday morning we brought everything on our patio inside including the huge train table and grill. We lifted inside things like books, toys and rugs off the floor and stashed our computers and printer in our master closet.
We packed the essentials of our business and important external hard drives in our carryons and headed to the airport. With a layover in Miami, we were in Atlanta by midnight.
Everyone I spoke with was certain Irma would turn north. We seemed to be the only ones preparing and taking action. It’s not that we were worried about our physical safety. We could ride out a storm hiding in our closet. It would make a great story. But knowing that our power blinks out for no reason on perfectly blue sky days, we knew that Puerto Rico’s infrastructure was in NO way prepared for this kind of disaster. The roads could majorly erode or have fallen trees clog them for days.
Today, Tuesday, the director of the Electrical Authority publicly stated that parts of Puerto Rico could be out of power for four to six MONTHS. Thats why we left. Let’s size up the situation from far away thankyouverymuch.
It just goes to show how little Americans think about Puerto Rico. As we diligently watched the news so many of the meteorologists we sooooo concerned about this hurricane hitting the USA. Of course that is anxiety inducing, but little was mentioned about the 3 million of people in Puerto Rico and the other island residents. Although, before I moved to the Caribbean I must admit I barely gave them much thought either.
PR gets more and more colorful!
Our neighborhood got organized and the internet company started a hotline to help us keep up to date with the recovery process. Cool!
