The 4 hurricane summer back in '04. Three of them (Charley, Frances, and Jean) hit my Mom's house which was yards from the beach.
I was living in Orlando at the time and got hit by the same 3 storms (and didn't have any power myself).
I drove out to Mom's to see if she was OK and assess the situation. I didn't bring any special tools or supplies with me. The house was pretty solid.
She was fine, no power, no phone, but fine.
The house had an old roof, but it held together until that last storm finally did it in. It ripped off large swathes of shingles and tar paper down to the plywood.
Of course everything was closed and even if something was open, you weren't able to get any roofing supplies because it was all sold out (this was after the last storm).
The storm had just passed and it was still windy and rainy.
I had to try to secure the roof before leaving to head back to Orlando. My Father had passed away years earlier and it's not like there were tools and supplies organized in the garage. It was a giant mess. There was no asking neighbors for help either. The beachside was under mandatory evacuation and the area was deserted.
I collected all the shingles I could find around the house (some of which were ours, others weren't). I found a hammer and a bunch of finishing nails. Then my cousin showed up and offered to help. There wasn't a second hammer to be found and he didn't load his car with special tools or supplies either. I found a giant monkey wrench. I gave my cousin the hammer and resolved to use the monkey wrench as a hammer. Basically, we tried to nail the random shingles over the exposed areas of roof decking.
I want you to imagine trying to hammer a finishing nail (which has no head to speak of) using one of these. Needless to say, I was destroying the fingers of my right hand as the fcuking thing would slide off the nail and smash my hand...over and over and over and over again. I'd get the nail about 3/4 of the way in, then bend the rest over to hold it down.
We soon ran out of shingles. I scrounged around for anything that seemed waterproof. I found random pieces of aluminum siding in the yard. Nailed those to the roof. My mom had some old shower curtains that had been used as drop cloths for painting. Nailed those to the roof. Finally, there was no usable debris left in the yard. I scoured the house and found a box of large, heavy-weight garbage bags. Nailed those to the roof. I was bruised, battered and beaten, but finally, all the exposed wood was covered.
I knew it was going to probably be a while before we could get real roofers to fix it.
I went back to Orlando and tried to find roofing supplies. I was able to find 2 rolls of felt and a 5 gallon bucket of that black latex roofing patch stuff that looks like tar. Oh, and a big box of real roofing nails with large diameter nail heads!
I took the stuff back to my Mom's a couple of days later and rolled roof felt over the BS repairs I had made that first day. I securely nailed it down and then and sealed all around the perimeter of the rolled areas with the black latex goop.
It was almost a year before my Mom got the roof professionally replaced. That patch job worked perfectly. Zero leaks all that time. I was finally able to laugh about it when I spoke to the roofers and they talked about all the insane things they discovered in demo-ing the old roof and patch job
My hand still hurts thinking about being up on that roof in the gusty wind and mist and smashing my hand over and over and over and over...
Alex.