Monday, August 29, 2011.
This certainly has been one of the most interesting weeks of my life. First, I had a booster vaccination ( TDAP) and I am possibly still having a reaction to it. Then I am put on an antibiotic for a sinus infection. Next an earthquake hits most of the east coast. While it was centered in Virginia and a 5.8 on the Richter scale, the earth shook as east as Maine, as far north as Ontario, and as far west as Indiana. People in California were laughing at us. They were thinking “we’ve had much worse.” Ya think? 5.8 is pretty bad no matter where you live, but here on the right coast we aren’t used to earthquakes.I was jolted out of bed for that one.
Then, from North Carolina down east to Maine and as far north as Toronto we all got pounded by a 500 mile wide category 1 hurricane (later downgraded to a tropical storm, but that really didn’t matter. It was 500 miles wide. So the effects were that of a hurricane) named Irene. People in Florida said “Category 1 is nothing. I lived through Andrew.” That angered me. Andrew was a category 5. Irene was a Category 1. Obviously, Andrew was way worse. However, that doesn’t take away the fact that there has been wide spread damages, injuries and , sadly, deaths due to this storm.
I am typing this article while on the South Shore of Long Island visiting my family because out where I am we have no lights and no home phone. I needed to charge my computer as well as my cell phone. Also, mom and I wanted to get into the light a bit.
My family was evacuated Saturday morning. They all went to different friends’ houses for the night. The canal overflowed its walls and many people on the other side of it were completely inundated. In the morning there were cars being towed by flatbed trucks because the engines had been flooded the night before. By Sunday evening my family was back in their home, and thankfully there were no major damages to the house or property. Basically, there are only downed branches; though there was a flood, but no damage to property on her side of the canal.
As for mom and I, well that’s a whole other beast. Through the emergency broadcast system on the television, at a quarter to four in the morning,it was being broadcast that there was a tornado warning. This was the first of three warnings. So I woke my mother and pried her out of bed. I made her go downstairs with me. When one tornado warning ended, another started. Then around 4:30 am the lights and the phone went out. Normally when the lights go out, we still have one land line. Well, the phone decided to ring just as it went out. That’s how we knew that we didn’t have a line. Alas, we were plunged into darkness and an eerie silence until I turned on the radio. I have an old walkman that has a small white speaker, and it actually works! I tuned into one of the news stations. The second tornado warning expired and mom decided to go to sleep. I went into my room and texted just about everyone in my phonebook. Most people that I know never lost electricity.
So after the storm was over, it was still very windy. The weatherman on the radio said that the gusts were now only 20-30mph with 50mph gusts. I don’t know where they got that information from. Perhaps that was in the city, but the farther up in a building one was , the gusts were much stronger. Anyway, I am convinced we had sustained winds of 50-60 mph. That did not stop my neighbors and I from walking around the neighborhood. For part of the evening, we were semi-trapped. By semi-trapped I mean, no one was trapped in our houses, but if we wanted to go anywhere we couldn’t. Why? Because three trees at three different locations were blocking the way. With that said, cutting crews were there rather quickly and chopped up trees that had fallen and moved the debris to the side of the road. Well, all but one tree on a major throroughfare through town. However, we were able to go around the tree and wires by navigating around the Fairway parking lot and coming out the other end.
There was a huge tree at one man’s house that fell over into the street, taking the power lines down with it. Originally it was in the middle of the road, but they weren’t able to chop it up. So very carefully they moved it to the side, on his lawn. It was completely tangled in the overhead lines. Had the lines hit his house, there would’ve been a fire. He’s a very lucky man!
Since mom and I did not have power Sunday, we did not have a means of heating food, and didn’t really have many non-perishables. We went out to dinner. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. We went to our favorite Italian restaurant. It was crowded from the front to the back, but we got a table. The waitress took our order after an hour. Then it took 45 minutes for them to get our order. We didn’t get home until 8pm. It wouldn’t have been so bad but the place was quite noisy, and the people behind us were rude and yelling across the table, and bossing the waitresses around like they owned the place. Yesterday we went to a diner who was in full service but price gouging, only serving us a small amount of what we actually ordered, which surprised us because this diner isn’t usually a place where this sort of thing happened.
When we got home, we turned on my radio and listened to the Yankee game while sitting on the porch and looking at the erieness of airplanes coming up over the trees, how they looked like UFOS. Some of the planes had flashing lights. It was so dark that each flash looked like the flash from a camera. Then, before bed mom and I played cards in her room, where with battery powered LED lights, was brighter than anywhere on the block…
except for my neighbor who had a generator. He is the only one on the block who doesn’t have to empty out his entire refrigerator and probably has enough electricity to at least run a fan, while the rest of us sweat and wake up stinky. I am not complaining, but I woke up smelling worse than a capybara rolling in his own feces. Thank G-d we had hot water and I took a ncie long shower.
On the way home from my aunt’s house we noticed LIPA trucks in Baldwin, Lynbrook,etc. However there were none in my town. There weren’t any crews yesterday to even take away that huge tree on the main thoroughfare. A neighbor said she saw so many lights being added around the perimeter of the tree that she thought they were decorating it for Christmas.
August 30, 2011
Today we went to my aunt’s house to cool off. Our house may have gotten new vinyl siding a week or so ago, but it is still an oven. I woke up dripping in sweat this morning…
On the way there we saw one LIPA truck. Well, as I left for Starbucks tonight to meet my friend whom I haven’t seen since January, the tree was that was blocking the main way there was gone, but the lines were still down. At least they got to that. I also saw Verizon and LIPA trucks coming in our direction. For once, it could be possible that we aren’t the last ones to be serviced. If you remember, back in March my house was one of four houses who lost power, and we weren’t serviced for a week because no one believed us. They would come and look at the wrong light post at first before getting it right. It was interesting. I wrote an article about it.
So now I am at Starbucks, praying that I return to electricity. I do not need the phone as I have a cell. I do not need cable. I need the air conditioner, and I would like to be able to work on my crafts and get online without having to go to Starbucks. Lofty thoughts. First they have to get new poles because the old ones snapped, and have to get the fallen lines off the ground.
Tonight, when I get home, we will be listening to the Yankees game, and then because I keep charging my laptop at my aunts or at Starbucks, we might watch a DVD.
All in all we really lucked out. Things could’ve been much worse. In Vermont, people are stranded. Vermont is a small state, but because it is so small it has the most damage. Rivers have overflowed their banks. Houses flowed down stream. Covered bridges that I remember from my childhood visits are now gone. New Jerseyans have been evacuated left and right the last few days as there has been overflowing rivers and canals. To me the worse devastation was in the Catskills, which is upstate from me. People are stranded in their homes because rivers rose. You’d think in the mountains that there would be minimal damage, but remember the northwest side of the storm produces the most violent part of the storm, and the northwest side of Irene went right over the Catskills. Two towns were washed off the map; washed off, as in they do not exist anymore!
This next part isn’t irony, it’s happening–as we clean up from this storm, there is another storm-Tropical Storm Katya–forming in the Atlantic, but as of now it’s not expected to hit the United States, and thus we are praying that it fizzles out.