Rene, part of the problem with planning for a hurricane, particularly a direct hit from the eye is that the wind will change direction, and could potentially come from any direction. Last year when we took a direct hit from hurricane Laura I experienced this first hand as the eye passed over our house with peak wind speeds of 130+ mph, an experience I never want to have again. I had been through lesser storms many times, including staying here through hurricane Rita in 2005 with 95+ mph winds, but Laura was something different completely, huddling in the dark in our house in the middle of the night listening to large trees come crashing to the ground all around us, and heavy items hitting the walls and roof of the house. Then the relative calm (think breeze day calm, not dead still calm) of the eye arrived at about 3:00 am allowing me a few minutes to go outside and survey the damage, see the large downed trees in our driveway, and around the house, then 15-20 minutes, then the winds reverse and start coming from the other direction, and within minutes are back up over 100 mph, and we are back to huddling inside the house listening to large trees fall. Afterward around 1/5th of the houses were rendered uninhabitable, many are still being rebuilt now a year later, many others still have blue tarps on the roofs, and some, perhaps 1 in 20 were so badly damaged to be complete tear downs.
