Viewing post #1292630 by MISSINGROSIE

flaflwrgrl said:My fellow Floridians
I have some news for you. Most of you know I'm in Lake City, aka The Gateway To Florida. I-75 & I-10 intersect here so we have major interstates running north & south as well as running east & west. They can take I-10 east to hook up with I-95.

We live outside of town & don't go into town very often but today we went to a Dr. Appt. & blood draws so.......

What an eye opener! This town is….I can’t even describe it! There are more power trucks, tree cutting crews, power trucks with those big augers for putting in power poles, crews, crews, crews & more crews of power, rescue, restore, phone trucks, trucks carrying transformers & big electrical equipment, power poles, Red Cross and every other imaginable personnel that will be needed after Matthew leaves than I have ever seen in my entire life. The fairgrounds is wall to wall, only inches between, power trucks. Very, very minimum of 300 of them @ the fairgrounds alone. Hotels & we have a TON of them - parking lots are FULL of trucks, every available space in this town has trucks parked!!! WalMart parking lot, Home Depot, Lowe’s, anywhere there is to park all these vehicles. All ready to move when the storm is over. We saw at least 30 trucks heading west on Hwy.90 — probably to other areas to park or to hold up in Live Oak which is 20 miles away. We were only at the western edge of town. Then the doc, nurses & lab techs were describing downtown & said you can’t move, it’s so clogged with help for afterward. The doc said the hospitals (we have 2) are ready for injured from Jacksonville, all docs on alert. He also said we are all set up & ready to receive displaced people from Jacksonville. You just can’t believe how transformed this place is!!! Unbelievable!!!
It’s a surreal sea of trucks & equipment.
It’s both a heartwarming and devastating vision all at the same time.
It makes me feel good knowing they have enough faith that it will not be bad for us because they wouldn’t risk all that equipment & lives but then I feel guilty for being happy when on the other hand it makes me very scared for all the people in FL who are going to be hit hard by this storm.
But know this:
If ever the powers that be were prepared for the aftermath of a major hurricane; they are THIS time!!! I can assure you that help will be on the way as soon as they are given the go ahead to move out. There were more trucks rolling in all the time and I'm sure some will continue to move on down into the safer western portions of FL where they will be staged ready to roll out from there.

Y'all take care & don't do anything stupid you hear? We don't want to lose a one of you!

Please check in when you can & let us know you're okay.

For those of you in GA, SC, and NC, I'm sure the same thing is going on in your states and we hope you guys will check in & let us know how you're faring.

Alice, did you bug out or are you still at home?

Thanks

Things going on in a different way ( but I can relate to the "vision" you saw..I have seen it happen with ice storms..folks come from everywhere to help restore power)


For this hurricane, it will be a rain event for our eastern counties...and devastating to the crops..in the poorest counties. The gov has declared state of emergency and what can be saved and harvested is with the arrival of many helpers and machines.