RV Dealer Preps for Potential Hit from Hurricane Helene – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
PANAMA CITY, Fla. – The National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported late this morning that tropical storm Helene – located east of the Yucatan Peninsula in the Caribbean – had been upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane.
And in the tentative eye of the storm right now is Neal Stewart, co-owner, RV Connections, headquartered in Panama City, Fla., with a second store in Dothan, Ala. As a result, his staff at the 50-employee Panama City store, while trying to take care of their own personal concerns at their respective homes and families, has been moving units together in a defensive posture with an eye to a worst case scenario.
No one, as of this morning, of course, knows what will occur with Hurricane Helene, which at RVB.com’s press time was projected to hit the Big Bend Region of Florida on Thursday.
But the storm is predicted to intensify as it crosses the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane and, according to the NHC, “Damaging hurricane-force winds are expected along portions of coast of the Florida Big Bend, where a hurricane warning is now in effect.”
Computer models late this morning had the storm making landfall near the Florida Panhandle town of Carrabelle, approximately 70 miles east of RV Connections Panama City location.
“We’re looking at the storm coming in,” said Stewart, whose dealership handles an array of towable and motorized RV brands including Tiffin, Newmar, Brinkley, Montana, Cougar, Rockwood and Alliance products. “They’re talking about a possible Cat 3. But we’ve heard that before and it could be larger and it could be smaller. Could it be a two or could it be a four or a five? We’ve seen these storms build up in the Gulf. It’s just depends on how much time it spends in the Gulf building up, how fast the storm is moving and a lot of other variables. But in times like these, we try to prepare the best we can.
“You know, right now the storm’s kind of a teaser for us because we’re (geographically) right on that line there of still being in danger’s way,” said Stewart. “So, it’s kind of touch and go trying to figure out how many units we’re going to try to move out of harm’s way. But what we’ve already done is secure a lot of RV’s at the store. We’ve stacked them nice and tight together and basically what we do is we filled the water tanks on the campers. We stack them nice and tight together in a big corral in the middle of the dealership’s yard there. And we put down all the jacks. And then we place the heavier RV’s around the perimeter of that corral to kind of help block the wind. And then we stack a lot of inventory around our steel building. We have an 18-bay service shop and a sizeable building and we’ll put inventory inside the bays and shops and also we will do our best to try to surround the building to try to protect the glass from debris strikes.”
All that said, again, they still don’t know what they’ve got on their hands either in Panama City or even Dothan, where they’re getting some sandbags to protect the building’s entrances because they’re expecting some serious rainfall and potential flooding.
“The scary thing is that if you don’t start preparing early enough you don’t have enough time to prepare. But if you do all of this work and move 150-plus pieces of inventory and the storm misses you, then you’ve done all that work and spent all that time and you don’t have an issue with the storm. So, it’s one of those things where you’ve kind of got to act early and get things shifted around and prepared for the worst if you will, but also make sure that everybody’s secure. Of course, at times like these, employees are always wanting to batten down the hatches at their personal homes. We’re just working on a lot of variables here.”
