Hurricanes, Flooding, Power Outages, Oh My!

I can sum up our experience with Hurricane Irene by saying we were very fortunate!  Our neighborhood is located between 2 canals, and our streets flood during hard rainstorms and high tide.  In fact, There had been a bad rainstorm about 2 weeks before Hurricane Irene that had caused water damage to several of our neighbors' homes.  Our ground was still saturated from that storm when Irene came through.  The storm had actually been downgraded to a Tropical Storm by then, but that didn't stop the ocean water from flooding my neighborhood.  Check out this video taken the day after the storm to see what my neighborhood looked like.  Luckily, our lot is raised from the street level, and our home was built approximately 4 feet off the ground.  The water got within 1 foot of our floorboards, but it didn't get in our house.  Our garage flooded, the deck is buckled, the water heater had to be replaced.  We still might have to replace the a/c and gas burner for the heat.  But all in all, WE WERE LUCKY!