Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

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SteveHGraham
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Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2009 7:55 pm
Location: Florida

Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by SteveHGraham »

The big problem now is lack of fuel. People are hoarding. Every time a station gets gas, people pile in and fill their vehicles plus gas cans.

I still have no power. A big oak dropped on three large power lines near me

Because the power was out here, the nearest big intersection has had terrible accidents. Last night I saw a man lying on his back with a wrecked truck resting on his face. No exaggeration. Obviously, he had already died. I probably arrived within 10 minutes of the accident. People were holding each other and shaking. Today the intersection has power.
Every hard-fried egg began life sunny-side up.
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steamin10
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Location: NW Indiana. Close to Lake Michigan S. tip

Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by steamin10 »

Sadly, parking a truck on your face is not recommended. As with any changes and new situations, being defensive is not on the top of the list, and becomes part of the learning curve. Personal survival may be selfish, AKA hoarding gasoline or milk, but one is responsible for your own needs. There is all the hoopla about effective aid, but it is always inefficient, spotty, and late, leaving you in that moment of need to fend for yourself, and whoever is standing next to you. Nature, the mother, has too many children to worry about you, and is part of the natural challenge and renewal, get smart or perish, and make room for the next younger replacement.

I live in the flatlands of Indiana, and several times a year we are reminded that tornado ally is at our back door. The USA has more recorded tornado activity than any other nation in the world. A fact not advertised. Not as wide as a hurricane, when it hits your town there is no difference to its violence upon you. A very few years ago, a tree topper went through just a half mile from me, lifting the roof off of part of a shopping mall and unroofing a subdivision. All of the severely topped trees are gone now, the store in the strip has been cleared to the slab, and not rebuilt, kind of like a beauty with rotten teeth, is hideous.This spring 60+ mph South winds took 22 tabs of shingles from my tall house, causing a re roof to be done on the aging shingles. They were some 25 yrs old, but still an unwelcome event.

:Things: occur in every life, we must have the fortitude to face the winds of time and carry forward. Having said all that, I am happy to hear of your general survival and well being of some one I feel a connection to. It is raining, and my power went out with a flicker about 1 pm, The automatics reset the overload in the grid so we were out only minutes, but it reminds me, that the tail end of the storm is still around. Not to mention that my Generator is sitting outside and has not been run or serviced. I get that one on my list. Being prepared is a pain, but not being prepared is just not in my creedo. Be vigliant and careful, my distant friend, the hazards are many in stressful times.
Big Dave, former Millwright, Electrician, Environmental conditioning, and back yard Fixxit guy. Now retired, persuing boats, trains, and broken relics.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smart. My computer beat me at chess, but not kickboxing
It is not getting caught in the rain, its learning to dance in it. People saying good morning, should have to prove it.
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tornitore45
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Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by tornitore45 »

What I do not understand is that hurricane, unlike tornadoes, are tracked for weeks before hitting, therefore the time to fill the tank and a couple of can for the generator, buy water and basic survival items is before the emergency. The best thing to do after the destruction is to stay put, if you can, and minimize travel on roads made even more dangerous.
Mauro Gaetano
in Austin TX
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NP317
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Location: Northern Oregon, USA

Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by NP317 »

tornitore45 wrote:What I do not understand is that hurricane, unlike tornadoes, are tracked for weeks before hitting, therefore the time to fill the tank and a couple of can for the generator, buy water and basic survival items is before the emergency. The best thing to do after the destruction is to stay put, if you can, and minimize travel on roads made even more dangerous.
My thoughts, too.
I've already been physically planning for a snowy winter here.
Now if the forest fire 10 miles to the west will just stay there...
~RN
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warmstrong1955
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Location: Northern Nevada

Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by warmstrong1955 »

NP317 wrote:
tornitore45 wrote:What I do not understand is that hurricane, unlike tornadoes, are tracked for weeks before hitting, therefore the time to fill the tank and a couple of can for the generator, buy water and basic survival items is before the emergency. The best thing to do after the destruction is to stay put, if you can, and minimize travel on roads made even more dangerous.
My thoughts, too.
I've already been physically planning for a snowy winter here.
Now if the forest fire 10 miles to the west will just stay there...
~RN
Ditto!
Some people think preppers are crazy.....I don't get their thinking.
When we lived in Oregon, we had a fire in the gorge, close to where we lived, on Larch Mountain. Burned up the power lines coming into the area. Was a surprise to a lot of people.
It was winter....power was out for about 5 days....no problem.
We had a wood stove, and at least 5 cords of wood.
We had a couple of generators, and plenty of fuel, so no problem with running the well pump, or the furnace iof we had needed to.
Candles, kerosene lanterns, flashlights, batteries, a pile of non-parishable food if we needed it....all that stuff.

We still have all that stuff, and actually....more of it.
Back-up, and back-up for the back-up.
And now in Nevada....no tornados, and no hurricanes. The power goes out a lot, plenty of range fires, but no matter....we are prepared for whatever life brings.

:)
Bill
Today's solutions are tomorrow's problems.
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SteveHGraham
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Location: Florida

Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by SteveHGraham »

It's easy to underestimate the difficulty of planning for and coping with hurricanes if you've never been through one.

You can do a lot before the season starts. You can get a whole-house generator, impact windows, a chainsaw, and so on. Once the storm gets close, it can be very difficult to do anything. Here, people started hoarding very early. Then the government started closing roads and evacuating before people were ready. If I had wanted to go to Miami a few days before the storm, I couldn't have done it. There was no gas, and the roads were jammed. The government actually converted southbound lanes to northbound.

After the storm, fuel was still scarce. It wasn't until today that I had confidence in my ability to fill up. There was no way to find stations that had gas without driving around, and when you do that, you risk running out of fuel while you're looking for a station. The upshot is that even people who filled up before the storm (as I did) ended up short on fuel afterward.

When a storm is still a ways off, plywood and other preparation items start selling like crazy, not just in the area where the storm will actually hit, but in huge swaths of the southeast. Retailers can't cope with that. Everyone in the southeast can't be supplied with everything he needs, on short notice, and you can't expect a big percentage of the population to maintain expensive caches of things that take up room and have to be stored and maintained.

It's not like you get a message two weeks before a storm, saying where it will hit, how wide it will be, whether it will be wet or dry, and how high the winds will be. Storms wander around. Preparing for storms is expensive and time-consuming, so you can't realistically expect everyone who might be hit to take time off from work and board things up. It doesn't work that way. People evaluate the risk of being hit as well as they can, and they take certain chances based on the cost of overreacting.

You should also be aware that the instant it appears likely a storm will hit an area, everyone involved in any kind of business related to storm preparation will be booked up solid, so forget about hiring help unless you're very lucky.

One of the most annoying things about storms is the inability to react the way you want to. By the time one gets close, things start moving too fast to cope with. You end up sitting in your house, making the best of whatever level of preparation you achieved before the disaster.

I intended to get a big generator soon after I moved here, but come on. I had two weeks. There was no way that was going to happen. I definitely screwed up on buying a chainsaw. I did okay on food and so on. I got my dad a hotel room before they all snapped shut. In reality, the only thing that would have made a real difference was the generator, and there was no way to get that.

The problem with Irma was that the tropical-storm-force part of it was very wide. So many people needed to prepare at once, things went haywire.

Anyway, the big wires near my house are up now, so I am hoping to have running water tonight. I do not want to bathe in a bucket of pool water again.
Every hard-fried egg began life sunny-side up.
SteveM
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Location: Wisconsin

Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by SteveM »

I heard that one of the downsides of the "everyone has to go to college" mantra is that in Florida you have plenty of people with diplomas, but not enough people that can do carpentry, electrical, plumbing and the rest of the related construction trades.

Rebuilding is going to be long and slow without the people to do it.

Wages will have to go up top entice more people from outside Florida to come down and do the work, and then they are all going to get accused of gouging.

Steve
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GlennW
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Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by GlennW »

Steve,

Here's a hint...

https://www.centralmainediesel.com/

You might even consider a PTO driven generator now that you are a tractor guy! Kubota's aren't all that efficient, though, as far as fuel consumption.

I have a generator large enough to run the entire house and is powered by a Isuzu diesel. I just fueled it back up this morning and it ran 16 hours on 7 gals of fuel. The same generator was available with John Deere or Kubota power, but they were far less efficient.

https://www.centralmainediesel.com/orde ... erator.asp
Glenn

Operating machines is perfectly safe......until you forget how dangerous it really is!
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by SteveHGraham »

I think the decision is really gas (not gasoline) or diesel. I like diesels because they're diesels. Not really much to explain about that. But you have to make sure the fuel doesn't go bad, and you can't plumb it to a grill, stove, or anything else. If I have propane, I can't grow algae in the tank, and I can use it to barbecue and run the stove. Just my thoughts.
Every hard-fried egg began life sunny-side up.
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by SteveHGraham »

I should add that the power came on tonight. Now I can bathe. I CAN. Not sure I'm in favor of starting a burdensome new habit, though.

I turned off all the breakers in the box except for one room, and I left the overhead light on, so it would tell me when the power returned. Small mistake: I didn't realize we had two breaker panels. Nothing blew up, though.

We have two central air units, and one did not fire up after the juice returned. No idea what's up with that. I can't make it turn over. I'm not hearing any humming, so I don't think it's a capacitor. Luckily, the other unit is keeping my bedroom frosty.
Every hard-fried egg began life sunny-side up.
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steamin10
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Location: NW Indiana. Close to Lake Michigan S. tip

Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by steamin10 »

Steve, and all. I have observed the preppers, and how they seem to overdo things. But stop and think. If you are the only one with basics, you can become a target. The only light on the hill, the only warm house in the woods with the wood smoke pointing the way. It becomes a human puzzle. On the internet is a couple of Jacksonville guys under arrest for picking up an aluminum light pole, and driving off with it, apparently to scrap it. No matter what you do, human nature of the needy can shred any situation. I had a close friend that is now passed, who I spent many an hour with at his property and cabin in North Wisconsin. A call from a neighbor there told of something being amiss. He had the cabin stocked with food, and a quiet and small Honda generator, we fed from an Evinrude boat tank for 6 gallons instead of the original tiny tank. Anyway, some vagrant moved in, and of all things a bear broke the front door and destroyed the fridge and freezer biting through the metal shell. Point being, that things untended are not always available when needed.
Along that line of thinking, having a generator is a neat idea. but it is also another piece of equipment to buy, maintain, and watch age.I have not needed a generator since I bought one. I bought it at a pawn shop that was very active in construction tools. I think I paid 225 for a 8500 watt job in good shape. I ran it that day, and not since.
Since I have a compact diesel tractor, I like the ides of a pto powered unit as most outages are short, and diesel is never a problem with the truck dominated expressway nearby. As far as long term storage of diesel, a sip of gasoline in the storage tank prevents any water form growing black algea that is a filter killer. Been there done that. I have a couple of chemical drums that are 17 gallon, and really too heavy to carry for storage. So I have a small fuel pump on 12 volt for transfers. A pita to use the system, so smaller fuel cans get used first. Meaning,I have to consciously rotate my fuel stocks. The idea of being prepared is not the panacea it seems.
Big Dave, former Millwright, Electrician, Environmental conditioning, and back yard Fixxit guy. Now retired, persuing boats, trains, and broken relics.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smart. My computer beat me at chess, but not kickboxing
It is not getting caught in the rain, its learning to dance in it. People saying good morning, should have to prove it.
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GlennW
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Location: Florida

Re: Still Here, Irma Notwithstanding

Post by GlennW »

SteveHGraham wrote:We have two central air units, and one did not fire up after the juice returned. No idea what's up with that. I can't make it turn over. I'm not hearing any humming, so I don't think it's a capacitor.
See if there is a fused disconnect box on the wall near the compressor. It my have popped a fuse.
Glenn

Operating machines is perfectly safe......until you forget how dangerous it really is!
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