I am due to fly out to Miami on Sunday just about the time that Wilma threatens to arrive on the scene. I wonder if any forum members from the Florida area have more up to date and relevant information about the situation on the ground.

Tim Gratz will know. Why don't you ask Tim to arrange a boat trip for you with Gerry Hemming to Cuba?

I believe the proposed trip is dangerous enough already

Wilma will be the third hurricane to hit Key West in three months (if in fact it does hit or "near miss" us). It's getting a little old! But it is still too early to tell which way it will go when it leaves Mexico. (All of the tourists were evacuated several days ago.)

I see you have time to post again. Could you please add your “political biography” to the relevant thread.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5051

Maybe I'll be the only one coming the other way

Well I ran into a very nice fellow from Norwich, England who arrived last Wednesday and defied the mandatory evacuation order and will be here to observe the hurricane (if it comes our way).

Brings to mind the poem about only mad dogs and Englishmen going out in the heat of the noonday sun. We'll have to adapt the poem to make it about hurricanes!

I have a stout windcheater and plenty of natural ballast so should be fine

I have been through at least one hurricane with close to 90 mph gusts and it really wasn't all that bad. I heard a radio commentator saying that if the hurricanes were really all that bad, the television networks would not send their reporters to stand out in the wind and rain and talk about how bad it is.

Which is not, of course, to downplay the tragic devestation of Katrina in New Orleans. But unlike New Orleans, for at least the past three days Key West has been providing free bus transportation (to a shelter in Miami) to those without private transporation.

So I don't think you'll have much to worry about, Andy!

90mph That's considered a girl's wind where I'm from
My main concern is that I will spend most of my holiday sitting in an airport waiting to get there.

Worse than sitting in an airport is sitting in a plane while the pilot tries to find a route down through or round a storm. I recall flying into Heathrow in the middle of a spectacular storm. We circled for nearly an hour, listening to the "thumps" as lightning keep striking the plane. About a dozen passengers threw up due to the buffeting of the plane in the wind gusts and air pockets. The captain and the first officer were remarkably quiet while all this was going on. I guess they needed to concentrate. When we finally landed, everyone applauded and the captain came on the PA system saying, "I am sorry you have all had a bad time. If it's any consolation, this is the worst storm I have ever landed in."

I have driven through a tropical storm in Florida and walked through one in New Orleans - very wet and windy, but probably nothing compared to a hurricane. I did, however, experience a tornado while camping near Venice, Italy. Our tent was on the fringe and only suffered minor damage, but trees were uprooted and houses brought down in the centre of its path.

My heart bled when I saw the devastation of New Orleans and the dreadful plight of its population in the TV news broadcasts.

Thanks Graham you've really put my mind at rest

I forgot to mention the crocodiles that lurk in the Everglades and some of the strange things that swim in the sea off the Florida coast.

On the other hand, you might just enjoy the sunshine and the excellent sea food. The blackened grouper in Mike Gordon’s restaurant is fabulous: Mike Gordon's Seafood Restaurant. 1201 NE 79th St, Miami.

We stayed in the Holiday Inn, Key Largo, some years ago. Interesting if you are a Bogart fan. You can view the original African Queen boat there, and just up the road is the Italian Fisherman restaurant, where I believe part of the movie "Key Largo" was filmed.

Thanks for the recommendations Graham
We are staying with family but will certainly look up the restaurant once the wind dies down!

Andy need no longer worry. Latest reports are Wilma has taken a hard turn to the west and latest estimated landfall is in Bedrock City, Arizona.

Tim, Norwich is where I was born, I moved to Cambridge in the early eighties. On a scale of one to ten, how laid back was this fellow? Noridgians are famed for their easy going take on life.

The World Meteorological Organisation has run out of its allocation of names for hurricanes this year. With more than a month to go for the hurricane season, there have been 21 named storms in the Atlantic, equalling the 1933 record.

Research shows that hurricanes of the intensity of Katerina has become twice as common over the last 35 years. Global warming is the main factor. Over the last 35 years the ocean surface temperatures, the source of the energy, have risen by an average of 0.5C over the same period.

Is God sending George Bush and the United States a message. Maybe it is no coincidence that Katerina appeared to target the oil industry in the US.

Glad to see that John now believes in God! A first step, anyway.

And an interesting question he raises.

Can't post much now. Key West is a mess mostly due to the storm surge. I haven't even been back home yet but my house had three feet of water in it. I had moved a lot of stuff up but I am sure I still have lost a lot of personal possessions.

More later.

From what I understand 60 per cent (!) of the houses in Key West were flooded. Many people lost vehicles (cars. motorcycles and scooters). It is estimated the damage to Key West is in excess of $100 million.

Tim, I hope your plight is not as bad as you fear. Please except my best wishes at this trying time. Steve.

Thanks much, Stephen. I dread going home to see what I've lost but my thoughts go out to many in Key West who have lost even more (one of my co-workers lost a motorcycle which was his pride and joy and his car!). Key West (or the Keys for that matter) had never experienced a storm surge like this before. Of course, it pales in comparison to what happened in New Orleans with Katrina.

Interested in how Andy fared in Miami. I understand much of Miami is still without electrical power.

In Key West an estimated seven thousand (!) vehicles were destroyed by the storm surge (flood). It destroyed my stove, refrigerator and dishwasher. Guess I don't need a stove or refrigerator if I can't wash the dishes!

Andy said he was staying with a relative in Miami with access to the internet. He said he would be able to post on the Forum from there. The fact that he hasn't suggests he probably does not have electricity.

Do you think there is a link between these hurricanes and global warming? Or is George Bush right to dismiss these suggestions?

Have you put your application in yet to become chief justice? It seems that Harriet Miers no longer fancies the job.

Yes, he is probably without electricity. I heard it could be up to two weeks for some areas in Miami etc.

Say what you will about Miers, she was clearly more qualified than me.

So seriously I would support another of the Forum members, Professor Blakey. Good Democrat credentials; strong crime-fighter; distinguished legal career.

P/S. to John: if you are correct about God directing hurricanes probably no cities in the US were more well known for drinking, carnalness and hedonism than New Orleans and Key West. (But all the bars have already re-opened, so there goes that theory!)

I hope Andy is OK. I haven't met him, but he sounds like a survivor. Tim, I guess, is used to this sort of thing.

Nature (or God) is pretty indiscriminate and, as the Tsunami in the Far East and the recent earthquake in Pakistan/India show, it's not only the USA that is getting hit by disasters.

I survived a tornado in Iesolo, Italy, in the 1980s. Birmingham (UK) has also recently been hit by a tornado, and my favourite Austrian ski resort in the Tyrol was hit by a spectacular snowstorm towards the end of the skiing season this year, leaving it under two metres of snow and completely cut off for a couple of days, but this meant we had some great late season skiing in March as the snow base didn't even start to disappear before the end of April - which was unusual for a low (700 metre) resort.

I'm not sure who's to blame for all this, but insurance companies seem to be pretty confident about the culprit. Have you noticed that "acts of God" always figure in their exclusion clauses?

Graham, you see all these natural disasters are God's way of punishing mankind for blaming natural disasters on Him.

Tim writes:
"Graham, you see all these natural disasters are God's way of punishing mankind for blaming natural disasters on Him."

So, I guess we won't be seeing many insurance agents passing through the Pearly Gates either.

Graham, they have there own special place in the seventh circle of Hell, along with politicians, Advertising execs, and Daytime TV celebrities. See if you can guess what unites these rogues. Steve.

Steve, You missed one important set of people. Shakespeare got it right:

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Henry VI Part II, Act IV, Scene II?

Graham, how true. I also like VI lenin's quote. "I shant be happy until the last Lawyer is strangled with the entrails of the last landlord." BTW, what unites the "people" in my last post?a total lack of any discernable talent or use, as my saintly Grandma was given to saying "Your neither use nor ornament" Steve.
ps, could the Bard have been prosecuted under the anti terror laws for that sentiment.

Actually Wilma hit Miami Shores (where I was staying) with some force (125 mph to be precise) in the early hours of Monday morning. Damage was extensive - power out (still out today I believe!), petrol and food shortages, traffic chaos as traffic lights were scattered all over the streets, 8pm curfews etc. etc..

The whole of south Florida still looked more like a Third World country when I left the place yesterday afternoon...... rather surpised that Tim didn't notice it

I consider this a libel on the Third World. A banana republic would be a better definition.

I thought the Florida Keys referred to themselves as The Conch Republic.

Key West is known as The Conch Republic. This relates to a time when Key West seceeded from the U.S., sometime in the 1980s. The federal government had set up a roadblock at the entrance to the Keys and was stopping every car and randomly searching for drugs. The delay caused to tourists by this process was hurting tourism in the Keys and the local fathers tried everything they could (including, I think, litigation) to stop the process. Finally, they decided to stage a mock secession from the U.S. and set up their own republic. This generated a lot of publicity and the press attention finally persuaded the feds to call off the roadblock.

Natives born in the Keys have long been called "Conchs" (after the Conch shell; conch fritters are a local delicacy). Some people are able to say, for instance, that they are, for instance, forth generation Conchs. If you emigrate to the Keys and are able to survive here for ten years you are entitled to call yourself a "freshwater Conch".

Every year Key West stages a celebration of the secession. There are even mock sea battles between the Conch Republic and the U.S. Coast Guard. The ships bombard themselves with food.


Every year for twenty five years Key West has staged a halloween celebration called Fantasy Fest. It is an adult festival and the costumes worn would most likely get the wearer arrested in most other cities. The festival was postponed this year because of Wilma. (One year the theme of the festival was Hollywood and the County Commission actually changed the name of Monroe County to Marilyn Monroe County for the month of October.)

But Key West was hurt rather badly by Wilma. The main damage was caused by a water surge that started about 8.a.m. Monday morning. The flooding ruined about 8,000 cars in Key West, including most of the cars at the island's only GM dealership. The dirty flood water also got into many homes in Key West and most of the streets are now crowded with ruined furniture. The Casa Marina, the famous hotel built by Henry Flagler and which JFK drove by on his November 1962 trip to the Keys, will be closed for about a month.