It stands to reason that no one wants to buy plywood every time a hurricane threatens here in Florida.
Not only would it be an exhausting venture, given the past two years worth of turbulent storms, but it would cost a ton of money too. The simple solution, then, is to recycle.
Saturday, as photojournalist Mark Guss and I drove around Naples, we noticed something about the protective wood sheets. Some looked new. Others bore the scars of being stored, dropped, drilled on and pulled off. But the best ones contained a common identifier - the names of past storms.
An Arby’s restaurant off Pine Ridge Road was boarded up with planks that bore messages to both Wilma and Hurricane Ivan, which threatened last year.
But the grand prize for frugal storm supply recycler goes to a downtown business. The boards covering its windows were marked with a blast from the past - Hurricane Georges, which struck way back in 1998.