Wealthy Florida Residents Without Power Forced To Use Emergency Hand-Crank Margarita Machines

NAPLES, FL—With state power outages topping 2.6 million in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, sources reported Thursday that wealthy Florida residents without electricity were forced to rely on their emergency hand-crank margarita machines. “Thank goodness our estate manager had the foresight to pack an emergency hurricane bag, or I don’t know what we’d be using use to make frozen cocktails,” Peter McDowell, 57, said as he hurried to transfer ice cubes from the nonfunctioning freezers in his main, guest, and pool houses into the manually powered drink maker. “It’s scary, it’s difficult—but if everyone in the family takes turns cranking, we should be able to maintain a solid buzz. At any given time, we have a three-month supply of tequila, triple sec, salt, and limes on hand. However, if FEMA doesn’t arrive soon with bags of fresh ice, we may have to resort to just doing shots. For the sake of my children, I hope it doesn’t come to that.” At press time, McDowell’s family had reportedly found neighbors with access to a generator and were able to get the karaoke machine back up and running.