For nearly a week we heard warnings about Hurricane Wilma.

When we went to bed last Sunday night Wilma was scooting across the Gulf of Mexico after spending some 30 hours battering the Yucatan peninsula. She was a category 2 storm and moving so fast that the forecasters expected little if any strengthening overnight.

We woke up Monday morning before 6 a.m. to the roaring of 120-mile-per-hour winds battering our condo building. Wilma had strengthened, all right — and was bearing down on us.

As early as the previous Friday we'd received a taped telephone message from the mayor of Naples, informing us that our Gulf Shore area was under a mandatory evacuation order.

But Wilma was 800 miles away, approaching Cancun, and not predicted to reach Florida until Monday. Besides, where would we go? News reports claimed hotels were full all the way up to Georgia. And I sure didn't want to get stuck in gridlock traffic on I-75 and run out of gas while the hurricane washed over us.

So we stayed. Our building has weathered hurricanes before. Although it's smack on the beach, it's built of reinforced concrete and very well designed. We bought extra batteries, filled buckets and jugs with water, lowered our storm shutters, and decided to tough it out.

When the building started swaying, I began to question the wisdom of that decision. But it only swayed a little, and by 10 a.m. the wind's howl was abating somewhat.

With all the shutters down and electrical power out, we were living in a dark cave. Our only link with the rest of the world was our battery-powered radio. The newscasters reported that Wilma's eye had passed to the south of Naples and the storm was now racing at 24 mph toward Broward/Palm Beach counties.

That was good news, and bad. Wilma was leaving us, but heading for the house of our daughter, her husband and our two grandsons. We had briefly considered going over to her place for the duration of the storm, but then figured they'd be in as much trouble as we would be. That turned out to be right.

Around 11 a.m. the wind had eased enough for me to use the back-up battery system and cautiously crank up one of the shutters. The wind was still screeching, but it looked much brighter outside.

Just about 11:45 a.m., our electric power came back on. I was elated! Last year, after Charley had blown by, power went out and it took Florida Power & Light six days to restore it. This was much, much better. Thanks, FPL.

Our cable TV came back at 1:30 p.m. Life was definitely getting better.

But no water came from the faucets. I called the city's Public Works Department. No reply. Not even a taped message. Same thing at the City Manager's office. Nobody there.

Then, around 4:30 p.m., the water came on again. Hallelujah! We're just about back to normal!

We went outside for a cautious look-see. The area around the elevators was soaked — and we're fourteen stories above the ground. Debris littered the courtyard. Sand covered the parking area. Our swimming pool was choked with tree limbs and debris, the deck around it ankle-deep in water. Several of the buildings on either side of us had suffered obvious damage: roofing torn up, storm shutters ripped loose. Trees were down everywhere.

The wind was still blowing pretty sharply and I worried about flying debris, so we went back inside. Friends phoned and asked if they could come for dinner; their electricity was still out. We invited them over, and we had an impromptu celebratory dinner.

There was a curfew in effect to 6 a.m., but our friends said they saw no signs of it. They weren't bothered as they drove to our building. There was plenty of debris on the streets, though, and they had to take a circuitous route to reach us.

Our daughter phoned to tell us that they were OK. That was the dessert for our dinner. We went to bed feeling relieved that we had weathered Wilma pretty well.

But the next morning there was no running water. We had dumped most of the jugs we'd prepared. Worse yet, I had left the dinner dishes in the sink, and now we had no water to wash them. The city's mains had suffered considerable damage from the impact of fallen trees, apparently. And the city was under a state of emergency; driving on the streets was difficult.

Wilma's aftermath is even worse than the storm itself. Certainly it's lasting longer. We have electricity, and maybe we'll have water again soon. But when?

It certainly makes you appreciate things that you'd taken blithely for granted. Running water. Electric power. Even the TV news shows, with their endless repetitions.

In a sense, we were over-warned for Wilma. Like the boy who cried wolf, our city, county and state officials gave out dire predictions for so many days on end that I, for one, felt as if they were not paying attention to the storm's actual progress. We didn't need a mandatory evacuation on Friday, nor a curfew. The storm was hammering Mexico then.

But I shouldn't complain. Though there was considerable damage, there was no loss of life that I'm aware of.

The lesson I draw from all this is that if you're going to evacuate, go early. Go while there are still hotel rooms available. Go while the roads are still clear enough so that you can reach friends or family who are safely out of the threatened zone.

But if you stay, don't empty your water jugs too soon.

Naples resident Ben Bova is the author of more than 100 books, including his latest novel, "Mercury." Dr. Bova's Web site address is www.benbova.net.