Good afternoon.
Sorry for the lateness, but still no power,
😦
Right now I’m posting from a generator run chatroom in my brothers living room. I’m surrounded by teens, tweens, and the 3 adults.
It’s actually pretty cool.
🙂
But I want my power back now please. You forget how much of your life relies on electricity. until you don’t have it. But I’m hopeful today is my lucky day.
And you can quote me on that.
🙂
Wandering Views 
First? That never happens to me.
Glad you’re able to join us, AJ, albeit under less than ideal circumstances. Praying for power to be restored to everyone soon.
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AJ, no worries on lateness. You are in our thoughts and prayers.
How about this for a QoD, what is the worst natural disaster you have ever encounterd?
For me it was a flash flood in the Mojave desert. We were on a road trip to see relatives when the water took over 395. The thunderstorm was further north so we weren’t expecting a flash flood in all that hot sunshine. It was hubby and I in a VW Bus with four young children. Fortunately we were able to get the bus out of the mud and water. The detour through Death Valley in August was almost as harrowing as when we got hit by the torrent of water. But in 51 years if this is my best story I am truly grateful.
Adios
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Hmmmm…. Worst natural disaster I’ve ever encountered?
Bad thunderstorms? High Winds? Small earthquakes?
Nah….
Drill has ’em all beat by a mile. 😀
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Hurricane Gloria in Connecticut circa 1986ish. All the boats went to sea–where they are safer in violent weather–leaving Groton full of women and children. We went further in land to friends in Ledyard and returned to trees down, a shed which miraculous sailed over the oil tank to lodge in a tree, and no electricity for 12 hours.
But then, we lived on a trunk line beside the Navy base, so we got power up pretty quickly.
Not bad at all, obviously. The earthquakes I’ve been in were never bad where I was.
Of course I now live a mile west of the San Andreas fault . . .
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Regarding the discussion this morning on yesterday’s thread about step-parents, what Cheryl said about being a grandmother is absolutely right. When both my parents were young adults, their parents divorced, and one on each side remarried. Since my parents were already grown, and since they each still had both their parents, Mom never considered her stepmother a “mother figure”, nor did Dad consider his stepfather a “father figure”. But we always considered both their step-parents as grandparents to me and my siblings. By the time we were old enough to know the difference, they were well-established as our grandparents. In fact, my step-grandfather was the one I was closest to.
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I agree that a young man does not “need” a mother, or to be able to go “home” to his parents, but it is good to have wise people who are older and who care about you as if they were parents, who can give good advice and help in time of need.
I never had step-parents, but my mother died before I met my wife, and I value my mother-in-law as a “mother figure”.
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January 17, 1994, 4:31 am, the Northridge earthquake. We were in Woodland Hills, about 5 miles from the epicenter. It was pretty terrifying. It seemed to go on for a couple of minutes, though it was actually less than 30 seconds. Since it was dark, it was hard to interpret all the crashing and breaking sounds we heard. As it turned out, our building was undamaged, and the breaking sounds were just a few dishes and such, nothing really disastrous.
But many places we frequented were shut down for quite awhile. One apartment building “pancaked”. When you drove by it, the mostly-intact second floor was pretty close to ground level. The first floor was crushed. Freeway interchange bridges fell down. It was a mess.
The aftershocks of a large quake like that go on for months and make it hard to relax.
That quake was dubbed the “Northridge” quake by the news people before the actual epicenter was pinpointed because some of the most spectacular damange was in Northridge. The actual epicenter was in nearby Reseda, in the very neighborhood where I had grown up. My father still lived in the same house and suffered quite a bit of damage.
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Just discovered something neat you can do with Google. Plug in a latitude and longitude and it will take you right there. Google “34.213056, -118.536944” to see the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake. I grew up at the northwest corner of Blythe Street School, three blocks away.
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Worst natural disaster? That is either the drought we had this last year or the two foot snowfall during the blizzard in 2011. Take your pick.
Or, you could say it is what happened 48 years ago today. It’s the day my mother died at age 37. It was of natrual causes, and in many ways was a disaster for the family. Never want to live through that again.
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Natural disasters?
I don’t know that I’ve been in one. I was in several hurricanes in Charleston, but they weren’t disasterous. My parents evacuated before Hugo.
I went several months without rain. But that was in Arabia.
I was in snow banks higher than fifteen feet. But that was in Labrador.
I saw it snow on the Fourth of July. But that was in Greenland.
I can’t complain about the weather. But I do anyhow.
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re: long gas lines: When a hurricane comes, it’s best to leave if you can. If you can’t it makes sense to:
Be sure you have a source of heat.
An auxiliary electric source.
A full tank of gas.
I always practiced that full tank of gas bit when we lived in Virginia and snow was forecast. There was always a wait to fill up, but not so much as after the snow fell.
Also, a full gas tank gives your car better traction. (That was especially true of my ’72 Pontiac that had the gas tank over the rear axle.)
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As standard practice, I almost never let my tank get much below half full in the wintertime.
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Probably the Bay Area earthquake of ’89 and the New England blizzard of ’78, but no disaster befell my family or me in either of those. The worst that happened to us in the earthquake was that our new TV fell off it’s stand, but in our tiny apartment, there was a twin sized bed fight in front of the TV stand, so it fell face down on the bed and sustained no damage. So we didn’t even have a broken TV disaster. But it was definitely disastrous to others when a portion of the Nimitz freeway and a portion of the Bay Bridge collapsed, as well as a couple of other fatal collapses.
The blizzard happened in my senior year of high school, and since Governor Dukakis ordered the roads closed to all but emergency vehicles for about a week, school was closed for that week. In fact, I think it may have been closed for a total of 8 days, if I remember correctly Not bad to have a week (or more) off in early February in between the two weeks off for Christmas and the Winter vacation week in February! (I wonder if they ended up canceling the February vacation that year, though, actually. I don’t remember one way or the other, but it seems like they must have.)
It was a sad time for me, though, because my mother was in a coma after recently suffering a heart attack in which she was only revived after about 7 minutes. And although she gradually came out of the coma over the next 6 weeks, she had suffered severe brain damage that left her in a dementia-like state. Then she lived like that for three more years before another heart attack took her life. The reason I remember a connection between the time of the blizzard and my mother’s illness, though, was because I convinced my best friend to go with me to walk 5 miles to the hospital in the worst of the storm to make sure my mother got a visitor that day. But although the 10 mile round trip hike in deep snow and high winds was pretty grueling, it wasn’t really so noble as it sounds. I was definitely motivated by the idea of mother not receiving any visitors because of the storm, but I knew, too, that she most likely wasn’t even aware of my presence. And I was also motivated by the spirit of adventure, as was my friend who went with me. That hike was certainly a memorable experience!
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Ha ha, I just noticed that I wrote “mother not receiving visitors” instead of “my mother.” It makes it sound like a Louisa Mae Alcott novel or something.
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Ree? What are you talking about?
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Can you only see one post from me? There’s a longer one above it that I can see but which says that it’s awaiting moderation. That’s weird that I can see it and others can’t. It has a couple of links in it to Wikipedia pages about the disasters I refer to which, I assume, is why it’s awaiting moderation.
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That is weird. I looked for your post and began to wonder if you were Kevin or at least his wife, but I was fairly certain he was not from India.
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Does that mean it will not show up until the real can inspect it? Might be a while.
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Worst natural disaster: the flood in Nashville exactly two-and-a-half years ago. Thirteen inches of rain in two days. People were rescued by boat all over the city the first night, and residents were urged to stay home. Church services were cancelled at every church I knew of (I couldn’t get to church even if I had tried), and several people drowned (including one couple–not from my church–attempting to get to church). Much damage all over town, and the Opryland Hotel ended up under something like fourteen feet of water. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/tennessee-flooding-photos_n_561436.html#s88270&title=Nashville_Mall_Flooding
Others: I was in Chicago during its second-largest snowfall, which surprisingly was under two feet, but it was on top of a few inches already there and right after New Year’s (1999), so many people were out of town for the holidays and couldn’t get back home. The city was virtually shut down for a few days over the weekend and into the next week. I was also there for the hottest weather in history, which was only 104 or 105 degrees (that wasn’t extremely hot for someone who had experienced 102 degrees in two different Arizona cities and had lived through whole weeks of 110+ degrees), but I think we had three days straight of 100-plus, and I was sobered from my pure enjoyment of finally having hot weather when I found out that the death toll had reached five hundred and was still climbing. (I think there might have been 600 deaths.) So that was actually probably the most serious natural disaster I’ve met, because it had by far the greatest loss of life.
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Mumsee,
India? My husband is from India, but not me. I’m a New England native of English, Irish and Swiss ancestry. Ree is just a lifelong nickname for my real name, Ann Marie.
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Kevin, I lost my father when I was a teenager and my mom in my thirties, and really heartily appreciate that my husband’s parents are still living, and that they see me as family with no asterisk. I’ve told people that if I’d met them before I met my husband and I knew they had a widower son, I would have been interested in meeting him. The first time I met them, they hosted me for ten days and were very sweet and kind; any hesitation I might have had (is he really as nice as he seems) was set at rest by knowing that he came from a loving, solid family.
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I guess I’ll copy and repost without the links. Funny that other people’s links show up. Maybe because I did mine in HTML code only then they require moderation. Anyway, here’s the post.
Probably the Bay Area earthquake of ’89 and the New England blizzard of ’78, but no disaster befell my family or me in either of those. The worst that happened to us in the earthquake was that our new TV fell off it’s stand, but in our tiny apartment, there was a twin sized bed fight in front of the TV stand, so it fell face down on the bed and sustained no damage. So we didn’t even have a broken TV disaster. But it was definitely disastrous to others when a portion of the Nimitz freeway and a portion of the Bay Bridge collapsed, as well as a couple of other fatal collapses.
The blizzard happened in my senior year of high school, and since Governor Dukakis ordered the roads closed to all but emergency vehicles for about a week, school was closed for that week. In fact, I think it may have been closed for a total of 8 days, if I remember correctly Not bad to have a week (or more) off in early February in between the two weeks off for Christmas and the Winter vacation week in February! (I wonder if they ended up canceling the February vacation that year, though, actually. I don’t remember one way or the other, but it seems like they must have.)
It was a sad time for me, though, because my mother was in a coma after recently suffering a heart attack in which she was only revived after about 7 minutes. And although she gradually came out of the coma over the next 6 weeks, she had suffered severe brain damage that left her in a dementia-like state. Then she lived like that for three more years before another heart attack took her life. The reason I remember a connection between the time of the blizzard and my mother’s illness, though, was because I convinced my best friend to go with me to walk 5 miles to the hospital in the worst of the storm to make sure my mother got a visitor that day. But although the 10 mile round trip hike in deep snow and high winds was pretty grueling, it wasn’t really so noble as it sounds. I was definitely motivated by the idea of mother not receiving any visitors because of the storm, but I knew, too, that she most likely wasn’t even aware of my presence. And I was also motivated by the spirit of adventure, as was my friend who went with me. That hike was certainly a memorable experience!
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QoD: a flash flood.
First and Second Arrows and I had gone to a graduation party for my friend’s daughter. They lived about one and a quarter hours south of us, and heavy rain started falling while we were there. On the way back home, driving at night on rather unfamiliar roads in a rural area (our friends had recently moved), I missed a right turn just as we were getting to the city that’s about a half hour from our home.
The rain was coming down so hard, and visibility was so poor that I missed the sign for where I should have turned (a road I later heard had not been flooded).
Anyway, I proceeded to go straight onto a street that I soon found out was very flooded. We were fortunate that we did not get stuck, but we saw a few cars that were floating down the street, and many other drivers who were making U-turns to avoid flooded intersections, which is what we wound up doing several times.
It was very difficult to find a way to get out of the city so we could get back home.
Did I mention I was almost 9 months pregnant at the time? I thought to myself, after all the complaining I’ve done about always going past my due date (I was 5 for 5 at that point), wouldn’t it be just the thing if I’d go into labor now?
Fortunately, 17-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter who were with me didn’t have to deliver any babies that night. 😉
Eventually, we did find a way out of the city via less flooded streets and got home without incident. But things were a lot worse for other people we knew.
My parents, who are about 30 miles west of us, live at the top of a steep, mile-long hill. Their road washed out near the bottom that night, and their neighbors, an older couple, drove down the road early the next morning when it was still dark out (the man was taking his wife to work), and did not see the gaping hole in the road. Their car plunged into the hole, and they both died. 😦
And in yet another town in the region, my husband’s brother, who is a city worker and volunteer firefighter, saw a dam break during the heavy rainfall his area had experienced (over 17 inches in a 24-hour period). He and his fellow fire department personnel coordinated evacuations and made some very dramatic rescues, especially one involving an 85-year-old woman who was standing on a countertop with water up to her neck, having been in the water for six hours. She had not heard the call to evacuate her apartment building at 4:30 a.m. as she was hard of hearing, and someone had initially said she had been spotted at the rescue center. It wasn’t until hours later that the rescuers learned that that report had been false and she was still unaccounted for. They used chainsaws to cut a hole in the roof of her apartment building, and my BIL, who does not know how to swim, jumped down into her apartment wearing a life vest, got somewhat of a foothold on a floating desk, and got over to her. He and another firefighter who jumped in second got her into a canoe that had been lowered through the roof, and rescuers on the roof pulled her and the two men up and out to safety. The devastation of the flood on their city was massive, but no lives were lost, a truly amazing miracle of God that awes me to this day.
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Actually, I just remembered an extreme weather experience that was much scarier than either of the ones I already talked about but I have to go pick up my daughter so I guess I’ll have to save that story for when I get back.
And, Mumsee, now I get what you meant about Kevin not being from India. You remembered that it was my husband who was from India so I couldn’t be Kevin’s wife. Silly me.
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It is true that I am not from India, though I have been there once.
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Ree, I hope nobody was in that bed when the TV fell on it!
In the 1994 Northridge quake, a 6-drawer chest fell onto my side of the bed. That would probably have been pretty painful, if not harmful, but my daughter D is proud to have saved me from it.
As a toddler D could be pretty fussy at night and was going through a lot of teething discomfort at the time. It was actually Jane’s turn to get up with D if she needed attention that night, but for some reason when D started fussing I got up without thinking. I had just sat down with her in a rocking chair in the apartment’s living room when the shaking started. So I wasn’t in bed where the chest fell.
The other nice thing about that is that the we were all awake before the shaking started, and Jane was glad to know that someone was with Kayla, who even in my arms was pretty scared of the shaking and noise.
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One of the worst effects of weather occurred in Northern Virginia several years ago. There was a big snowstorm on 10 October. The problem there was that the leaves were still on the trees and we had limbs breaking and falling everywhere. Power was out several days because of the extent of the damage.
Louise may remember that.
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Ree, with World’s blog, posts entered moderation if there were more than two links in them; I’m guessing that having more than one is the issue here too.
The worst weather I myself have “experienced” would have been a heavy snow in Chicago. I think my job let us go home early since it was snowing hard, but visibility was poor, and I got on the wrong expressway. (I missed my exit and deliberately got off on the one to the other expressway; I hadn’t driven on it previously, but I knew it would take me to a place I could exit to get home, and that seemed easier than backtracking.) Well, here I am on a brand-new-to-me expressway in blinding snow. And my radio started saying how many spin-out accidents there were on the road I was on, due to ice. Yikes. That was a bit much for an Arizona-bred girl who didn’t own a cell phone yet and didn’t have a husband to come after her. So I got off on an earlier exit than I usually would and made my way on “side streets,” some of which weren’t all that well paved. (Not the best part of town.) At one point I ran a stop sign since I didn’t even see it till I saw the flash of red as I went by it, but I held my breath and prayed and didn’t hear crashing metal or sirens, so I was safely through. Traffic was actually pretty light, which was good. The near white-out conditions were scary enough without near misses.
I decided to park in my church’s parking lot (it was a block from my home, and I figured it would be easier to get out of the lot the next day than out of a parking space in front of my home on a one-way street), and by the time I got there, the 90-minute drive (which was usually 30-45) had left me a limp rag. I also had a desperately full bladder. But I was safe, and that was what was most important.
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No, Kevin, it wasn’t a bed anyone slept in, thankfully. It was just a twin bed that I’d had before I was married and it fit nicely into that spot. We just used it for extra seating in our little apartment.
So, my worst weather-related disaster was the near plane crash outside the Hong Kong airport in the middle of a typhoon. We were on our way to India with our 5-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son and we had a stopover in Hong Kong. The pilot had already tried to land, but each time he started to descend, a gust of wind would come and he’d have to quickly pull the plane back up again. Finally, he gave up and the plane was diverted to China for a few hours to wait for the gusts to die down.The Chinese officials were extremely inhospitable, though, and I think he was just a little too determined to make the landing work this time. But just as the plane descended too low to bring it up again, a huge gust of wind started up and the plane started rocking like crazy. At one point, the wing just barely missed clipping the ground before the pilot was able to straighten it up a little. Finally, after about 15 minutes of incredible turbulence and near misses, he finally managed to get the plane on the ground. Of course, the plane broke out into applause when he did, but after a few seconds, the tension started to rise again. This was back in 1993 which was prior to the time the Hong Kong airport was redone, and the runways were difficult to land on because the pilot had to touch down heading towards the water and then quickly make a sharp u turn. It became apparent, shortly after he landed, that the soaking wet runway was making it difficult to slow down enough to make the u-turn. By the grace of God, just at the last moment, he did manage to make the turn safely and to bring the plane to a stop.
Shortly after that, the pilot came on the intercom and announced that we’d be there awhile because the runway was blocked with emergency vehicles. Turns out the plane that came in right after us wasn’t able to make the turn, and it taxied right into the water! That was so close to being us! No one was hurt on the plane that went into the water, though, so that was good.
The pilot admitted after the landing that he’d been really frightened trying to land the plane, but I was just glad I didn’t know that while it was happening. I was so wrapped up in trying to keep from getting sick from the turbulence that I didn’t know what a close call we had. And my two-year-old adrenaline freak son spent the 15 minutes of bouncing up and down in the typhoon saying, “This is fun!”
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Yikes, Ree! I always hope when I hear stories like that that if I ever have a first time flying, I won’t have an experience like that. I’m not afraid to fly, but I would probably never want to get on a plane a second time if my first time was like that!
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It hardly counts as a “natural disaster,” but one time when weather seemed to make things particularly difficult was the winter I was at Word of Life Bible Institute. During the winter, they have Snow Camp every weekend, and the Bible Institute students act as the camp counselors. (It was from going to Snow Camp as a teenager that made me want to go there as a student and be one of those wonderful counselors.)
Usually they get lots and lots of snow. But the first Snow Camp of the season, right after Christmas, we had a busload of teens from Florida, who were eager for some real winter weather. We had no snow at all. Some weekends that winter there was a little snow on the ground from earlier in the week, but not enough for the kind of winter fun Snow Camp was supposed to have. At least one time, some of the male students went out on the frozen lake and shoveled up snow which they then spread on the hill used for tubing. I don’t remember anything much about those weekends, but it was hard to generate enthusiasm for a snow-less Snow Camp.
The first weekend after the end of Snow Camp season, we had a big snowstorm.
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Interesting stories. Thanks everybody.
In the fires of 07, we had evacuated people staying with us and we all took turns helping at the evac center a half a block away at the high school. No evacuated person with us lost their homes and it was kind of like a giant sleepover.
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Pauline,
A frozen lake is perfect for ice skating on. Too bad they didn’t try have skates. We used to have to shovel the snow off the lake to skate on it. Also, there was a little pond in the cemetery that was right behind the back yards on my street. When we were in elementary school, my friend and I would go out to the pond and shovel mazes in the snow on the pond and skate on them. That was some of the best fun I had as a kid!
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Strike the word “try” above because I forgot to! All my posts have random words that I neglected to delete when I reworded something as I was typing. It’s so annoying!
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I do that too, Ree. I re-word like crazy and end up leaving random words in. I try to re-read one more time before I post, but I don’t catch them all.
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Has anyone heard from Pastor Roy of late? He used to comment here all the time, but I haven’t seen him in weeks.
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Kevin, there have been a couple times I think I recall Pastor Roy posting on here in recent weeks — on the news/politics threads if I remember right –but they were short posts that ended with a quick “Done. Bye.” or something like that. Must be pretty busy.
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I have been in quite a few natural events but no disasters. Typhoons, earthquakes, blizzards, tornado warnings, nor’easters, seriously subzero temps, power outages of several days, but nothing that really affected us. Other than the fun of being able to say we were there for them. If there had been damage, we would have viewed them differently and I definitely do not take lightly what the people back east are going through.
I thought Pastor Roy made the switch in the beginning, but have not seen him for quite some time.
No word from Random on his excursion? He was not supposed to be in contact but it seems he was headed right for the event.
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Hmm, disasters. Well, we’ve had some mighty hot spells this fall.
(That’s for Ree)
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It’s Friday! You know what that means?
Not much for me today. Just Y and Lions. Other than that, nothing much. That is good.
I finally heard from Sawgunner. I’m posting his reply here, not enough to say they’re OK.
Yes Charles all are well. It is still quite a challenge up there. Gas is nowhere to be found or the lines are very long. They wont allow the dealers/station owners to raise prices so they have a small supply. Cindy’s sister Mary is married to a retired NYC Fireman. He set up a generator for my inlaws and they are coping okay.
I’ve been in Texas for the last week. Got back on 31 Oct. Arrived in Charlotte late on 30 October and spent the night there and drove to Columbia the next day.
See you on the worldmag blog.
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It is pretty standard in a storm situation that gas stations cannot charge more than the “in the ground” price. Disasters like this bring out the worst in people and they take advantage of others. I have watched with some humor that people have been without power for 2 or 3 days and are starting to get angry. Do they have no concept of what it takes to get a power grid and substations back on line? Try going without electricity for two weeks!!!
Someone posted something on FB (I don’t know if it’s true or not) about some Alabama Power workers being in New York working. The community/neighborhood offered them some water and they said “No thanks. We have water, you need to keep that for yourselves.” The snippet went on to say how kind and courteous the power workers were.
A woman who is WCR with me has a husband who is an EMT/Disaster First Responder. He is somewhere in the Northeast now helping out.
It is distressing to me how many people have died here in the US due to this storm. There were several days warning.
I hope this morning finds most all of you well. I am off to the dentist at 8 to have my teeth cleaned and catch up on the local gossip. Seems one of the hygenist was fired a few weeks ago. She is the only person who has ever cleaned BG’s teeth.
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Of course here is another side:
https://twitter.com/TheDaleJackson/status/264194900252319744
Power workers turned away because they are NON UNION???????
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Here is more:
http://www.waff.com/story/19981857/some-nonunion-ala-crews-turned-away-from-sandy-recovery
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And some people wonder why others are so anti-union. Some unions really do come across as being a racket.
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Kim: All I can say is ‘wow’.
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Most of you remember my worse Natural Disaster when my house was hit by one of the hundreds of tornadoes that hit Alabama last year. But the funny about the electricity thing. Because our house was uninhabitable we were moved to a nice apartment across town, while our neighbors had to deal with a week of no power.
We lent our generator to the elderly lady next door.
A hurricane hit the gulf when the Kid was a toddler. We were on vacation down there and had to evacuate. We arrived home to find the storms had reach all the way to Birmingham and we were out of power for a couple of days.
Once we actually had a blizzard…in Alabama. Being the deep South we were not prepared. My mother-in-law out in the country was trapped for two weeks without power with an 90 year old mother and a disabled husband. My future Husband and I had volunteered at a homeless shelter the night before and ended up trapped there for two days. Garrison Keilor was scheduled to do a show down the street from the shelter. Since most people with tickets couldn’t get to the theater, Hubby, another volunteer and I got in for free. But everyone had bought milk and bread and survived. I haven’t been in an Earthquake yet.
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Donna,
🙂
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Oh, and we were ashed in when St Helens went off.
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It’s oil change day for my Jeep — it better not need anything else this time. On the last service (which was that 60,000 mile mark) required just about everything from brakes to new fluids.
I knew it needed a lot on that one, but still, the bill left me in shock.
Countdown to election day.
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