Mother Nature WTF???

[OakLeaf]

Wooohooo! Electric and internet both came back last night, way earlier than predicted. If I'd known all we had to do was buy a generator, I'd have been looking harder. There are still something like 350,000 AEP customers down in Ohio, don't know what the total is for all companies.

Oddly enough, even though we have DSL, still no phone. This happened once before and the phone company explained that the DSL is switched from a different station from the voice service.

Kudos again to our awesome co-op, and to all the line workers from around the country who've been working so hard to get everyone back on line. And thanks to our friends in town who let us swipe water and take a couple of showers.

[Koronin]

Glad you've got your power back.

[ny biker]

A couple of storm tidbits from the DC region --

We've had problems with 911 service in the close-in suburbs in Virginia (Arlington, Fairfax County, Alexandria). This was the most disturbing of all the news I've been reading since the derecho hit. When you see an alert from your local government advising you to call the non-emergency number or go to the nearest fire station in an emergency, it's pretty scary.

On a lighter note, I spoke to a friend yesterday who lives in DC, and he said they did not lose power at his house. In fact they never lose electricity at his house, because they're on the same grid as the White House. I lived around the corner from him for a couple of years back when I first moved to this area, and I don't think I ever lost electricity while I was there, but it never occurred to me why that might be the case.

[Blueberry]

On a lighter note, I spoke to a friend yesterday who lives in DC, and he said they did not lose power at his house. In fact they never lose electricity at his house, because they're on the same grid as the White House. I lived around the corner from him for a couple of years back when I first moved to this area, and I don't think I ever lost electricity while I was there, but it never occurred to me why that might be the case.

Snort. That's too funny!!

The other stuff is just plain scary. DC seems to have had significant natural "issues" too frequently lately.

[ny biker]

This has some good tips on maximizing your ability to communicate during power outages...

http://blog.ce.org/index.php/2012/07...after-a-storm/

BTW, we had some thunderstorms tonight, not severe but with some wind and lightning, and about 11,000 lost power afterwards. At least some of them had only just gotten the electricity back...

[Dogmama]

On a lighter note, I spoke to a friend yesterday who lives in DC, and he said they did not lose power at his house. In fact they never lose electricity at his house, because they're on the same grid as the White House. I lived around the corner from him for a couple of years back when I first moved to this area, and I don't think I ever lost electricity while I was there, but it never occurred to me why that might be the case.

Interesting!

Have a childhood friend in the affected area who has been without power for several days. Luckily, her neighbor has power. Weird. Around here, when a storm wipes something out, we ALL get hit.

[ny biker]

I was renting a condo on the other side of my neighborhood back when hurricane Isabel hit. I lost power for 4 days while the people across the street never had a problem. For the recent storm, that part of the neighborhood had their power restored Tuesday morning, vs. Saturday night for the area where I live now. Our power lines are all underground, so the cause of an outage is always a few miles away at least.


I was just out for a ride this morning, and I saw a fair number of utility trucks along the way. I think everyone I saw was from a different state, but they're here on the holiday trying to get everyone back online.

[OakLeaf]

We went into the "big city" for the fireworks last night and there were probably 50 utility trucks eastbound on I-70 in the 45 minutes it took us to get there. The cavalry is continuing to arrive. Our phone is back on, not that we use the landline much.

We're extra lucky. There are lines down about 1/2 mile down the road from us, and everybody below there is still dark. They attached a guy rope to keep one pole from leaning any further into the road/falling over before they can replace it, but repairs are probably still days away. We did see one of the transmission towers with a broken connector and a wire dangling, just north of I-70.

Actually, yesterday morning when I headed out for my run, my neighbor who shares my lane was out in her yard. They also had bought a generator the night before and ran it all night, and didn't even know their electric was back on until I told her!

[ny biker]

Why it takes so long to fix a power outage...

http://gizmodo.com/5922841/why-it-ta...a-power-outage

There's a small fire station around the corner from me. I wonder if I benefit from that?