Divemedic

During the power outage, I began following my local utility’s page, because the page is giving updates throughout the day, informing customers when power in their area will be restored.

One customer went to the page, and rated them one star. In the comments, he began saying that the power workers here were stupid and lazy, and if this storm had happened in New York, power would already been restored. I pointed out to him that when Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, it was of Cat 1 strength, with winds of only 80 miles per hour and a storm surge of 4 feet.

Northerners in general, and New Yorkers in particular, have this condescending attitude that everything “up north” or “up in New York” is sooo much better than here, and that is largely attributed to the opinion most of them share that the people in the south are stupid, fat, lazy, uneducated hick rednecks who spend their days humping their cousins and lynching blacks.

Even my wife and her family, being from New York, agree that the loud mouth New Yorkers are wrong. To illustrate:

Compare the strength of Sandy to Irma.
Irma hit Florida with 142 mile per hour winds. Twice as many people lost power here as did in New York during Sandy.

By the time Irma got to this area it had been over land for almost 14 hours. We had sustained winds of 85 mph, and gusts to over 100 mph. That makes Irene in my area comparable in strength to Sandy in New York. The difference? We didn’t demand that they call Irene a “Superstorm” and didn’t freak out. Except for problems with fuel delivery, most restaurants and stores were open by Tuesday, as long as they had power.

Part of my neighborhood flooded. The only way a vehicle could get in or out was 2 feet underwater. We were on our own, and our flooding was far from the worst.

When winds finally died down to below 35 miles per hour, the utility crews were able to safely work. They reported that 65% of utility customers were in the dark. Within 24 hours, that was down to 50%. (They restore shelters, hospitals, fire stations, and other essential service areas first.) They then concentrate on repairs that will bring on the most customers the fastest. By 48 hours, only 45% were in the dark. Another 12 hours, and only 25% are still without power. They are now down to repairing outages affecting individual streets. They plan on having all customers restored by Midnight on Sunday the 17th, six days after the storm hit. Less than a week.

Compare that with Sandy:
 Sandy leaves millions without power for days or even weeks


Cleveland residents, who had almost no winds, complain that power was out from Sandy for days.

Even Manhattan, where sustained winds were less than 50 mph from Sandy, was without power for four days. The other boroughs, a week or more.

Millions without power in the outer boroughs for over a week.

So don’t lecture me about how New York is better. I have lived through more hurricanes than I care to remember. I was a professional responder to nearly a dozen of them. If you don’t like the way we handle them or the way we do things here, go back where you came from. We won’t miss you.

If you like it here, listen to the people who live here you might learn our way is just as good, or even better. You might decide that you want to become one of us. We would love to have you. Heck, I married a New Yorker. I hold no grudges.

Remember: you joined us, we didn’t join you.

The electricity came back on at 4:30 this morning. The Hurricane Irma event now appears to be over, at least at my house. Wife goes back to work today. I go back Monday.

Here are the stats:
13.5 inches of rain
103 mph maximum wind gust
93 hours without electrical power

I didn’t even have to dig into emergency food supplies.

Stored supplies used:
39 gallons of fuel (I only had 6 left)
2 cases bottled water
1 chem light (for light during the worst of the storm while we were taking cover in the safe room)
1/4 tank of propane

Damaged:
We lost a tree, with another small tree needing to be staked up.
The cable from the house to the satellite dish will need to be replaced.
The UPS powering the satellite system is dead and will need to be replaced.

One of the things I learned from past storms was that during the storm and the days immediately after the storm, it is easy to get cabin fever. You can’t sit there and watch the news without driving yourself crazy. So we did during the pre-event checklist was record lots of programming for entertainment. While the gennie was on to refrigerate food, we watched movies and TV shows, and our Internet was up. At night, while the power was off (I didn’t want to be the only house on the street that was lit up at night- that makes you a conspicuous target) I read books on the Kindle. She entertained herself with her Kindle Fire.

Next time, I will have more fuel for the generator. I also want to get some better window covers. Other than that, things went well for my preps.

I just found out that, although my family weathered the storm, not all were so lucky. A firefighter that I worked with for several years passed away during the storm. Details just now are sketchy, but from the few facts I was able to gather, it appears that he was at home during the peak of Hurricane Irene and had some sort of medical emergency. When he was finally able to get to the Emergency Room several hours later, he was scheduled for emergency surgery, but by the time weather and road conditions allowed an on call surgeon to arrive, it was too late.

When he showed up for his first day at work at the age of 22, I remember that he was wearing a backpack. He is what you would call a very big man at 6’4″ and 300 pounds. Someone asked him if he had brought a change of clothes, as firefighters are known to do. He replied that t wasn’t clothes, but his lunch. His nickname was born. We called him lunchbox.

He just turned 35 years old, and leaves behind a wife and a 3 year old son. As you can imagine, his family is devastated.

As I said before, I have a pretty comprehensive disaster plan, honed and adjusted after riding out or responding to more than a dozen disasters (10 hurricanes, 1 tornado outbreak, and the widespread brush fires of 1999)

It is organized into several sections, or phases:

Preparation (this is the normal, ongoing preps I am always taking)
Evacuation or pre-event
Shelter
Subsistence
Recovery

Pre-event was through Sunday.
Shelter was carried out from Sunday morning through Monday at first light.
Subsistence began yesterday at first light, and will continue until electrical power returns. This is the most tedious part of the storm process. The last time I had to do this was Hurricane Charley in 2004, and I was without power for 12 days.

I shut off the generator just after dark. We did a patrol of the area, and there are quite a few neighbors sitting in chairs on their driveways, enjoying the cool, post-hurricane weather. Eight other homes are continuing to operate generators at night, and two are living in RVs parked in their driveways. I have the only operating generator on my street of 14 houses.

This morning, I got up at 6 am (the eastern sky begins to lighten at about 6:45), refueled the generator, started it up and checked the freezer temp, which was up to 24 degrees. I fired up the propane stove and made breakfast burritos.

I took a quick ride to the closest three gas stations, but no luck on fuel. I have enough for two more days of running the generator at my current rate of consumption. After that, I will have to steal fuel from our second vehicle.

I am hoping to convince the wife to add a whole house gennie that runs on propane so I can install a 250 gallon tank, and maybe this storm will do the trick.

The power went out at about 11:35 last night. The UPS that supports my Internet connection and security cameras died 45 minutes later. I patrolled the house by flashlight and chem light until dawn, then I went outside for a first light check. No damage to the house, but I did lose a tree. I managed to get in a pair of one hour naps. Some idiot caused a bit of excitement at 3 am, just when the winds were gusting to 100 mph, walking up my driveway with a flashlight. He left while I was deciding what to do about it.

Once the winds died down, we set up the generator, and we are currently on generator power. Word is, it will take up to two weeks for power to return. I plan on running the generator only to keep the refrigerator cold enough to protect my cold food. Doing that, I have fuel on hand for three days. After that, I will either need to find fuel, or rob it from my second vehicle.

For now, we are doing pretty well as far as damage and supplies are concerned.

Communications are normal. Phone is up, cell phones are up, Internet is up, and satellite TV is up using a backup cable from the house to the dish. The regular cable will need to be replaced.

Security: We are both armed, and the generator is chained to the car.

So all is well, and we are waiting for the power to return.

We just began getting winds over 40 miles per hour. Monitoring the HAM and CB radio bands, as well as friends checking in, reports of looting all over the state, and the local area. Some are on social media, some by text, and some from the radio. Links are not available for all reports.

Fort Lauderdale:

Looters ransack a sporting goods store. It is caught on video by a news crew. 9 are arrested.

Miami:


Three different foot lockers are ransacked.

Orlando:

Looters enter a sporting goods store and begin stealing guns. A standoff ensues, the SWAT team is called, and reports I got are that the cops arrived with armored vehicles and then called for National Guard assistance.

Local to me:

Armed looters are posing as power company employees, and attempting to enter homes.

I have armed myself, and my security cameras are recording nonstop. So far, we have received 6 inches of rain, winds are sustained at 35 miles per hour, gusting to 47.

TV is out, power has gone out twice, but come back on within a couple of minutes.

We have about 18 more hours of this.

Less than 2 hours after it began raining, we have received an inch and a half of rain. Then we lost our satellite TV. Not the signal though, as you might suspect. No, our receiver is claiming that it cannot communicate with the dish. That would seem to indicate a problem with the cable that runs between the house and the dish.

So no TV- but that is OK, we have Internet, power, and telephone. No real wind yet, just incessant light rain.

I have a disaster plan. Since I don’t want to miss anything, I have checklists. The last steps on my checklist are scheduled to be completed 12 hours before the event and include:
1 Shut down the NAS that I am using as the household file server, take out the mirrored hard drives, and place one in the gun safe, the other in the BOV.
2 Place BOB in BOV.
3 Ensure safe room has flashlights, chem lights, and other items.
4 Take pictures of the inside and outside of the house, to use as “before” pictures, in the event an insurance claim needs to be made.
5 Check radio transmitters to ensure that emergency communications are operating.

I am as ready as I can be. The first rains that are a part of Irma hit me this afternoon. We got an inch of rain this afternoon. Winds have been relatively low so far, with the maximum so far being a gust to 25 mph. Tropical storm force winds are supposed to begin around 9 tomorrow morning. Right now, the NWS is saying we will see max winds of 90+ with gusts to 100+.

I will post periodically, as long as we have power and internet.

Not many Floridians know this, but when the Governor declared a state of emergency on September 4th in advance of Hurricane Irma’s arrival, it immediately became a crime to sell your own property unless you have a business license. The law is 501.160, which reads (in part):

(9) Upon a declaration of a state of emergency by the Governor, in order to protect the health, safety, and welfare of residents, any person who offers goods and services for sale to the public during the duration of the emergency and who does not possess a business tax receipt under s.205.032 or s. 205.042 commits a misdemeanor of the second degree

If you are selling that property at a price that “grossly exceeds the average price at which the same or similar commodity was readily obtainable in the trade area during the 30 days immediately prior” to the emergency, you are guilty of price gouging. Even if you were offering the commodity for that price for the last two years, if your price is higher than your competitor, you have broken the law.

So instead, people are buying and hoarding the goods. This is an important lesson. In a real emergency, the next law to be passed will be one that allows the confiscation of hoarded goods. THAT is the most impactful part of the declaration in the Virgin Islands, IMO. People were up in arms about “gun confiscation” while missing that the declaration allows the government to take whatever they want.

The Adjutant General is authorized and directed to seize arms, ammunition, explosives, incendiary material and any other property that may be required by the military forces for the performance of this emergency mission (emphasis added)

Keep your prepping a secret, lest your neighbors vote to appropriate them for public (their) use.

Last week, I posted that Jon Stossel was explaining how price increases, called ‘gouging’ by people who don’t understand the law of Supply and Demand, are a part of economics, and a good thing. If you read the comments, he was called greedy, and pretty much any other insulting name you can think of. Then public outcry and complaints silenced him when Fox pulled the article.

Then Irma approached Florida, where authorities reminded residents that  increasing prices during an emergency is illegal, provided a “price gouging” hotline where people can turn in merchants for raising prices, and proved him right.

There is no fuel to be had within 30 miles of my house, according to the fuel app, Gas Buddy. It’s so bad the people fleeing the Hurricane are running out of gas while being stuck in the traffic of the mad dash away from its path. Whenever fuel does get delivered to a station, there is immediately a long line of people, who buy it all within an hour or two in a panic buying frenzy. I saw a man yesterday pull in and buy almost 400 gallons of gasoline. (He had a fuel tank on the back of his flatbed pickup, and was pulling a trailer with a fuel tank on it. Likely a farmer)

If price gouging laws were not in effect, gasoline would likely be around ten or more dollars a gallon right now. That’s a good thing. Why? Because it would be VERY expensive to buy more fuel, which would cut down on people buying unneeded fuel for hoarding. More fuel would then be available for those who need it. Sure, Florida can claim that they stopped hoarding, but now there is no fuel for anyone at any price.

The same thing is happening with bottled water, plywood, batteries, food and other supplies. There is no bottled water to be had anywhere. People began offering water for sale on Amazon at $100 a case. Complaints rolled into the hotline, and Amazon pulled the listing. Now there isn’t any water there, either. You showed them! They won’t make money off of our disaster! Of course, people who have water now don’t have an incentive to sell to those with a higher need, and now there is no water available at all, but at least the marked prices are reasonable…

EDIT: I just checked, and if you order water on Amazon at the regular price now, it will arrive at your door on September 21. At least the $100 water was for next day delivery.