One of my cousins lives in Orlando, and she and her family (husband and 2 small boys) were directly in the path of the hurricane. I asked her to write up an email of what it was like, and she sent it to me today. I found it fascinating, and am sharing it here:

I finally have a few moments to collect my thoughts about the storm. You asked great questions, so here are a few long winded answers.

We spent the storm at our house, fully expecting the storm was not on a path directly toward us, or even if it was going to get close...that the storm would diminish greatly prior to Orlando and we would not have any problems except perhaps a short power outage or loss of cable tv type of thing.

One of the outer bands of the storm hit at about 4-4:30 - very strong rain - no wind though, then afterwards the air was completetly still and quiet - no birds etc. At 8 PM as we gathered to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics, while the boys peppered us with questions like What are the Olympics and What is Athens and why is it greasy? and is that wind I hear? the storm hit. Huge winds heavy rain and by 8:15 we lost power. The noise of the wind for the next 2 hours was incredibly intense and howly I guess. We heard a few thumps which we guessed the next day were actually shingles hitting our house, saw lots of lightning and weird incredibly bright green flashes (still don't know what those were, some people say green lightning, others say transformers blowing??) We couldn't see much except when there were flashes. Truthfully, we thought no real damage was being done. All of our trees are relatively short, mabye not taller than 30 feet and they were all standing before we went to bed. Our pool area looked intact, so we went to bed at 10:30 with strong winds still blowing and figured we'd made it.

The next morning was perfectly clear and sunny, after we all woke up we "shoed" up and ventured outside to face the mess. Shingles all over our yard, holes in the screen enclosure over the pool, shingles in the pool. Several large limbs off our orange tree....all of which was negligible. Neighbors all around us lost most of their trees, had severe damage to their pool areas, some homes lost shingles and tar paper and were down to plywood. The street that runs past our neighborhood had EVERY power pole down, so we knew then we would be doing without for a while. But things looked up quickly, while we sat outside for an icecream breakfast (which attracted lots of neighbors) the man who lives next door said he had a generator and would we like to plug in our fridge.

The kids and a friend and I started picking up shingles and handing them to Mike and other neighbors who used the loose shingles and plastic sheeting to repair about 6 roofs. The generator neighbor made pancakes and coffee which we distributed to the many passers by. EVERYONE was out walking that morning.

Our phones were all out, most of the cellphones were also not working with the exception of Sprint, so the neighbor with that phone loaned his "free weekend" minutes to anyone who wanted it. We got phones back on Sunday for an hour or two as a tease...then they didn't come back on till Wed I think, but then we could only call out, the phone would not ring. Electricity was out until Monday afternoon, we got cable back on Friday. Mike bailed out on Sunday afternoon to Alabama for a business trip and we retreated to the west side of town to a friends house where power was restored that morning. We stayed there till Tues morning. We took in another family who still didn't have power on Wed and Thurs nights.

Our streets are now still filled with downed trees and signs, and power co. trucks from as far as Illinois. We learned several days later what we kind of already knew..that the eye of the storm had passed right over us. It took the grocery stores about 9 days before they were fully stocked again. Gas was a problem for the first 5 days after the storm as only a few stations had power, and they closed when they ran out. There was plenty of fuel available in town...just no power to run the pumps. Ice was a major commodity, after 4 days it was finally being distributed at local parks and firestations along with water and bananas of all things.

Andy's school reopened on Monday and Zach should go back tomorrow if his school could just get their phones back.

Andy drew some nice hurricane pics, but really can't write letters yet. He is working on a little journal page though...so I'll see what I can send.

In Decmeber you will still see much of the damage I'm afraid...well the trees anyway. Our latest inconvenience is the new dumping station around the corner from our neighborhood. From 7-7 anyone can dump yard debris there. This morning in the first mile of my commute to Andy's school, we counted 21 - 18 wheeler sized trucks carrying debris to this new dump site. Needless to say, traffic is a mess. : ) But still we are incredibly grateful to the kindness of our neighbors and complete stranges. This could have been much much worse and for sure we'll all be more prepared before the next storm.

Sophie