State of Emergency

[iDuc]

My town, Dayton, Ohio, just declared a state of emergency. The remnants of hurricane Ike came through yesterday with 70 mph winds and knocked out power to 200,000 people and blew down some trees and roof shingles. But we'll be back up and running in a day or two. Spare a thought for those people in Texas who suffered serious damage and are looking forward to maybe weeks with no power. Any DMF'ers down there?

[Slag]

Wow! My wife just left Texas for Dayton. What are the chances of that?  Hope all gets fixed there quickly.

[Monsterlover]

My friend in Columbus told me yesterday that they're expecting to be in the dark for a couple weeks 

[Slag]

Well, her hotel has power but the meeting location does not. Looks like she is stuck at the hotel for a week.

[cyrus buelton]

I live in Dublin (northwest suburb) of Columbus.

A state of emergency for a power outage?


Talk about a state and residents that aren't prepared for a hiccup.

[TiNi]

drove through there yesterday, i did notice a ton of debris and downed trees.
hope you all are ok...

[wbeck257]

Numbers for power outages are deceiving when it comes to work needed to be done.

200,000 could be 15 events. That is a long night.
200,000 could be 1,000's of events. That is a long month.

The last number I saw was something over 2,000,000+ people out in 7 states because of Ike.

We sent 700 guys to Texas -- traffic is making it hard to get there.
Once crews get there it'll start dropping down pretty quickly.

[Speedomax]

I rode through there yesterday as well on my way back to Pittsburgh from indy. Lots of trees down and hard to find a place to eat.  I went to work today to find out we have no power, extra day to recover from indy.

[superjohn]

When I was coming home from Indy last night I passed about 50 Duke Power trucks heading up that way from NC. Hopefully they're starting to get things back in order.

[iDuc]

My friend in Columbus told me yesterday that they're expecting to be in the dark for a couple weeks 

After watching the Buckeyes play Saturday, I'd say they're more in the dark than they know!   (Just kidding- I'm a Buckeye fan).

Things are a lot better today, but still lots of lines down. Cyrus is right about preparation- many different levels of preparedness. I keep a generator with gas, extra propane tank, Coleman stove, non-perishable food, etc  ready no matter what the weather. But some people seem totally unprepared. On the other hand, my power's out but three blocks away the megastore is open. I think some people like to panic sometimes.

[NeufUnSix]

Funny, we used to get those kinds of winds (60 mph +) in the Maritimes without much trouble. A few power outages, sure, but never anything like a state of emergency.

Then again, Toronto declared a SOE and called in the military when they got a little bit of snow...

[il d00d]

I'd like to give a big FU to hurricane Ike for the kick in the groin.  Day six without power.  Looks like at least three more days of camping in my house.  I am in good company - still 1.3 million without power.  Sigh...

But, a little perspective - a house a few down from mine was pancaked by a tree.  I have a messy lawn, and some minor tree damage.  I hope all the rest of the Houstonians and Galvestonians are doing OK - please PM me if I can help with ice, groceries, a good place to get gas, or if you want someone to commiserate with...

[MendoDave]

Not to make Light those in Texas pretty bad storm and all. But I just have to laugh when folks go with out Power for a couple of days. We usually end up with out Power for at least a few days every winter around here. It's just to be expected. It's really No big deal. The worst part is if you have no water, but last year I rigged the Pump house to run on the Generator. So this year we will have water.
Our house was out for 6 days last year. Some other folks were out longer than that.

The only Place Ive seen where it is truly a crisis if the Power goes out is NYC. It basically shuts the city down. All those Highrises. No ventilation, elevators, subway, etc. S.F. would have a hard time too...

[il d00d]

Not to make Light those in Texas pretty bad storm and all. But I just have to laugh when folks go with out Power for a couple of days. We usually end up with out Power for at least a few days every winter around here. It's just to be expected. It's really No big deal. The worst part is if you have no water, but last year I rigged the Pump house to run on the Generator. So this year we will have water.
Our house was out for 6 days last year. Some other folks were out longer than that.

The only Place Ive seen where it is truly a crisis if the Power goes out is NYC. It basically shuts the city down. All those Highrises. No ventilation, elevators, subway, etc. S.F. would have a hard time too...

I think you were making a general statement about people losing power. 

However:

To put things in perspective a little bit.  We did go without water for a few days, since the municipal pump lost power.  Six days after the storm we are still under a boil water advisory for all of the Houston and surrounding areas.  That's 4+ million people.
We are working on a couple X 3 days without power, which becomes an exponentially bigger deal.  There is no amount of ice you can stock to keep your food cold for six days.  If the supply of ice trickles in, as it did for the first four days or so, you are pretty much reliant on FEMA (don't get me started) or your local stores being open. If we had a mound of snow to use for refrigeration, we'd be in better shape.
With no residential or commercial electricity, the problems become circular.  What was scariest was the shortage of gas, also due to the outage (no juice to pump the gas).  Before more generators were shipped in to power the gas stations, we were making calculations on having enough gas to leave the city before crazy, hungry people started doing stupid things.  I think this problem also  grows geometrically with population.

And yes, depending on your area or proximity to a large urban area or climate or infrastructure reliability , you should be prepared for an outage and to generally do for yourself.  But the last hurricane of this magnitude hit Houston about 25 years ago.  I am not trying to be histrionic here, but going without power, when you expect it to happen, and when the outage is not complicated by a natural disaster is an entirely different thing.

[MendoDave]

Yes I was not speaking of this paticular incident in Texas. I was speaking of the general whiners out there that cant use the toaster or the coffee pot, so their whole world comes apart.