Hurricane Preparations
The board will make the decision whether to close the space due to weather. For recent storms we have not closed the space but left it to members' individual judgement. This decision will not come until the storm is less than 3 days from landfall.
We do cancel classes and events but often leave it up to the instructor's judgement and comfort level.
Frequently Ask Questions
Q: Is the space in a flood zone?
Yes. The best guess is that the floor of the building sits at about 11' above sea level. GPS shows somewhere between 3-4 meters. Topo maps show the building right along the 10' line but that was before construction and the building floor is a little above the roadway.
Q: Should we cut power to the building?
No. We have in the past and it creates more issues than it's worth. If the building has been flooded, nobody should enter until we have confirmed that it is safe.
General Preparations
Whenever a storm forms and has some reasonable potential to impact our location:
- Consider cancelling classes and events
- Move items away from known potential water leaks
- Rollup door in woodshop
- 4933 front door
- Get items off the floor that could be damaged by puddles from roof leak
- Consider tarping high-value tools in case of roof leaks
- Laser engravers
- Embroidery machine
- Sawstop
Closing the Space
When closing the space in the event of a hurricane:
- Cancel meetup events
- Announce closure on email, Slack and social media
- Coordinate members/volunteers show up and:
- Move equipment off of floor (where possible)
- Cover equipment with large garbage bags, plastic drop clothes, tarps, or other plastic sheeting.
- Throw away perishable food items from the refrigerator
- Perform typical lock up procedures
- Lock up
- While away
- Encourage members/volunteers to contribute to crowd sourced shelter database
- After the storm
- Clean up
- Start with critical systems, such as security, and access controls
- Announce space availability on email, Slack and social media