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In The Path Of Sandy?


Steph

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There's a strange feeling on the Maryland shores right now.

It's kind of like there's nowhere to run.

Go North and things might wind up worse than here.

East would require a boat and just be silly.

South is just tempting fate quickly.

And West is colder and I really feel for people out that way. Bob

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Sitting about 100 miles north of the expected landfall. They reported on the radio a little while ago that they expect the worst flooding in Long Island Sound... ever. Luckily, we're up on a ridge at about 300 feet, so we'll be fine, but I suspect that my father-in-law's boat is going to come off the top of the pilings down at Milford Harbor. My wife's biggest concern is that we'll have trees come down on the horse fences and then we'll have to run around the neighborhood getting them back.

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Hi Lou, I thought you were near Philly- so you still may need the generator..the worse is yet to come..

having some winds in southeast Pa.- am about 20 miles west of Philly. been rainng all day

Kbobam- do you live in MD? I grew up on the Eastern Shore. neat Cambridge. water all around there.

am hoping for the best here. a couple huge oaks nearby and will be watching them

Di

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Hey Di!

Cambridge! Nice. Would have liked to have grown up there.

Got stuck with New York City.

It had its good points, but glad to be in Annapolis now.

As for this very moment, I guess I lied.

Right now I'd rather be in L.A. ( :

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Eight days without power, running water or furnace heat. We were lucky though. Only lost the contents of the fridge/freezer and the fish in the fish tanks. On the plus side, my wife and I spent a week sleeping with our kids because we hauled all the mattresses down to the lower level and slept in front of the wood burning stove.

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Eight days without power, running water or furnace heat. We were lucky though. Only lost the contents of the fridge/freezer and the fish in the fish tanks. On the plus side, my wife and I spent a week sleeping with our kids because we hauled all the mattresses down to the lower level and slept in front of the wood burning stove.

Wow! Tell us more. How did you flush the toilets ? (our 22 year old daughter who lives in Manhatten, in the zone that was "blacked out", toughed it out until she could no longer flush the toilet. She then walked to the bus station and luckily found a bus that would get her to where we could pick her up) Cook? Bathe? Laundry? See after sundown? And the kids with no TV nor computer? Cell phones work? Rechargeable? Roads passable to grocery stores and gas stations? Did many have generators? Get to meet neighbors you seldom talk to? Don't know if I could have toughed it out without utilities for 8 days - might have had to go to a shelter.

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After the first couple of days you sort of get it into a groove.

Water? We have a stream running through the south side of the property (we have 7 acres), so we carried buckets of water up from there for the first couple of days. We have 4 horses here, so the problem after Day 2 was getting water for them. The houses up in front of us have city water, so they had water pressure. As it became apparent that we would be out for a while (the town started over 90% out) we went out and bought several hundred feet of hose, moved the trough to the corner of the property closest to them and connected to one of their outside outlets. Now I have more hoses then I'll ever need (until we get another storm).

Bathing? My parents and my wife's parents live the next town over in Trumbull. My parents lost power for 7 days, my inlaws didn't get power back until after us, 10 days. My parents have a gas furnace. While the furnace couldn't circulate water to the base boards, because the circulating pump is electric, they did have hot water due to city water pressure. So we went there for showers.

Heat? We luckily have a wood burning stove in the playroom downstairs. We slept upstairs for the first two days, but the temperature in the house got down below 50 degrees inside the house both nights. So, we moved all the mattresses downstairs in front of the stove. The bigger issue was my parents, who are approaching 80. They had no heat and it got awfully cold at night there. They're stubborn and refused to leave. On Day 6 the temperature outside at night fell into the 20's. Luckily they got power back on Day 7, because we were about to forcibly move them to one of my brother's houses (they both got power back on Day 6).

After sundown? Candles, flashlights, books, legos. We ran out of sterno for cooking on the 5th day. I was finally able to restock yesterday. I would highly recommend getting some of those new LED flashlights. I had bought some over the summer and I only had to change the batteries once around Day 6. It's amazing how long the batteries last in them!

Cell phones, ipods? We recharged them in the cars. Note of warning, don't continuously recharge cell phones and ipods for more than a day without starting the car. I did it for two days straight at the beginning and had trouble getting the car started.

Passable roads? We didn't drive out until the third day. Our road was blocked by trees for the first two days. It took them 7 days to remove the tree that was cantilevered over the end of our driveway on the power lines which freaked my wife out ever time we drove under it. I've posted pictures elsewhere here.

Gasoline? Power was restored to the main street on one side of town by day 3, downtown didn't get power til day 5. I've emailed with Pete of Land of Marbles a few times. He lives down on the south side of Queens and is having a lot of trouble finding gas (even yesterday). They went to rationing last week (not sure what took Bloomberg so long).

Kids with no computer/tv? School was cancelled for a week. Our kids are limited to one hour tv and one hour ipod a day, so it wasn't too much of a hardship for them. We substituted in 2 hours ipod which we recharged in the cars. The bigger hardship for them was that we had no wifi so my two youngest couldn't connect their ipods to play Minecraft. My oldest does mostly texting and the cell towers were functioning. During the day it was light enough in the house to not have to worry about seeing.

It was an interesting experience, I'm sure my kids will remember it the way that I remember the 1964 blackout. But, this is the third time in 14 months we've lost power for an extended period of time (5 days in Storm Irene, 6 days in the Halloween storm last year and now 8 days), so I'm getting a propane powered generator installed.

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I keep the "just in case" list full.

Generator

Gasoline

Lanterns,both white gas and propane

Gas stove that doesnt require electric

Keep a nice pile of canned/dried food in the pantry.

Case or 2 drinking water.

I kind of have alternatives for alternatives at my house.Food being one of my favorite hobbies,lets see,Small grill,2 big grills,fire pit out back,gas stove,,,,,,,come to think of it,there is a solar hot dog cooker in the attic,but the dang thing dont work good at night!---LOL

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