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Lower Keys Damage/Communication?

kkott

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Oct 26, 2001
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My friend who has a house down there has had a helluva time getting any updates for the lower keys: Big Pine, Sugarloaf, Cudjoe and on down. I haven't heard much from the media either. I guess once the story became the big cities they forgot about where it came ashore as a CAT 4 and the hundred or so thousand folks who call the Keys home. He thinks they are going to have significant loss of life down there. The only mentions I've seen say they will have to go door to door and do supply and water drops by plane in to Big Pine and islands around it. I don't use much social media but wondered if anyone on here knows anyone down that way and if they are hearing anything or just similar to what's above.

There was a nut on BPK who posted a couple videos on youtube from Sunday morning but nothing since. This is the best I've seen, and was shot in the area, and item #28 does make it sound like the road in, US1, is in tact. I know it's got tons of debris, especially it seems northbound, but sounds like they can get through. Haven't seen anything for when it might be open for residents.

https://stormwall.org/videos/watch/5KXEJbgEAs0
 
My friend who has a house down there has had a helluva time getting any updates for the lower keys: Big Pine, Sugarloaf, Cudjoe and on down. I haven't heard much from the media either. I guess once the story became the big cities they forgot about where it came ashore as a CAT 4 and the hundred or so thousand folks who call the Keys home. He thinks they are going to have significant loss of life down there. The only mentions I've seen say they will have to go door to door and do supply and water drops by plane in to Big Pine and islands around it. I don't use much social media but wondered if anyone on here knows anyone down that way and if they are hearing anything or just similar to what's above.

There was a nut on BPK who posted a couple videos on youtube from Sunday morning but nothing since. This is the best I've seen, and was shot in the area, and item #28 does make it sound like the road in, US1, is in tact. I know it's got tons of debris, especially it seems northbound, but sounds like they can get through. Haven't seen anything for when it might be open for residents.

https://stormwall.org/videos/watch/5KXEJbgEAs0
I saw this on Facebook as one of my friends "marked themselves as safe". If you scroll through the timeline, there are all sorts of updates from Florida including the Keys. https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/hurricane-irma-in-florida-sep09-2017/?uid=1404441592
 
Cudjoe Key got the eye directly at cat 4. I have seen lots of damage pics of Key Largo (upper) and key West (lower) and things within 20 miles of Cudjoe are bound to be worse. No pics because they have no power, no internet, and no cell towers left.

It was a bizarre storm, though. 120 miles away from the eye, Port St. Lucie got 16 inches of rain, more than anybody else, but of course not huge winds. 100 miles away, I got 80 mph winds and was without power for ~30 hours at home, but power returned Monday night. A tree also took out my internet and home phone, and my satellite dish was blown out of alignment. There is no structural damage, though. The widespread loss of power and internet has taxed cell phone services. I cannot load anything on 4G at home. It doesn't help that the news sites are so photo/video intensive and take a lot of bandwidth to load.

When the storm was supposed to be heading for us, we went to Orlando and were planning to head the next day (Saturday) to Georgia. The shift of the storm track westward meant that our Georgia destination was going to get a tropical storm a day or two later, though, so we headed home and rode it out with no issues, except for the day without power.
 
my friends place appears to have survived, at least in terms of the structure, which is concrete, but it gutted the inside from what he can see from pictures. Blew out windows, doors, the garage door, contents and even walls, drywall and some studs. He probably won't know definitively until he can get down there if he can repair or will have to tear it down. He got some pics from a spanish language TV team and it's pretty devastating.
 
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