Most people living along the gulf and south Atlantic coasts don't do much to prepare for hurricane seasons — opinion polls tell us that. Then there's Susan Scibetta, who's been preparing for those storms ever since she lived through Hurricane Andrew, and fine-tuning her survival strategy through hurricanes Charley, Frances, Jeanne and Wilma.
Suffice to say that she — with the help of her willing and able husband, Sal — has got it down to perfection. You might think of her as the Martha Stewart, or Wonder Woman, of hurricane preparation.
Her family calls her "Chicken Little," but she's OK with that since her four grown girls are now as diligent as she is. So are her parents, both in their mid-80s. All live nearby. "They've become a version of me," she boasts.
At first glance, the Scibetta home fits the Florida stereotype: a resort look and layout, with a semi-circular driveway, beautiful kitchen and swimming pool out back. But it doesn't take long to realize this home is atypical.
Two years ago, Susan persuaded Sal to replace all their windows with impact-resistant glass. The cost? $25,000. Sure that's pricey, but it's peace of mind knowing that they don't have to rush home and spend several hours putting up storm shutters if the notice goes out.
Plus, "now we can see things fly by us without worrying," Susan says, laughing. But she's quick to add that she might want Sal to put up storm shutters if it turns really ugly outside. That gets Sal to thinking about the time during Wilma when they saw a porta-potty fly across the street in front of their home.
The Scibettas also had a backup generator installed on the outside of the garage and wired to kick in any time there's an outage. It runs on propane stored underground and it's bolted into a concrete slab so it won't fly off in a storm like portable ones would. That means the Scibettas can use it during a storm, not just after the winds have died down.
Those changes also meant a big drop in home insurance — from $3,000 a year to $1,200 —after a state inspector came through to verify their upgrades. "He was very impressed," Susan recalls.
Stocking up on supplies
Then there are the little things — the many little things. One closet is stuffed with batteries, games, portable fans, radios, TVs, hand sanitizer (imagine no running water and dirty hands), and a camera to take pictures pre-storm for insurance purposes.
And then there's the comfort food: ingredients to make s'mores, cans of squeeze cheese and bacon in a box. "That's the most amazing product," Susan says as she pulls out precooked bacon that can be stored on a shelf.
"If you're going to be miserable you might as well have fun," she says. But she also knows those goodies might tempt Sal and her visiting daughters and grandkids, so she's put warning signs on the comfort food bins:
Do not touch!
and
Hands off
In the kitchen, a pantry brims with canned goods, from salsa to tuna. "I can do amazing things with salsa," Susan says. Each can is labeled with purchase dates, with the freshest items moved to the back.
If there's too much peanut butter or mayonnaise stockpiled at the end of hurricane season, which typically ends around mid-November, "we just donate it to a food bank," Susan says.
The garage has 20 cases of bottled water (35 bottles in each case) plus several gallon jugs of water, a few empty coolers and two milk jugs full of frozen water in a freezer. Stacked along one shelf are six gasoline containers.
A couple of buckets of chlorine sit on the garage floor in case the pool man can't come by. "You overchlorinate the pool and hope for the best," Susan says.
Florida encourages residents to be able to survive for two weeks without much help. Susan waves her hands as if that's no big deal. "I could go longer," she says.
With all her expertise, Susan feels a need to share it with others. "I'll say, 'Don't get that lantern, get this one," if she happens upon a novice at a store. Sal confirms that with a nod: "She'll go up and tell them what to buy."
Heck, she even stockpiles the hurricane preparation supplements published by local papers so she can hand them out to friends, family and strangers.
Sal, a lawyer, acknowledges that his wife is the driving force behind their preparedness. "I follow her lead," he says. Would he be as diligent without Susan? "Probably not. And I should know better because I'm still handling claims against insurers from Wilma" in 2005.
A trail of storms
So how did Susan become the Martha Stewart of hurricane planning? She doesn't have an answer at first, but then it hits her: the kids. "I don't want them to be afraid," she says. "That's why I plan." Her daughters are all over 20 years old now, but they grew up in hurricane country.
The Scibettas moved from Michigan to Boca Raton, Fla., and felt Andrew's winds in 1992. "I made my husband go out and get storm shutters" after that, Susan says. Before Andrew, "we had no clue what a hurricane was."
Five years ago, they moved north to Boynton Beach, part of the greater Palm Beach area, and bought a new home that, like every new home since Andrew, had to meet hurricane standards.
But as bad luck would have it, they moved to a stretch of Florida that would soon be lashed by three hurricanes in two years: Frances and Jeanne in 2004 and Wilma in 2005. They unexpectedly ran into Charley in 2004 while driving to Orlando!
After each storm they had no power for a week to 10 days. Frances and Jeanne were in the hottest times of the year and, with no backup generator then, the Scibettas sweltered in the heat.
With each new storm, Susan improved her preparations to where she's now "a day or two ahead of everyone else" and is quick to deploy an "easy drill." Here's just part of what happens when a storm approaches:
- Gasoline run. "I'll tell Sal, 'You gotta fill up the gas cans, and he'll go at night when the lines are shorter."
- Pool canopy. Many coastal homes with pools have canopies wrapped in screens. A few screens are removed so that if a storm hits, the winds pass through the canopy instead of lifting it out like a balloon. "We lost pieces of it in Frances, Jeanne and then Wilma," Susan recalls.
- Frozen dinners. "We start eating our freezer down" in case of a prolonged outage and the backup generator runs out of propane.
- Last-minute perishables. Fruits, vegetables and bread, "those are the things you miss," so it's good to stock up at crunch time.
- Chicken Little e-mails. Susan will send hourly updates on projected storm paths and other data to friends and family, who have since named those notices after the "sky is falling" character. The National Hurricane Center Web site is on her list of online favorites.
- Household chores. Anything that needs electricity — laundry, dishwashing, vacuuming, even washing/drying her hair — is done just ahead of a big storm. Cell phones and power tools get charged up.
- Office support. A paralegal at a law firm, Susan will print out online storm tracking maps and post them at her office.
Susan doesn't mind the ribbing she gets because of the payoff. "It makes you feel in control," she says of the planning. The alternative is to panic at the last minute.
As prepared as Susan is, her neck of the woods has been spared since Wilma passed through nearly four years ago.
And that, she and Sal say, has made folks complacent. It's not like people in hurricane areas aren't warned. Stores carry displays on what to stock up on. Media carry special reports, and cities, the state and the federal government all have awareness campaigns.
After 2004 and 2005, folks were motivated to prepare, Susan says, but since then "everyone's gone back to being lackadaisical."
Part of it, she says, is that Florida's population is so transient — many people are looking to start a life, change a life or retire, but fewer actually have roots here and regular experience with hurricanes. "They have no clue what they're getting in to," Susan says.
"Granted, I'm a little overboard here," she says of her planning, but that's no excuse for folks not taking at least some basic steps — like having bottled water on hand, a cooler and maybe a $200 portable generator.
Her kids tease her that she can't wait for another one now that she's a pro. Susan acknowledges there's a bit of that in her. "It's a mixed bag," she says. "I don't want it but I'm kinda psyched. I'm ready to take it on."
If you live in a hurricane-prone area, are you?
