We set up a soup kitchen in our driveway
Our electricity was out for a total of 16 days, the damages to my house were significant. The roof was a total loss, the fences were down and needed to be replaced and there were six broken windows out of the 26 we had in the house.
The repairs were not covered by insurance because the house was built in 1952 and the roof was over 15 years old. The new roof cost over $30,000, the windows more than $18,000 and the fence was never replaced…we just propped it up with lumber and it is like that to this day.
Wilma hit South Florida with the vengeance of a bitch that hasn’t been laid in years. It was the night of October 24, 2005…one day before my birthday. All night long the relentless wind gusts were castigating our homestead and imparting damages. At one point it did sound like a freight train and the doors and windows were shaking until we heard the sounds of breaking glass…one window after another was shattered…water began to pour into the house both from the broken windows and from the damaged roof.
It finally passed and we all breathed a sigh of relief…the house 
although damaged was still standing and we were alive; others didn’t fare so well. After we surveyed all the damage we got up on the roof and installed temporary blue tarps that became a very familiar part of the South Florida landscape for months to come. The roofers could not possibly repair so many roofs and there were even some shady contractors from out of state who came and took advantage of seniors, walked off with a down payment and never did the work. Others were so incompetent that the jobs they did were so shoddy that the roofs had to be 
done over again.
But even though we could not celebrate my birthday; I was a happy trooper. Everyone in our block and most of the entire neighborhood was unable to cook because they had electric stoves. I had a gas one and I proceeded to cook everything in the side freezer because it would have spoiled as it defrosted. That afternoon, on my birthday we took out about twenty round tables with folding chairs and set them up in the driveway. I took out this gigantic pot and cooked my heart out. 
We set up a soup kitchen and put up signs on the corner and at the entrance of the driveway. All of our neighbors came and broke bread with us.
All the neighbors except the man in the corner who committed suicide this past April; he lived in a duplex owned by the AMA Maritime Academy and they had their own power plant. But he did offer to run an extension cord to supply us with electricity for the refrigerator and my computer and that was appreciated tremendously as I was working from home at the time. That was the one and only time I ever spoke to him.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2008/0805/alt_hurricane_
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THANK YOU, THANK YOU
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