Divemedic

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.

I served in the Navy for six years, an enlistment that began during the Reagan administration under Secretaries Lehman and Weinberger, and ended with the election of President Clinton. I served aboard an East Coast aircraft carrier for the majority of those six years.

Every time we deployed overseas, we carried nuclear weapons with us. Dozens of them, as did the majority of US Navy ships. At the peak if US Naval power, the Navy had over 5,700 nuclear warheads afloat at any particular moment. That number represents more warheads than the entire US stockpile today.

During the Bush administration, President George HW Bush issued the Presidential Nuclear Inititatives, or PNI. With that initiative, the US unilaterally disarmed its Navy. In 1992, the US surface Navy lost not only the ability to use nuclear weapons, it lost the capability to do it, as the ‘W division’ that was onboard the ships and trained to handle them was disbanded. Additionally, he withdrew all nuclear weapons from many overseas locations, including the removal of 100 nuclear warheads from South Korea. An extension of this initiative was an international agreement that prohibited North and South Korea from producing nuclear weapons.

I still think that it was a bad idea. Bush signed the PNI because he was hoping that the Russians would reduce their own nuclear stockpile, and North Koreans would abandon their own nuclear program. We all know that has not happened.

Even though the Russians have fewer warheads than they once did, we now see that North Korea has gone on to develop their own weapons, and now we have to face the fact that there is an unstable dictator in possession of nuclear weapons, with at least enough range to reach all of the US to the west of Colorado.

We learned nothing from Neville Chamberlain

Look this video, a discussion between some college aged American socialists and a man who actually lived under their proposed system in the USSR:

Some things I noticed in their attitude:

1 They don’t want to reason or discuss anything with him. They just want to argue.
2 What happened in the USSR wasn’t “True” socialism, except under Stalin. No matter that communism has failed every time it has been tried- THAT is just because they didn’t do it “right” and that is because they weren’t as smart as us.
3 Anyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi/fascist/ racist and will be properly disposed of by being thrown in a “labor camp” once they are in charge, if they live that long.

This is what we are up against. They are willing to kill and use force to achieve their goal. There is no reasoning with them. How do you stop them from wanting to load you into the boxcars? There is, I am afraid, only one way: you must use violence to stop them BEFORE they gain power.

Things are going to get ugly, one way or the other.