TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Show gives tips on surviving hurricane, gator attack

Spike TV

Cade Courtley, host of Spike TV's series 'Surviving Disaster,' demonstrates how to surivive a hurricane.

ADVERTISEMENT

By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 15, 2009

As if a hurricane isn't bad enough, the Spike TV "Surviving Disaster" episode on surviving a hurricane throws in an alligator attack, crossing a raging river and a lesson on breaking and entering as part of living through a fictitious storm.

The series stars a former Navy SEAL Cade Courtley, who dishes out advice on survival. The episode that airs on Spike TV at 10 tonight looks at making it through a hurricane.

"We try to incorporate all the things that could happen in the worst day of your life," he said in a telephone interview from California.

In the episode, Courtley guides two men and a woman from the evacuation order to final safety.
Along the way, they first have to abandon paved roads too jammed with evacuation traffic and take to cross-country, where Courtley gives advice on how to drive over soaked, muddy terrain.

They are forced to abandon their SUV after it blows two tires and they have to weave through debris hurtled by hurricane winds. Here, the advice is to treat the debris like bullets. Move from tree to tree.

Go down to crawl on your belly when the whirling projectiles grow thicker.

Filming those scenes was as close to combat as Courtley said he's felt since leaving the military where he spent nine years on active duty.

"We had the wind fans going at 85 miles an hour, and the rain machines and people throwing debris," he said.

The episode was filmed in West Palm Beach with some of the scenes shot in a state park, including crossing a flooding river created by damming a creek and using water jets to create the rampaging current.

"They had to get a couple gators out," he said. "You watch them pull the gators out of there, then get in five minutes later."

Eventually, Courtley and his companions find refuge by breaking into an abandoned house.

And kicking down a door isn't best done the way you see in all the cop shows on television. It's easier and safer for your foot if you face away from the door and do a mule kick with the back of your foot.

The program bought the house that was a former meth lab in a not so tony part of Palm Beach County.

"We had constant police protection," Courtley said.

The program also shows viewers how to break through the roof from an attic – look for where plywood deck sheets meet – and fend off a gator attack – you twist the nearest leg you can reach and the gator lets go to see what's happening.

"That's what they say to do. I've never had much experience with gators," he said.

The show does take some license with timing of the evacuation. The evacuation order is issued an hour before landfall. Emergency officials issue orders at least 24 hours before a storm hits.

That would have resulted in an hour episode of four people sitting in a car stuck in traffic, Courtley said.

Contact reporter Neil Johnson at (813) 259-7731.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT