Floridians flee hurricane, take refuge in Warren Co.
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And if limited store supplies before the storm ever hit were any indication, her family made exactly the right decision as the slow-moving category 2 storm pounded Florida this weekend.
The mother of three and wife of Warren County native Scott Glenn, Stephanie also knew power outages would be widespread in her town of Loxahatchee, Fla., located near West Palm Beach, after having endured a category 1 hurricane around four years ago.
The couple decided it was best to get the children out of there.
Glenn, the couple’s three children and her mother, Sharon Worrell, made a two-day, 849-mile trip from Florida to Warren County, while Scott Glenn stayed in Florida with friends in order to be there in the wake of the storm. They arrived at the Warren County home of Scott Glenn’s parents, Mike and Alice Glenn, on Saturday.
“We left Thursday morning and when we left, they were talking about a category 5 hurricane hitting 30 miles from our house,” Stephanie Glenn said. Main reasons for leaving were owning a wood-frame home, expecting power outages and having a 10-week-old daughter.
“I said, ‘I gotta go. I have to take the kids and go,'” Glenn said. “Scott decided to stay at home and make sure everything was OK there and watch the house afterwards. But we didn’t want our kids to be scared and with a newborn baby, we just thought she would be very uncomfortable in the heat.”
Once the decision was made, it was slow going on the highway. It took two hours to go five miles and supplies were limited along the way. At one point, they were told there were no vacancies in hotels located within 100 miles of the interstate, which forced the family to sleep in their vehicle.
With land-line telephone service in Florida just restored, Scott said yesterday that he is OK after braving the storm in a friend’s concrete structure home, which was also in the path of the hurricane.
“The doors were shaking and those were probably only 100 mile per hour winds,” he said. “Luckily, it got downgraded, or it could have been a lot worse.”
He said the couple’s home in Florida suffered some roof and water damage. The couple lost their fence and the children’s toys are long gone. Worrell’s home in Okeechobee, about 1-1/2 hours away, seemed to be OK and power was available there.
Scott is trying to prevent further damage to the house, but the home supply store was closed as of yesterday. The basic supply situation has gotten worse and he noted some reports are that it could take as long as three weeks to get power. Federal agencies are having trouble getting trucks in and it can take up to three hours to get gas, he also said.
He said he is getting by with friends who have a generator and is thankful his wife and children are staying with his parents in rural Warren County.
As for how long they will be staying in Warren County, the family was bracing for another possible hurricane that is lurking in the Caribbean.
“We’re going to stay here until we see what Ivan is going to do,” Worrell said, “and to make sure that Frances has dumped all the rain she is going to so that on the way back, we don’t have to drive through it.”
The Glenn family of Loxahatchee, Fla., as well as Sharon Worrell of Okeechobee, gather in safety at the home of Mike and Alice Glenn.