Just a quick note:
Sorry I was AWOL for a while. We got pounded bad here in St Pete. (This diary was shot and scheduled before the hurricane came through.)
The buses are not running and it is not safe to be walking around a lot—lots of power lines are down. So I can only see the immediate area of the mobile home park that I live in. We got hammered. There are places with roofs peeled off, places with carports gone, siding gone, trees uprooted. I am fine physically, but I have my neighbor’s tree on my roof and had some siding peeled away. I don’t think the tree actually penetrated my roof, but I won’t know for sure how bad it is until the tree gets removed. Many folks here are worse off than me so I’m pretty far down the priority list. Water was out for most of the day but is now back. Power is still out for most of us. I’m at the local McDonalds which is one of the few places still open, but there is no place to charge my laptop here and I’m running low, so I may be incommunicado until the power and wifi come back on at home.
The good news is that as far as I know nobody in my complex was hurt. I talked to 7 or 8 people who stayed here to ride it out, and they ALL said they would never do that again.