Hurricane season 2004 will be long remembered as the most active in Florida history. Four major hurricanes battered the state in the months of August and September. Okeechobee, Florida was hit by both Frances and Jeanne dead on with the eye of these storms making their deadly path across Okeechobee county.
I have created this web page to share my storm experience and the photos I took during and after both the storms.

Hurriedly we packed our belongings to flee for the third time in a month! Hurricane Jeanne had done a loop in the east Atlantic and was now forcast to slam the east coast of Florida as a major hurricane. We live in a manufactured home so must hide from the storms with family about 2 miles away in whats known in Florida as a CBS home (concrete block and stucko).

Danny and I and our twin daughters were rushing to pack the car with clothes, blankets, food, battery operated lanterns and family pets...Chloe Belle, Boo Boo (our chihuahuas) and Ce Ce the cat. What always breaks our hearts is we have to leave our big dogs and horses behind and you can bet they are on our mind the whole time during the storm. We leave praying God will protect them once again.

This storm was approaching fast so we needed to leave and get to where we would ride out the storm. I have a battery operated radio that recieves the local TV broadcasts so we can still get information on what is going on with the storm. You can usually count on the electric going out before the storm gets very bad.

With Jeanne we had electric until well after midnight and the storm had started to kick up with sustained winds of at least 40 to 50 miles an hour. The lights kept going on and off as we watched the TV broadcast what the storm was doing. After midnight the eye of the storm was just off the coast and it was obvious we were going to have landfall once again on the Treasure Coast of Florida! Jeanne was still a catagory 3 storm and much worse than Frances was when it hit us exactely three weeks prior.

There were 7 of us riding out the storm at my sister-in-laws that night. Each of us claimed a bedroom when we arrived earlier that evening, unloading our things in the room and organizing things for when the lights went out. Lanterns in each room and flashlights ready. Coolers already filled with ice. Plenty of snack foods and sandwich fixins. The bathtub full of water is most important so we have water to flush the toilet in case we are without power for very long.

Pop had gone to bed but the rest of us continued to watch the local weather station broadcast the where abouts of Jeanne. It was obvious that we were going to once again be in the eye of the storm as they warned of the storms approach to each community. The eye wall which is the most dangerous and destructive part of the storm was in western St Lucie county and entering eastern Okeechobee County.

Not long after that we lost power and the storm was really starting to get worse. We moved from the closed in back porch into the living room and listened to the radio broadcast telling of the extensive damage already experienced in Ft. Pierce and St Lucie County. Wind and rain were now beating the front and east side of the house with incredible force. We often heard the sounds of things breaking and what seemed to be things hitting the house.

Rain and wind were starting to blow in around edges of the front door. Rain was bubbling thru cracks in the door and the carpet was quickly sopping wet for about 3 ft from the door. In the living room I heard a bubbling from the windows and found that the wind was blowing the rain under the windows although they were well closed and covered with plywood! The water was running off the window sills and quickly flooding the carpet.

Soon we found the carpet saturated with water in the hallway and in the bathroom as we found the water was being blown under the windows in the bathroom too. We were running out of dry things to sop up the water and had to move the living room furniture out into the center of the room. My sister-in-law tried to find something to reinforce the front door and although none of us said it at the time we were really afraid that front door was going to break under the force of the wind!

My daughters had fell asleep in the living room but I woke them when it was very apparent that the dangerous eye wall had finally approached us and was really working the front of the house over so badly! I had the girls stay in a bedroom in the back of the house hoping it would be safer. When we did all we could do with the front door and flooding, we moved back to the closed in porch on the back of the house hoping the eye of the storm would come soon.

I have been thru many hurricanes but Jeanne put the most fear in me than any I have ever experienced. It is an eerie feeling when the eye of the storm finally comes and you realize you are in the very center of something so powerful and dangerous! In spite of that I drifted off to sleep for about an hour with my little radio clutched in front of me.

My little dogs had spent the night in their cages stacked inside the bedroom closet with the closet door open. Before the back half of the storm came over we quickly took the dogs out to go potty although Chloe was just too nervous to pee and was very glad to crawl back in the closet. Can't say that I blame her.

I sat in wait and could hear the back half of Jeanne approaching us. At least the winds came from the southwest this time and gave the front of the house a well needed rest. During the eye we had found that a giant oak tree had been blown down in the front yard but would wait till morning to venture out much farther to check for any other damage.

I think we all drifted off to sleep during the back half of the storm and woke to the smell of "Cowboy Coffee"! We may loose power during a hurricane but that does not mean we will miss out on having coffee in the morning. Danny always manages to make "cowboy Coffee" on his little camp stove. I must say that was a great cup of coffee after the night we just went thru. The storm was just about blown out and as we waited for the last of Jeanne to pass by us that morning, Danny cooked bacon and scrambled eggs for us all on the cook stove.

Now that we had a full belly we wandered outside to check out the damage. Besides finding alot of shingles off the roof we faired pretty well with the exception of the oak tree out front but then Frances had already worked the trees over pretty bad several weeks ago. Now we decided it was time to try and make our way to our home to check on our horses and dogs.

As we drove the two miles home I shot some pictures with my digital camera of the destruction left by Jeanne. It was much worse than the damage from Frances and I was beginning to feel sick the closer we got to home. I was so afraid our home was destroyed but when we turned the corner I saw my palomino horse in the pasture with our other horses and the dogs came running when we pulled in the driveway. Our roof has quite a bit of damage and the porch is damaged on the east side but for the most part we are going to be alright.

The inside of our home is the only place we have not experienced any damage from all the hurricanes this season. We live on a twenty acre farm and have lost all the barns and the land looks like it has been raped. The windmill was ripped out of the ground and thrown across the pasture in Frances. The squirrels that used to romp thru out our giant oak trees lay dead in a foot of water left by the last hurricane.

After this last storm my horses although physically seemed fine were dazed. It was very apparent they went thru a very traumatic experience but after a couple of days seem to be back to their old selves. The trees are starting to grow new leaves and I saw a squirrel in the oak tree out back. My hubby dug out his twelve volt TV from his truckin days and had a long wire running out the front door and hooked to the battery of our pickup truck.

It was mighty hot during the day with no power to run the a/c. The humidity was terrible and we were glad for nightfall. We drank alot of water and tried to find someplace to catch a breeze and an afternoon nap. Danny and I boiled some yellow rice on the ole cook stove and boiled some chicken to make a big pot of chicken and rice. Daily we ventured out in search of ice to keep our food from going bad in the cooler. I think the only thing we lost was a half gallon of milk.

The heat was making me sick almost daily until my cousin and her husband came to our rescue and made the trip a couple hours drive one way to bring us a generator, gasoline and two loaves of bread! She wrapped her arms around me and told me she loves me! Well if I didn't know it before I did when she pulled in the driveway that day! Forgot to tell her I had worn the "cousin angel" pin she gave me last Christmas during the hurricane. Ok...nuff of the mushy stuff.

The generator made life much easier as we plugged fans in and were able to stay much cooler but Danny still made "Cowboy Coffee" on the cook stove out on the porch. Like my horses he is a creature of habit. Lol

We now have the power back on and life is getting back to normal. Hurricane season is not over yet and we cringe when hearing the words "hunker down, cone area or plywood"! We no longer live in the Sunshine State, I have been told Florida has been renamed the "Plywood State"!

The photos shown in the slide show below were taken after hurricane Jeanne in Okeechobee, Florida. When the storm had subsided late sunday morning we decided to try and make our way to our home to see if there was any damage. We stayed with family during the storm about 2 miles away and took these photos on our journey home.

A few of the photos were taken around our community later the next day.

The links below are not working yet. I plan to add these pages very soon. Check back soon to see the photos taken in Ft. Pierce and my story and photos of Hurricane Frances.