In April of 2012 my wife and I moved to the beach house we built on Long Island in the Bahamas. We were on the Atlantic side of the island, 100 feet from the high tide line, and the house was built a on sand dune about 40 feet above the line.
In October of 2012, Sandy came down on us as a strong category 3 hurricane with winds at 125 mph as it gave us a direct hit. We had the house built with hurricane glass, extra strong roof and siding. We hunkered down and rode it out. We were fortunate in that despite taking a direct hit from the center of the storm, it was moving at nearly 25 mph and came and went in just 6 hours. All power was out in the entire island, but we only lost a half dozen shingles off the roof, and no leaks because they put down snow/ice shield under the shingles specifically for that reason. Toughest part of the cleanup for us was just the several pounds of beach sand that found it's way in around the 2 pairs of sliding glass doors on the ocean side of the house, ending up packed into the door tracks and rollers.
With no phones or power, we had no way initially of knowing how the rest of the island fared outside of our little 5 home enclave. The next day we decided to take a chance and drive north to look around. The highway on our end of the island was open, aside from some downed power lines, and with the generating station shut down to facilitate repairs, that was not a problem. About 10 miles north we found one local gas station was open, and they were pumping gas straight out of the tanker truck. We were 3rd in line, got gassed up (started with just 1/4 tank).
Looking pretty good at that point since we now knew that we had enough gas to get back home again. Then we got to the Conch Bar where we usually hung out a lot, and they were open. Liz had made a bunch of sandwiches, they actually had Kalik (local Bahamian beer) on ice. We spent the afternoon there visiting and getting the news from other parts of the island as folks dropped in. They were typically closed Sundays, but they got power back on Saturday, 2 days after the storm, so we headed there to hang out. Ours didn't come back until Sunday afternoon while we were sitting at the bar. The last of the power was restored in about 2 weeks in the areas where they had to replace a number of poles. They only had one truck for setting power poles, and it broke down, delaying the recovery effort.
In all it was not as bad as it could have been had the storm been moving slowly like Florence is, or like Joaquin did the year after we moved back to the states. Joaquin sat there stalled for 2 full days right on top of the island with 140-150 mph winds. It devastated our island and several others in the Southern and Central Bahamas much the same as Maria did to Puerto Rico, and it took more than a year to recover from that one.
We now live on the eastern plains of Colorado, tornado country, and I'd rather be here any day than in the path of any hurricane.
