Hurricane Dorian: Man Parks Car in Kitchen So It Won’t Blow Away’

A Florida man had to get creative when strong winds brought on by Hurricane Dorian threatened to blow his car away. Jacksonville resident Patrick Eldridge, fearful that he would lose his car in the hurricane-force winds, transformed his kitchen into a makeshift garage when he pulled his smart car into his home.

The stunt came after Dorian, which left devastation in the Bahamas after it made landfall as a Category 5 storm, loomed close to the Florida coast, with some projections forecasting that it would make landfall. With his wife’s vehicle in their garage and fearful that his own car would “blow away,” Eldridge drove the smart car right through the kitchen doors on Tuesday morning.

His wife, Jessica, shared images of the hilarious stunt on Facebook, her post going viral with more than 67,000 shares and hundreds of comments.

“We are still in shock that this madness wave has occurred on the internet since the posting first emerged,” Eldridge told CBS News, boasting that his “wife was impressed that I was right about it being able to fit into the kitchen.”

Speaking to Market Watch, Jessica claimed that although safe from the storm, the car’s new location proved to be an inconvenience, as she had to move around it to cook and serve dinner.

“I’m hoping he will pull it out pretty soon once the wind dies down,” she said. “There is room and it’s not in the way but my dogs are confused by it.”

Thankfully, Jessica got her wish. As Hurricane Dorian, downgraded to a Category 2 storm, made its northward turn, it took it further away from Florida, and her husband was able to move his car back outside, confident that it had escaped the brunt of the storm.

Florida was drenched in heavy rains and wind gusts Wednesday night, though North Carolina and South Carolina are currently bracing for potential landfall. As of 11 p.m. Wednesday, the hurricane was located 105 miles south of Charleston, South Carolina, and 225 miles south-southwest of Wilmington, North Carolina and had sustained winds of 115 mph. It could make landfall by Thursday or Friday.

Meanwhile, the Bahamas got the worst of the storm. Making landfall on Abaco as the strongest storm to ever hit the Bahamas, thousands of homes have been destroyed, much of the land is currently underwater, and at least 23 people have died in a storm that Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said had left “generational devastation across Abaco and Grand Bahama.”