Ramblings On Hurricane Irene

At a quarter of eight Sunday morning I became one of the over seven hundred and seventy-five thousand people without electricity. I went to put plan “A” into effect and that fizzled, I was hoping that my computer system UPS would power the scanner so that I could listen to the police, fire and electric company. So I had to go to plan “B”, I went back to bed. When I woke up later in the morning, nothing had changed… I had hoped that maybe it was just a dream.

I’m listening to the radio and they are talking about all this damage and flooding and I’m “Hun”, the wind is hardly blowing here, maybe at the most we are seeing 20 – 30mph wind gusts. Where’s the hurricane? I hear that along the shore flooding is a half mile inland and around the state there are a number of washed out bridges.

For lunch, I had instant macaroni that I cooked on my camp stove and I think for dinner that I’ll go out to eat. I think that power will be back on before long there can’t be that much damage in town. Then I went outside to check for damage around the house. There were no trees or limbs down, just a lot of leaves and twigs. I just laid on the couch all day reading. I went on the internet using the phone modem that I use up at the cottage and eventually I ran the battery down in my laptop (like I’m doing now). I drove around town looking for any hurricane damage while I was recharging my laptop on the car’s cigarette lighter. There wasn’t much damage that I could see, a few trees down, some broken limbs and the regular areas were flood in town. I then had dinner at Mickey D’s and a lot of other people had the same idea. The parking lot was filled and the drive through window had about ten cars in line. While the Burger King across the street was closed because of a large tree blocking the driveway.

When I got home I could hear a number of generators purring in the neighborhood. However, most of the homes were dark or you could see candles or oil lamps lit through their windows. I read for a while by the light of a propane camp lantern and listened to the radio. After a while that got boring so I’m going to bed at 9:30. Maybe in the morning I’ll wake and the power will be back on.

It was dark last night and it was quiet. It is a new moon and with sixty percent of the state without electricity, it was very dark. I did find out one thing, my alarm system makes weird noises in it death troughs, it beeps faintly, it squeals as the battery slowly dies.

Another surprise this morning, the phone is dead, when I went to connect to the modem, a message popped up – “No Dial Tone Detected”. At least yesterday I could read my email, surf the web and keep in touch with friends. But today I’m isolated from everyone.

I went out to breakfast this morning and afterward, I drove around town and I didn’t see very many places with downed wires. All the flooding has receded and there were a lot of cleanup crews cutting up the downed trees. On the way back home I spied a friend sitting out in his yard so I talked for a while about the hurricane. Now I’m back to reading and napping.

I went out for supper and charged my laptop again. I noticed that the phone company has generators at all of their concentrators (they take local phone lines and put them on one cable) so that is probably why my phone is working again.

My neighbor went out and got a generator and it has been running all day and into the night. It is starting to get on my nerves; it is loud, constant noise twenty feet from my deck. I was reading out on the deck and had to come in because of the noise, I closed all the windows on that side of the house.

YAHOO!!!! Power is back on at 7:40pm, a total of 35 Hours 55 Minutes without power. The internet is still down and I’m still using the dial-up modem.

Cable and internet is back at 11:15am. All systems are back to normal.

I think I will buy this, I think it will allow me to be able to listen to the scanner and radio, and also be able to use my laptop without running out to my car twice a day to recharge my laptop.