This was taken today along with some others below. Gas is VERY hard to get, food too. As soon as it arrives in small amounts it gets snapped up.
I'm waiting to refill my propane tank.........
This is a gas station at the corner of 41 and Bonita Beach Rd. I live about 2 miles away. As of today they have it moved aside, the smashed pumps have been removed and they are loading it all up to remove it.
This is my girlfriends neighborhood the morning the storm subsided. Part of a house is under that live oak tree. It's about 5oo feet from her house, which was completely untouched other than a couple of medium sized branches on the lawn. Her end of the street was mostly spared but the other end of the street was demolished. Probably 75% of the trees were damaged or down completely.
To give you perspective that piece of dirt in the roots of the tree is about 12 feet wide, maybe more. There are trees this big up and down the street that are down like this.
Two houses down this live oak got blown over onto a car.
This is the fence that is between my garage and the condo, it forms a nice courtyard area. The tree you see there, a palm, is about 6 feet from the outside of the fence. I took this standing on the concrete "floor" of the courtyard. That was not originally in two pieces. The wind pulled it off of the house slamming it into the tree hard enough that it smashed it in half. Those are 2 x 12's that got broken like toothpicks.
That gives you an idea of the power of the strongest gusts.
The silver minivan belongs to my girl. I drove it down to check on my condo (it's an end unit and the woods to the side got smashed) and her house, then crashed and drove back in the morning. Obviously due to my tire trying to eat a bolt I couldn't take my CX-5. As you can see the garages are in front of the buildings which helped keep damage down.
I woke up early and got out to get gas. I found a place and got in line but it was early so it was only a 40 minute wait if I recall.
See the tree that's down between the garages? It wasn't growing there..........
..........it was growing here. If you look closely you'll see that it's up against a palm tree. That kept it from slamming into the garage/condo building.
This is Bonita Beach Rd about 5 or so miles from the gas station with the canopy destroyed. I was on my way to the freeway, I-75, to head back to STP (St. Petersburg) and snapped this very quickly. These are "old Florida homes", meaning small bungalows that are cement block small structures. They are all over especially in the older part of Bonita Springs.
The water is a combination of rainfall and storm surge and the small lake that you can't see. This is about 7 or 8 miles from the beach.
This is from the same area of Bonita Beach Rd. Miles of businesses and several homes are under this kind of water. There are other street like it all over of course this just happens to be the one I was on.
This is the street that my condo community is on.......the wind took down the concrete and cinder block monument sign and the street sign. There are signs, metal street signs, building signs and everything else all over the place. It's crazy. I took this yesterday. The morning I got back I snapped a different pic of it before they put down the orange cone. This was taken Wednesday.
These are from the Publix right by the damaged gas station. There is very little food available to actually cook. There are some non perishables but everyone snaps up the eggs, milk, beef, chicken and other stuff because when it gets into the store there isn't much of it to buy. The shelves don't get restocked totally, just partially.
