Who We Are
This site is published by me, Franklyn Galusha, through Franklyns Bay LLC, out of Crystal River, Florida — Citrus County, on the Nature Coast, where hurricane preparation is not a hobby anybody took up out of interest.
I have lived in Florida since 1984. That is better than forty hurricane seasons, a fair number of multi-day outages, and enough near misses to have left me with firm opinions about which of it works and which of it is somebody’s marketing.
I have also spent twenty-five years in SEO and web publishing, which is a considerably less romantic trade but a useful one. It means I know how to build a thing people can actually find when they go looking for it — which is most of the battle and none of the fun.
I live here with my wife Tina and our dog Eli. Crystal River sits on the Gulf in one of the most exposed corridors in the country. So when I write about a week without power, I am not writing about a place I read about somewhere. I am writing about this street.
Why We Built This
Your grandparents did not call a repairman, and it was not because they were hardier people than we are. It was that there was no money for it. One income, a family, a job that had to be kept, and nothing left at the end of the month for a service call. So the weekend went to the house and the car and the yard, and they got good at all three because there was no other way to be.
And I guarantee you will find yourself in the same place after you retire. A fixed income does to a man exactly what one income did to his grandfather. That is the whole of it. Gather the tools now, while buying them is still an easy thing to do.
Most of what gets written about preparing is written for what the trade calls a generic adult, by which everybody seems to mean a fit thirty-five-year-old with a sound back and very little on his mind. It takes for granted that you can carry a kit up a flight of stairs, put up your own grab bars, and work out your CPAP battery arithmetic at two in the morning by torchlight, in a house with no power in it.
This site is written for the other thing. For being fifty, or sixty, or seventy, in America.
A fixed income. A grip that is not what it was and is not going back. Several medications, one of which may want a refrigerator. Equipment beside the bed that stops when the power does. None of that is hypothetical, and none of it has ever crossed the mind of the young man writing the general article, because it has never once had to.
The thesis is short enough to say in one breath. Prepare at 50. Independent at 75.
Buy the useful things while you have income and mobility and time to shop slowly. The window closes so quietly that hardly anybody hears it go, and most people find out it has shut on the one morning they reach for something they never got round to buying.
Every page here is written with that window in mind — the generator guide, the grab bar walkthrough, the medication cold-storage calculator, the whole lot of it. It is one argument wearing a good many different sets of clothes.
What Makes This Site Different
- No salespeople. Commissions from Amazon Associates and other affiliate programs are the only money this site makes, and nobody pays me to name their brand or their contractor.
- No sign-up required. Every calculator, guide, and resource is free and fully accessible without creating an account.
- I live in the weather I write about. Crystal River, Florida is not a safe distance from hurricanes. It is directly in their path. When I describe a week without power, I am not working from research alone.
- I cite sources. Every figure comes from FEMA, NOAA, the CDC, the EIA or another government source, and I show you which, so you can go and check me.
- I tell you what does not work, not only what does. The story about the generator that was too small, the medication that degraded, the battery bank that was never charged — those are as important as the success stories.
What We Believe
- Quality once beats cheap repeatedly — especially for things you depend on in an emergency
- Corded tools outlast battery platforms that get discontinued
- A buried propane tank survives a hurricane. An above-ground tank is a liability.
- The most expensive thing a 70-year-old can do is nothing
- Neighbor-to-neighbor preparation saves more lives than any government program in the first 72 hours of any disaster
- The generator you buy at 55 is the generator that keeps you safe at 75 — you cannot buy it retroactively
Our Other Sites
Franklyns Bay LLC also publishes two other free resources for coastal homeowners:
- HurricaneShutterCalc.com — Free hurricane shutter cost calculator, shutter type comparison, and contractor directory for coastal homeowners in 13 states.
- StormRoofQuotes.com — Free storm-resistant roofing information, material comparisons, and quote tools for homeowners in hurricane zones.
Affiliate Disclosure
This site participates in the Amazon Associates program and earns commissions on qualifying purchases through affiliate links. This supports the cost of running the site — hosting, tools, research time — and does not affect our editorial recommendations. We recommend what we believe in, based on our own research and experience. We do not accept payment to recommend specific products or services, and we do not allow advertisers to influence our content.
Contact
Questions, corrections, a story of your own, or just something that worked for you and might work for somebody else. I read all of it, and I answer most of it inside a few days.