by halki13

Created on: September 09, 2008

Hurricane Francis

It was a very long journey; we arrived at one of our favourite hotels, the Marriot Wyndham Orlando Resort on International Drive.
I would always have a keen interest in the Florida weather. It's a British Curiosity. Several days into our vacation, I started to get a little concerned over some of the weather forecasts.

I have always been lucky where the Florida weather as been concerned. In fact, 19 visits without any bad weather is a very good record.

Past visits the severe weather as always tracked away from Orlando. During the early part of the year from June onwards, it's very normal to have bad weather and it tends to deteriorate towards October time.
I kept passing off the news reports on the approaching hurricane I dismissed the realism.
It soon became very evident to me that this was getting to close for comfort.
The approaching hurricane carried the name of Francis and reports had scaled it to the size of Texas and winds of 175mph, bigger than any other hurricane that Florida had ever witnessed and I was going to be in the middle.

I tried evenly to break the news to my family that this hurricane was serious, even then I tried to ignore my own belief. I kept getting negative feedback from my wife, maybe she didn't want to believe it either.

Many times I have vacated in Florida and as usual, the holiday of a life time.
Eventually we acknowledged the facts. Hurricane Francis was heading our way.
Even still; at this point I didn't want to believe it.
Our thoughts immediately turned to rejection; we had become blas about the whole situation, I suppose fear had kicked in.
We convinced ourselves, Hurricane Francis was going to miss us, like any other time a hurricane had been forecasted. We are British, Can this be really happening?

Naturally, Human nature had kicked in, since over time we have become ignorant to death and disaster, the great world wars. Thinking, we are all invincible.
The anticipation of an approaching hurricane is on the whole a frightful experience, waiting for the unknown!

That's strictly untrue; we know of all the disasters that occur across the world, which are beyond our imagination.
This is real and its happening and I couldn't do anything about it; I felt helpless, until the Day before the hurricane.
Winds had increased from strong to storm and I thought the storm had arrived early.

Expectation soon became our nightmares; I soon realised I had to follow the advice that was being given out on the TV. Although still trying to

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