Independence Day in Kenny's World

July 4th 1998: Walt Disney World via Leesburg from Palm Coast

Well . . . everything on the news is true . . . they *did* evacuate an entire county (Flagler) in Florida because of the wildfires. Three large fires were traveling toward each other, and could combine in such a manner that would trap thousands of people inside the flames with no way out, *if* the wrong conditions presented themselves.

Sunday, July 5th, is when the radp / addw meet was held . . . but our story begins on Wednesday. 

Wednesday, July 1, 1998

On Wednesday, the situation begins to get very hectic with two massive areas becoming evacuation sections in Palm Coast. This particular evacuation order put me just outside (extreme far end) of the order. The most confusing part, was that some media sources were saying that the evacuation was voluntary, while others were saying it was mandatory. The confusion in Flagler County was just beginning. During this week, my brother, the minister's family, and about 20 youth from my church were spending the week at camp in Leesburg (middle of the state, about an hour north of Orlando on the Turnpike). I was taking care of the minister's dogs while the entire family was away. I kept watching some news reports to figure out what I can but don't worry too much.

Thursday, July 2, 1998

Thursday comes, I traveled north on US1 to see what is happening . . . and could see a fire out to the Northwest coming toward Palm Coast (yesterday's main concern was the fire to the south, now there is one to the Northwest too). At this time, the fire was still a couple miles away, and still hadn't jumped US1 . . . the first main obstacle in its path. Firefighters were preparing to deal with protecting the structures, but they were not able to do anything with the fire while it was still out in the dense pine forest and away from any roads. With all the smoke and stress, I had been eating poorly, so I went and ate at McDonalds (ok, so I *still* didn't eat properly, but at least I ate.) It was beginning to get really eerie. Because of all the smoke in the sky, the sunlight was being filtered in an unusual way. The tint had changed the surroundings to yellow. Everything was beginning to look yellow. The smoke had been in the sky and in the air for a while, but this was the first time that the yellow tint appeared.

Well . . . then the voluntary evacuation for my neighborhood was announced. Once again, I was on the end of the evacuation area, this time the extreme southern end. So, now I started paying attention to the news and started to think of the things that needed to be taken with me when it was time to leave. My apartment, the Church, and the minister's parsonage are all very close to each other and all within this particular evacuation order. Because of some of the other fires throughout Central Florida, I knew that there would be a police line somewhere. That afternoon I went to find how close the police line was, to get a better idea of the location of the fire.

Once the mandatory evacuation for the area went into effect, I began phase two of my evacuation plan. I gathered all the stuff that I planned to take and moved it into the living room. For me and my brother, this was mostly electronic equipment, every cpu-unit went so that we didn't have to worry about all the data on our computers. I did take my entire computer so that I would have access to a computer, but I didn't want to break down my computer until the last possible moment.

After a few phone calls with friends, we began to plan how to deal with the evacuating important items from the minister's family home. Since I was responsible for the dogs, I took care of them. One of the friends called the minister's wife and discussed what to take. The minister's family had evacuated from Marco Island during hurricane Andrew, so she had a clear idea of what to take and not take. Later in the day, the friend called, after the initial mandatory order went out. I told her she should go ahead and get the stuff out of the parsonage so she would be ready and wouldn't get stuck outside the police line if it ever moved this far.

I continue to go back and forth to the police line a couple of times during the day. It held steady during the daylight, but in an unusual fashion, the fires advanced after sunset, the police line was pushed south twice within a two-hour time frame. I stayed up quite late figuring out what was going on with the fires, and had brought the dogs over to my apartment just in case we had to leave quickly. I instigated the next phase of my evacuation plan. I packed the car. This meant I had to take my computer down as well. I logged on quickly, ran over to sandnet on IRC and told them that I was being evacuated. Then I loaded my computer. I decided to stay since it was still a good distance to the fires at that time, but I was ready to leave quickly if I had to.

Friday, July 3, 1998

I woke up on Friday . . . took care of the dogs, and checked out the police line. It was still at the last place that I saw it. Then my phone started ringing and the scanner started having lots of traffic . . . Flagler County was under a mandatory evacuation. The car was already packed, but my brother wanted me to get one more thing from the church, and the minister wanted me to do one more thing at the parsonage. I took care of all that. We decided that there were three options for me: Jacksonville to the north, Cocoa to the south, and Leesburg to the west.

Jacksonville is where the minister's parents live so that was the initial plan. But before I left, I had heard on the scanner that there really was no way to go north. The initial plan was for everyone to head west on State Route 100. WESH, Channel 2 in Orlando had reported that I95 south was going to be a part of the evacuation route. So I went toward I95, past the northern entrance and headed down to SR100, I did not encounter very much traffic (though everything was heavier than normal) until I got onto SR100 . . . heading toward I95 again . . . and luckily, right as I passed it, they started letting cars on I95. So I made an U-turn and made my way back to I95. Off I went . . . more cars were still using the other routes (probably because of trying to get back home so that they could leave) than using I95 at that point. Much of I95 had been closed earlier. Northbound traffic was only emergency vehicles, and southbound was only partially being used at this point.

The trip down I95 was extremely bizarre. I thought the day before with the yellow tint was eerie . . . this made it even more bizarre. Every exit ramp off I95 had a police officer preventing us from exiting I95. We were traveling through Volusia County which also had a lot of trouble with the fires. We saw a lot of acreage that had been burnt, some smoldering fires, some small fires, and lots of ash on the ground. The gray ground made it look like a war zone.

As we approached US92 in Daytona Beach, we finally found out what they were doing with the traffic. The overhead changeable signs directed us to I4 West. Every one of the traffic signs was used for information about the evacuation. I was very impressed with all the detail they had put in place, and in such a short period of time. There are definitely folks working who are on their toes. On I4, the signs were used to show where evacuation shelters were and what numbers to call as far as hotel rooms and the like. I was impressed. Although, it also felt weird knowing that they were talking about *you*.

Once I made it into Orange County, before I had to make my final decision, I called my brother in Leesburg and told them I wasn't going to be going to Jacksonville after all, I was in Orlando and I could either go to Leesburg or Cocoa. We decided the best thing was to reunite the dogs with their family, so I headed to Leesburg.

Leesburg is the home of the United Methodist Church's camping program here in the Florida Annual Conference. They were gracious enough to allow the youth and adults to stay for an indefinite period of time. There is an enrichment center across the street of the camp that has motel style accommodations, so that is where I stayed (my brother and the other adults who spent the week were already there). After the camp session ended all the youth from Palm Coast were moved over there as well.

Saturday, July 4, 1998

Saturday comes, camp is over, we move the kids across the street and start planning our stay . . . not knowing when we would be allowed back into Flagler County. To help pass the time, we went to the Leesburg Mall Saturday afternoon and saw Mulan. I really liked the movie, glad that we went to see it. Though, the scene of the burning city wasn't very appealing to us at the moment. Luckily it didn't trigger anything in any of the kids . . . something that we worried about the entire time. Basically everyone enjoyed the movie. The adults definitely enjoyed it (almost everyone thought it was better than they expected) and most of the kids liked it.

Sunday, July 5, 1998

Sunday comes and it is time for me to head to Walt Disney World for the meet. So I leave the rest of the group after lunch in Leesburg and make my way to Walt Disney World . . . the Turnpike is extremely busy since there is no access to I95 for the top half of the state, everyone has to use the Turnpike to go North-South. The tolls had been lifted earlier in the week because of all this . . . trying to get folks to travel as fast as possible to wherever they needed to go.

I went to Animal Kingdom first, checked out the basic attractions I visit, rode the Kilimanjaro Safaris and checked out Countdown to Extinction. I had a mission this time: to determine if the transport fields were *red* or *green*. I had a discussion earlier about the color of the lasers. I told the person that I knew they were red now, he insisted that they were green. They were red.

Off I went to Epcot to check some things out. Then off I went to the MarketPlace for the meet. When I get there, Rob and Bruce are already sitting on a wall across from Ghiradellis. [Glad I just have to type that and not pronounce it. :)] I headed off to the restroom and then came back. Cathy B is sitting with them now. So we sit and chat. We talked about the fires and what I had to do. Folks provided me with options for the rest of the evening and told me that they had been thinking about me. Then all of a sudden, Jenn runs out of Ghiradellis saying . . . "There you are" . . . and that she is glad to see me. She talked about all the trouble she has had trying to get in contact with me and everything she had done to try to contact me. Thanks Jenn, I appreciate all the concern and the trouble you went through. :) She never could find my telephone number . . . it is under my brother's name and not mine. :(

Kristen and Eric (and of course the guest of honor, Jan B) are there too, and Kristen gives me an extremely hard time for not letting friends on IRC know about my whereabouts. I had to explain, that though I have a computer . . . I didn't have telephone access where I was staying (just have lots of cellular phones). So I could never connect to the internet to tell anyone. Cathy said, she was going to tell her husband to tell everyone on IRC that night that I am alive and well. Kenny rolled his eyes a few times throughout the evening . . . luckily . . . we didn't talk about the fires the entire time.

We all got our ice cream and talked for a while. And then the folks who had to smoke lit up before we made our way to Pleasure Island. Jan and her friends didn't go with us to Pleasure Island, but everyone else did. We only had to get a ticket for Cathy, so I used my Disney Dining Experience card to get a half price ticket for Cathy. Rob made sure to point out, that I *didn't* go straight to the ticket window with the shades down (a reference to a thread that was going on in the newsgroup at the time).

We checked out the Island for Cathy, went past Mannequins, the Eastern ticket booths weren't opened, so we had to go to the center entrance. We headed over to the Wildhorse Saloon. Rob made sure he showed us the restrooms . . . and some of us checked 'em out from the inside. We made sure we checked out a video from the Hub Video Stage, saw the New Year's Eve celebration . . . and watched them shoot off fireworks even though Disney had *claimed* not to be using fireworks in any of its shows. And, of course, we went to the Adventurer's Club. Otis won the Balderdash Cup . . . although we aren't sure if it was fair, Amul kind of gave in, and no one had a chance to vote for him. But, it was a great Adventurers Club experience for our meet.

After the New Year's Eve celebration, we started to leave . . . we headed back to the other side of the Island since we had met in the MarketPlace. As we passed Mannequins, Jenn really wanted me to go in . . . I said I needed to head back too . . . we saw the line to get in . . . and we both decided that it was *way* too long . . . *especially* for a Sunday night.

Monday, July 6th, 1998

Back to Leesburg I went. We received the good news the next morning. Monday at 9am, the mandatory evacuation order had been lifted . . . and all roads leading into Flagler County had been reopened. The trip back home wasn't quite as eerie. Although we passed fires and upon arriving in Palm Coast, we found that fires had been closer to home than when I left. We were all just happy to be back home.

I got to sleep in my own bed, and had access to my computer again.

Thanks to everyone who was thinking about me and the others in the entire state who were in the same situation. The firefighters really did an excellent job. It is really strange to see a wooded lot burnt next to a house that is still standing and only sustaining minor damage. The firefighters really do deserve a lot of credit. Thanks guys. I am back home, safe and sound and ready to read tons and tons of posts on the newsgroups. :)

Thanks again to all.

July 4th, 1999

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