Hurricane Ida

[Necessary Evil]

We keep our boat at Palafox Pier Marina in downtown Pensacola. Its built like a fort, and with floating piers able to accomodate a ten to twelve foot storm surge easily. The dockmaster told me he had boats rushing in from all over the area to take shelter. Ida turned out to be a pretty mild storm, and there was no damage at Palafox Pier. However, the Pensacola Yacht Club is more exposed and has fixed wooden piers. They required everyone to evacuate their boats, then they removed every third plank from their piers to mitigate the surge. Some photos and a PYC member's report below...

"Jamie, these are a few shots of your boat and the docks at PYC. The surge came up 3.5’ to 4’ in Pensacola. Your boat is intact, the marina is quiet, the wind was out of the southeast then clocking to southwest this a.m. There is plenty of room on the new pilings for the floating docks to rise. The other shots are the before and after with early morning photos of PYC’s docks. The mandatory evacuation is necessary there due to the wide open southeast channel and fixed piers. The staff removed the electrical pedestals and every third plank on the piers to provide relief for the waves. They have numbered all the planks for easy re-assembly after the storm. We have plenty of experience rebuilding that marina, and this is the simplest idea yet. "

[Necessary Evil]

A footnote: This morning in Birmingham we are just getting dumped on... three inches of rain in the last few hours. So, its pouring outside, I'm attending a teacher conference at my three year old kid's kindergarden, and the friggin fire alarm goes off! I'm thinking, what idiot calls a fire drill in a tropical storm? Turns out, some moron is sanding a hardwood floor elsewhere in the building, takes no precautions against setting off the smoke alarms, then, when they go off, he decides he better high tail it to "another important job" without explaining anything to anyone! So there we are, a hundred or so shivering toddlers, their teachers, the church and school staff, standing outside in the pouring rain while the fire department checks the entire building! Of course, the firemen have to do their job by the book, and they let us back inside as soon as they could. But I can't wait to have a little chat with the flooring contractor...