Buzzsprout Braces for Hurricane Milton

As the Buzzsprout team prepares for Hurricane Milton, we decided to drop this conversation from the upcoming episode of Buzzcast before the hurricane makes landfall. 

Transcript

Jordan: 0:00

While recording Buzzcast this week, the guys and I had a conversation about the team at Buzzsprout bracing for Hurricane Milton on the heels of Hurricane Helene, so we decided to publish the conversation today before the hurricane makes landfall.

Kevin: 0:18

Jordan, do you know that there is another storm coming at Florida?

Jordan: 0:22

That's what word on the street is in our base camp chat. I have a feeling I'm going to be picking up some support shifts this week while you guys have some power out.

Kevin: 0:32

Yeah, it's possible. This one's the other one didn't? It looked terrible going into the pan handle and then the pan handle I mean obviously had a lot of devastation, but I had no idea that it was going all the way up to do devastation in Georgia and North Carolina as well.

Kevin: 0:46

And I think it's one of those situations where, like, you get a, uh, a pretty mild snowstorm in like Atlanta and like, if that same snowstorm hit out in you know Idaho or something like that, you guys would be totally fine, you're prepared for this stuff, you have all the equipment, you know how to handle it, you're ready for them, anticipating them. But it's one of those deals where a snowstorm hits Atlanta and it's six inches of snow and the city is shut down for two weeks because they have no idea how to handle it. I think it was the same thing with that storm that came through and went all the way up into Georgia and the Carolinas and they were not ready for it, they weren't anticipating it, people hadn't prepped, people didn't have supplies, people didn't have gas and generators and all that kind of stuff.

Jordan: 1:23

Oh, my gosh.

Kevin: 1:24

They are reeling and reeling, and so, of course, florida also devastated. And now there's another storm a week later, heading right into a different part of Florida, but it looks like it's actually going to impact a lot of Florida.

Alban: 1:35

Yeah, we're recording early because it looks like Florida's going to get hit probably Wednesday, and so we're recording on Monday, where it just got upgraded to category five and Florida I feel like we always make jokes about hurricanes, because there's tons of hurricanes and we get a handful a year and most of them are not a big deal. There's property damage, you lose power, but overall it's not bad. Category five possibly hitting a major city like tampa yeah is very scary well, that's where cameron's located too.

Jordan: 2:10

Like he's just he posted a photo. Like I mean, he's just like right in the middle of the path there yeah, he is down in the sarasota area yeah

Kevin: 2:18

that whole west coast of florida is definitely highly susceptible to storm surge flooding, and so it will be bad. A few years ago, a hurricane I can't remember the name of it went through a portagorda, puntagorda, and the flooding from the storm surge and everything was awful, devastating, to hunt thousands and thousands of people, displaced, thousands of people without power for weeks and weeks and weeks. Uh yeah, so we are anybody who lives in florida anyway, we are on prep duty and trying to prepare as best we can before and there's always like interviews with people who are 80 and they're like I've never left, I'm not leaving.

Alban: 3:08

But you know, 50 in a row are not a big deal, until the one big one hits your house yeah and there's nothing you can do and there's no one who can come and pick you up in a helicopter, because when there's 120 mile an hour, winds and tons of water and floods and stuff, you know it's just, it's devastating. So if you are in the path, make sure you leave and go inland or go up north and take a little vacation and call in some PTO.

Kevin: 3:41

Yeah, I mean.

Kevin: 3:41

Kevin you were in North Carolina last week, right, and there's an area in on West Florida that we our family travels to quite often. I was down there last weekend looking at some of the damage from the last storm and I was talking to a guy who I know who lives across the street from the place that we normally stay and he spent the night on his kitchen cabinets because the evacuation order came in and he was had the same kind of mentality that Alvin was just talking about. Is that? They always say this.

Kevin: 4:06

It's usually not a big deal yeah and around 11 or 12 at night the water started coming into his house and he got up to like two feet of water in his house and so no power went out. He said it was pitch dark, two or three feet of water in his house, you know. He grabbed his pillow and climbed up on the kitchen counters and him and his wife slept on their counters and he said they were never been more scared in their life and they will never do that again. This time they are getting out.

Jordan: 4:30

Yeah, good.

Kevin: 4:31

And it's. It's terribly scary to think like I have to pack up and leave this place and and you might not come back to it Like all your stuff could be gone. Um, it's terribly scary to have to do that, but the reality that at least this guy shared with me is is being there. You can't do anything about it anyway, and now your life is in serious danger. Yeah.

Kevin: 4:50

And so you have to preserve your life. You can't save your stuff, and stuff's just stuff. I mean it might take a while to replace it or and it's going to be hard it can be financial impacts and everything else. No one is saying it's easy, but your life's not worth any of it.

Alban: 5:05

Yeah, the last time we got a mandatory evacuation I want to say it was like six years ago, so maybe 2018. There was some hurricane that was supposed to hit Jacksonville directly, at least at one point, and we were like, all right, we're going to leave. We packed up a few things. We were living in an old house one block off the ocean. So I was like, okay, it's probably not good, we definitely need to leave.

Alban: 5:34

And then my friend, who is a tornado chaser and films tornadoes and storms for a living, reached out to me a friend from college and he was like, hey, you need to get out of your house. And I was like, yeah, we're leaving, he goes, and you need to be ready to come back and not have a house. I was like, really, and he goes, yeah, you're in an old house, If you get hit, it's gone. And so I went back and grabbed a few family heirlooms that I was like, okay, if you know, I'm going to fill up the rest of the car. What 10 things would I put in here? Um, but it you know the the gravity of the situation. Like I don't know why the weather channel just never seems scary. They always seem like they're overhyping the most basic storm, but then having a friend reach out and go, you need to get anything important out of the house. I was like, okay, this sounds like this is legit.

Kevin: 6:15

Yeah.

Jordan: 6:15

Yeah.

Kevin: 6:16

Usually you know there's, there's a few communities around where a storm hits and you never know exactly where it's going to be. It's not always directly in the direct path of the storm. Sometimes it's the north of the storm, sometimes it's south of the storm, sometimes it's the north of the storm, sometimes it's south of the storm whatever. Sometimes it's two states away, like all the way up in North Carolina with this last one where dams broke and they had to release water and stuff and towns that have never flooded before were completely flooded and underwater. But we get lured into this false sense of security of oh, I've been through dozens of these storms.

Kevin: 6:45

I've you know, and it's never impacted me in the way that I've seen. You know some pictures on TV and stuff that never really happens until it does. And then it happens and you know you're sleeping on your kitchen counters and you're hoping to survive the night. It's crazy. So it's insurance policy Like you have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, and you know we pray that nobody gets hit and devastated, you know, but it's inevitable, like it's. It's, this storm is real. It's right now a cat five storm off out in the Gulf of Mexico and it is headed towards Florida and so some people we don't know where exactly, somewhere from the panhandle down to the Florida Keys, some area of Florida, and some huge number of people are going to be devastated.

Kevin: 7:24

And so, uh, I don't know. Our hope is that somehow the storm goes away, but the reality of that happening is is probably zero. So, anybody listening, if you're in those areas, please take care of yourself, take care of your pets, take care of your family, take care of your community, like, get yourself squared away, get the supplies you need and get ready early so that you can help people around you, cause we know that people will be ill-prepared. So, yeah, take care of everyone.