A "rain event"

We are, at this writing, still being pelted by rain from Tropical Storm Fay.

As Louise has written, we are parked a couple blocks from relief HQ, in an honest-to-goodness camping space graciously provided by the (undisclosed) landlord of our temporary HQ facility, with a 50-amp pedestal and a water spigot.

Fay seems to have spared us, and most of Florida, any significant (read: damaging) winds. Instead, it has maintained a tenacious amount of organization over land, and has dumped huge amounts of rain on vast tracts of the state. We are in the crook of the pivot as the storm makes its "boomerang" turn back inland, and so the rain has been incessant here for well over 24 hours, with probably another 8-12 hours to go. Points east and south of here have gotten even more. That makes this storm a "rain event" rather than a "wind event," from a response perspective.

CNN was reporting earlier today that 8,000 homes were flooded in the Port St. Lucie area. While this number is, doubtless, media hyperbole, if even a fraction of that proves to be accurate, what has been a very small operation to this point could mushroom rapidly into a major response.

Ironically, we are being booted out of the ~22,000 square foot facility we are in now (where the whole operation occupies a tiny corner of the cavernous room), and are moving tomorrow afternoon into a ~3,000 square foot union hall that will barely fit the number of relief workers we have today. We are bracing ourselves to move HQ not once, but twice in the next several days if the operation expands.

Odyssey's various leaks have been troublesome in the middle of all this, but we have little time to deal with them during the day. We've been taking turns running home and wringing out microfiber towels. We are hopeful that we'll get a respite from all this rain in the next day or two so things can dry out.

In the meantime, we'll be moving to our new HQ tomorrow night, and we're hoping for at least a 15-amp outlet there to keep some A/C running throughout the day.