Because we had the trees cleared away from our house, we did not hear quite the "hitting" noise from tree debris as we did during Hurricane Frances. Consequently, it deceived us somewhat into thinking that we might have faired as well under Jeanne as we did under Frances. Yet, we clearly had higher winds and the amount of rain was incredibly much more than that of Frances. We could look out of our little windows at night and try to shine a flashlight, and all we could see was rain blowing horizontally and pouring off our roof. Not much else. BUT, we were not prepared for what we saw the next morning.

After taking down the bathroom exit to the south screen porch, Geoff was then able to go outside and see what was happening. It was still raining a good bit, but it was possible to see what kind of damage had been sustained. After he got the initial look from the porch, despite the rain, he decided to go out, brave the wind and rain, take a few pictures and scout out the situation at the same time. ----------- Below is what he saw.

The first thing that was noticed upon going outside was that part of the screen enclosure that kept most of the mosquitos and bugs out of the pool area and also the houses (since most of the windows opening on the pool side relied upon the pool cage screens. After a closer inspection, it became obvious that the damage was a result of poor workmanship on the part of the installers. The easterly winds at the latter part of the hurricane eye passing over us were too much for four screws put into sheetrock with no backing. Before dark, Geoff and Dave had push this back up and temporarily secured it until we could find someone to fix it at a later time. It remains unrepaired.	The next thing that immediately came to Geoff's attention was that we were flooded. Just how badly, he could not really see just yet, so he decided to get a rain jacket, rubber boats, his camera and a hat and take a walk around. The winds were no more than about 50 mph at this time.
As he walked around the back (northern) side of the house, he got a much better perspective on just how much water had been received. If you can notice the gate just above the stump in the center of the photo, it was about 2 ft. under water and the goat barn behind it was lower than the gate. As it turned out, about five goats were up to their stomachs in water trapped in their overnight barn.
Turning to the left, water up to 3 ft. deep was found throughout the back yard facing towards the northwest. Because of the rain, Geoff could not see the many trees that were down at this point. You can notice the absence of leaves on the trees. The oaks, and many of the pines were stripped nearly bare. Some weeks later, it was spring all over with new leaves popping out on the oaks. The pines will take much longer.

A quick trot by the cars showed that there was some damage to the remaining carport primarily by wind. No damage was sustained by the cars.	Near the office, again we noted shoddy workmanship that resulted in the ceiling of the breezeway between the houses and our office fallen down. Not able to be seen in this picture is the fact that much of the rest of it was buckled and would need to be taken down and secured. Since this is more cosmetic, it remains this way at the time of the writing of this page.
One of our concerns was the canal. Walking over to it, we saw that it was perhaps another 4 ft. higher than when Hurricane Frances came through. The height of the canal was well below the level of the water in our yard, BUT, there was no way for the water in our yard to get to the canal in order to drain because of the high berms around the property from the original digging of the canals back in 1920. It will be quite a job to put in a drain under these berms, and since this was the first time we had seen water of this amount, we think we may well not do it unless this experience were repeated with some degree of frequency.	Another first was to see water in the front yard of the Card's house. As high as this looks, it was still about 20 inches below their floor level so there was no threat of in-house flooding, despite the appearances outside.
As Geoff walked by the Card's house, he noticed the markings that Dave had made on the hurricane shutters as to how many times they have been put up.	Around the bend from their house, Geoff noticed his banana and plaintain trees, many toppled down and all very wind-damaged. All in all, perhaps 15 plants were destroyed, but they will grow back.
This is a composite panarama of the east side of the house with with pond well overflowed. In fact, we had to catch many of the fish that had gotten out of it, because as the water receded, they would die. We were unable to get all the fish back in, so some did die. Furthermore, the huge amount of pine needles that were blown into the water, changed its chemical composition and killed virtually all of the bottom plants from which our plant-eating Tilapia fish feed. Consequently, we have not seen them and don't know whether they have also died or are managing somehow to eak out some nutrition off of the water lilies or some other plants that are so deep we cannot see.

One of the unique things that was immediately noticed from the flooding was the number of piles of red "fire ants" that were floating on top of the water. The water had driven them out of the nests and they simply floated into piles. All different varieties from the nests were seen including the soldier ants, workers and others. We never saw the queen ants, but supposed them to be in the huddle somewhere. These piles were everywhere and whenever they found something dry, like our boots, they would begin to swarm up, so it was really a mess. We founds swarms in trees surrounded by water, and in the hurricane shutters over the window wells.

Having seen the amount of water outside, Geoff went in and woke up Dave and suggested that he needed to look into the animals because some of the barns were filled with water. Dave got up and woke Kimarie up as well. He went outside and discovered that all of the goats needed to be moved to dry ground, including the buck goats.

Kimarie, about five months pregnant at the time, carries one of the smaller goats that had water half-way up its side. Water was deeper than the boots, so now Kim has water in her boots. Thankfully, there were no red ants in the deeper water.	Dave is the only one who could handle the big buck. He was in isolation to keep the does (lady goats) from getting pregnant. Since there was no separate pen to put him in, at the time, all the does that could be are now pregnant.
Kim handles a more docile buck that is familiar with her.	Dave takes the last two. Geoff took one, but it was hard to take pictures and pull goats.

Here is some of the damage done to the Cards farm operation by Hurricane Jeanne.	Surprisingly, with all this damage, no animals died.
Two huge trees took out the buck goat pen, which was also full of water.	Damage to the chicken pens. Geoff stepped on a nail under water.
Water up to the floor of the laying chickens home (shed on right of photo) and two or more feet deep in the goat barn, along with a toppled branch from an oak tree.	Dave's hay barn survived, but it was full of water as well as the road leading to it and the pig pens in the back. The pigs did fine in the water. Goats, on the other hand, need to have a place to get out of water or it can cause them to get sick.
The day after the storm, the weather cleared up and gave an opportunity to get outside and take some more pictures. This is a composite photo from the north end of the property looking south through what is normally a lovely, shady backyard. Even in winter, Florida trees are never so bare. Now the trees are largely stripped of their leaves, many branches are down, dead fish litter the sides and the smell of standing stagnant water with thousands of dead ground grubs, rotting fish, soggy bark and leaves and branches made for a brine that created a glue like film that lay over the branches and grass like a stinky shrink wrap as it dried. What a stinky mess it was. We will show you this report number seven on Cleanup.
This is a side-view, looking east across the back of the property. The Donnan house is on the right.
This is a roof top view later in the day while cleaning out the gutters from the leaves in anticipation of more rain.
A front view of the property the following day.

The following is just a bit of the general damage that was done to the property. By far away, the greatest damage was done in the woods. We use these for pasture and are gradually reclaiming them while maintaining the trees as much as possible. One thing is very evident since the hurricane, we have about 30% of the follage in the woods that we used to. Some of that is very good, because the winds blew down a tremendous number of the grapevines that had climbed into the trees and which were full of pine needles. This was a great forest fire hazard, and we praise God for this positive side of the destruction.

On the other hand, there are trees across most of the roads in the woods, and many have broken tops hanging 30-50 ft. up in the air, making us very cautious about walking in the woods or letting the children play in them until these "swords of Damacles" are no longer hanging over everyone's heads.

Snapped tree across forest path road.	Jonathan David (J.D.) Card (8 years old) standing next to huge oak branches.
Kimarie and J.D. Card standing next to Cabbage Palm pushed over by the storm.	Kimarie next to a huge pine tree (perhaps 60 years old) fallen across a forest path road.
Kimarie next to another down tree snapped just above the base.	Kimarie and J.D. next to down oak branches from the tops of a nearby tree.
More stripped leaves.	Another pine snapped about 10 ft. up from the base. Little J.D. is standing next to the base on the right hand side and Kimarie is standing in the road to the left of center.
This one, with J.D. standing next to it, took down part of a small barn that was under construction.	On our front road, this tangled mess awaits cleanup.
More trees and branches that have fallen across the main ditch that drains from about a mile away. These have to be cleared or they will eventually clog the ditch. Many of these trees still standing are leaning in the direction of the ditch and road and consequently will require heavy equipment to push them the opposite direction while they are felled.
Snarled and tangled and manged with the fence just north of our entrance road.
This is a shot to the west looking down Ditch #1, as it is called. Our property runs about 1/6 th of a mile and most of the ditch looks like this. There are probably 20-30 trees or significant branches down here. Many other trees are still standing but damaged beyond repair, so this will take a long time to clean up.
We thought you would enjoy seeing another place we found some ants when we finally began taking down our hurricane shutters. This was a high and dry place for fire ants to nest. We wondered why we had them coming into our bedroom. (This is not unusual during times of much rain, but this has never happened before.)

In order to give you a little perspective on how blessed we were in contrast to many around us, Geoff took a trip through town about a week after the storm to catch some of the damage. Keep in mind that what you see is at least a week after the hurricane.

Fellsmere is a small, somewhat sleepy country town, that is primarily an agricultural base for the surrounding citrus groves and vegetable farming. It also is a recreation community for those with horses and a desire for living off the beaten path. It also serves as a bed-room community for Vero Beach, Sebastian and Melbourne, the near-by towns to the south-east, east and north-east respectively.
Above left is a damage screen porch far more severe than ours. On the right are the branches trimmed from trees nearby the former King's Reformed Presbyterian Church meeting place on Broadway in Fellsmere.
The only two gas stations in town had significant damage to their gas islands. The one on the right had the island roof completely blown off. You can see it setting on the left hand side of the picture on the ground.
Beautiful Queen Palms blown over. If they can pull them back up and prop them, they might live.	The stand of trees is the one that took out our phone lines. We live about 2 miles further north from here.
This huge tree was totally uprooted.	A snapped pine tree in the Fellsmere Elementary school ground.
Grapefruit lost during the hurricane.	Oranges lost during the hurricane.
Shortly after Hurricane Jeanne, the blue tarp was unofficially declared the new state flag. The new state tree was the last one left standing after hurricane season. The house on the left is just a few miles south of where we live. It sustained damage to its entire roof as did the one on the right.
Some tarps are gray.	Some are black. This is the CITY HALL of Fellsmere, which also suffered damage to some of its garage facilities in the back.
The historic Fellsmere Inn suffered significant roof damage in front and back (lower left hand). It is now up for sale. Any takers? This is a delightful old building that sires back to the days of the founding of Fellsmere and is a historic landmark. I believe it was built in about 1915 or so.
Back roof of Fellsmere Inn.	Significant roof damage, but not leaking.
Fellsmere Post Office was damaged as well.	This old garage nearly collapsed.
Church of God building in Fellsmere.
Here there is no need for a tarp, because the roof was completely taken off of this prefabricated home.	This mobile home was completely destroyed.
Also total losses.

That ends the report on Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne. God was incredibly good to us through these storms, and the more we drive around and see the damage all along the Treasure Coast of Florida, we feel incredibly blessed because of what we were spared, but also because of the great demonstration of His power, and His sustaining watchcare throughout. We walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and a few did die, yet His grace truly kept us from any great fear. Praise God for His goodness.

Go to the Report #7 by clicking below:

7. HURRICANE JEANNE
Clean-up -- October 5 to present

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