30 years ago I was living in South Florida and preparing to move to NC. All of my moves, and we had plenty of them, were hectic and hurried due to schedules. This move I had planned to NOT be hurried and hectic. If it took all week to load the moving truck, so be it....
Then Andrew showed up.
I was keeping a close eye on it and it seemed liked it was going to stay offshore and move north. Then it made the left turn and was heading for South Florida.
There was no real way to know where it would hit so my decision was simple. Stay or Go?
If I stayed and Andrew hit my area, even though I was living inland, on a second floor unit that was pretty well build, I could loose everything. If I loaded up the truck, I could get stuck in the traffic and loose everything.
I decided to get the heck out of Dodge.
The rental company said I could get the truck early so I did and started loading up the truck. Family helped and we got the truck loaded pretty quick since this was not our first rodeo. After the truck was loaded, I got a shower, and a family member went to McDonald's and bought me six plain hamburgers to eat on the trip to NC. As I climbed into the truck, I was hanged the sack of hamburgers and it started to rain from the first bands from Andrew.
There were only a few ways out of my part of Florida, take Bloody 27, the turnpike or I95. The first two roads out would take me to the center of the state, and away from my shortest path to NC. Bloody 27 I just did not want to travel. I lived west of the turnpike and I95 so I headed east to see how the traffic on the turnpike. It was a slow moving parking lot so I95 was going to be the road to take. Course, I95 was a parking lot too but it was moving a bit. It took a couple of hours to move what should have taken 30-45 minutes. I95 was being expanded, and in Palm Beach county the road work was finished, so there were extra travel lanes available, but they were blocked!
At this point, it had been known for a day or two that Andrew was heading our way and the people needed to evacuate yet I95 was restricted for no reason in Palm Beach county.
As I got to the chock point, FHP was removing the traffic cones so we could use the extra travel lanes which really improved the traffic situation. traffic was still heavy but it was able to move a bit faster. The farther north one got, the faster one could go as traffic thinned out so that by the time one got to GA, it was not bad at all. That part of the trip took at least 30-50% longer than normal but I got out of Andrew's path by driving, sipping water and eating cold McD's hamburgers. Eventually, I had to stop for sleep at 0200 at a rest stop that no longer exists in SC. The rest stop was closed down due to criminal activity.
It took about 24 hours to get to my destination in NC. The normal drive time would be 15-16 hours. It was a long, tiring, drive but I was glad I left. It was a risk moving as I did but I figured it was less risky compared to staying in place. Andrew could have landed in my area which would have had flooding issues along with everything else Andrew handed out.
Course, moving to NC put me in the Hurricane Hot zone.
We have had Floyd, Fran, Florence and a bunch of lesser storms.
Hard to believe Andrew was 30 years ago. Three decades....
Later,
Dan