Sorry to hear about your pine tree.
Foresight is better than hindsight. I stop and think a day before the hurricane hits, when I know exactly where the winds are going to be coming from, then I plan accordingly and I put plants and heavier stuff on the leeward side of the house. I made an issue out of cleaning my garage out this time so I could get my car in it. I took too much of a chance with it during Hurricane Charlie.

Don't get relaxed about the storm, as we are STILL getting bands 48 hours after the storm hit. Although the wind gusts are only 40-50 mph, because of the spacing of the bands, they hare having tunnels and swirls of high speed up to 110 mph dropping tornadoes down as close as 70 miles from us.(north of orlando). The feeder bands go out as far as the Bahamas.

I let one of my cats out yesteray before dark. It ran out, got caught in a gust of wind and ran back in with it's tail dragging. They know.