Surviving Wilma, How To Be A Good Neighboor

Ralph T. Castle wrote a 13,000 word account of his experience when Hurricane Wilma hit, which is running as a Boing Boing exclusive:

In the dim yellow glow from a Wal-Mart oil lamp, I sit at my kitchen table, cursing the State of Florida while I struggle to enter a few more keystrokes on a water-damaged laptop with a dying battery. My cat, Eddie, is having a fine time, prowling around outside in the total darkness of a landscape where all street lights are dead within a radius of 75 miles. I would join him for a stroll under the stars, except that the county police are liable to throw me in jail for violating the 7:30 curfew.

According to news estimates I am one of 3.5 million people in South Florida currently deprived of electricity. When Hurricane Wilma blew through a couple of days ago, she ravaged the landscape and scattered power lines like a petulant kid kicking over sand castles on a beach. This of course is what hurricanes normally do, but Wilma’s range has astonished even seasoned veterans of the so-called Sunshine State.

Lots of people lost electricity. The power outage extended from Miami in the south, all the way up to Orlando.

I had hoped to cover the storm, but lost electricity right in the middle of this post.

One good thing about Wilma was that she brought out a neighborly side in people. If you drove down my street you would have seen long extension cords stretching from one house to another. Those who had generators were sharing electricity with those who didn’t. That’s what I call being a good neighbor.

Related: Hurricane Frances Surf Photos

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