I'm wary of eating out after the hurricane. Is every restaurant in the city going to throw out everything they had in stock? Will food that defrosted be served? Will items that partially (or completely) thawed be put back into the freezer? You can't regulate such things, and not all restaurant owners are rich. They'll try to save what they can. I don't necessarily blame them; but I'm concerned that I might be served food that isn't as fresh as it should be. I had some funny tasting Mexican food last week. Un-refrigerated cheese won't kill you, but it's not pleasant either.
Just be cautious, and think about what you're ordering for another week or so. It's still hard to get some food items for us consumers; it's likely that it's been difficult for restaurants to restock as well.
The Beach
They opened up the beach for the weekend The the first thing you see when you get to the end of Las Olas is a big pile of sand. Most of the restaurants were open and there was a spattering of people walking around, but generally pretty sparse.
Some places didn't bother opening; not sure if Drunken Taco is closed for good?
Sand is piled all along the beach and on the sides of the road. But A1A is passable.
A few venues seem to have lost their awning canvas. American Social's is down as of this weekend.
Monday Morning: The Day After
Fort Lauderdale was pounded by Irma, with sustained heavy rain and wind all day Sunday. But the aftermath in downtown Fort Lauderdale was benign; The New River never flooded in this area, not even at the height of the storm. And this morning, it's like a regular summer morning; or at least it seems that way from a high rise.
The only property that experienced serious damage was the icon, with just about all of their recently planted palm trees down. This is likely due to the fact that they were recently planted and haven't taken root yet.
The rear of the property has some broken lamps and also downed trees; it's likely that they'll just stick these back in the ground. They were only planted a couple of weeks ago. There also wasn't much, if any, flooding of this patio; I checked this area during the storm and it never was covered with water.
Same in the front. More of a landscaping project than a catastrophe.
One window sitting on the sidewalk; this building is under construction and has some other windows boarded up also. Don't walk around downtown with bare feet.
Grille 401 has some broken windows upstairs and a piece of their awning ripped. This is the least of their problems.
One thing I wanted to check was the crane at the Riverhouse. The fake news networks were peddling this narrative about construction cranes not being dismantled; but as you can see the crane survived nicely. Any cranes that didn't survive weren't secured correctly or were defective.
There was one crane that went down by the W Hotel by the beach, but the once downtown seem to be fine.
The alley between Timpano and the Royal Pig was largely unruffled; this area was well shielded from the winds with came mostly from the SW. Even the outdoor TVs at the Pig were unbroken; they'll see when they try to turn them on if the electronics survived the water.
All in all, not too bad. Downtown is technically a flood zone, but the New River didn't seem to surge at all during the storm.
Fort Lauderdale Beach didn't fair as well.
During the Storm
We now know that Irma is not coming through Fort Lauderdale, so we're done with the cones. It's fairly certain now that Irma will head up the west coast. If you're in Fort Lauderdale, you woke up to heavy winds and driving rain. We can expect this to continue all day.
We are in the worst part of the storm for us now; the NE quadrant. Every once in a while we get a crazy wind storm, and they come in bands. We can expect this to continue throughout the day. Winds will continue but the isolated storms (and tornado warnings) should subside late afternoon.
The only story anyone is paying attention to (except the nuclear war with N Korea thing), is that Hurricane Irma is heading our way. It's path will become clearer over the next couple of days, and we're keeping an eye on the forecasts.
The latest projections sees Irma shifting east; the median model has a direct hit on Fort Lauderdale, but the trend is moving east, which is good news.
Some tips:
Home Depot is a disaster. Stay away unless you MUST go for something.
Stores are out of water. Water machines were "sold out".
While most of us likely don't drink tap water, it is drinkable. So filling up a couple of jugs
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