Posted on 07/02/2012 4:43:44 PM PDT by Kartographer
We’ve seen it time and again over the last decade. An emergency strikes and panic grips the city or region for days or weeks on end.
We saw a complete breakdown of emergency response and law & order during Hurricane Katrina. The 2011 Snowpocalypse on the east coast led to runs on grocery stores and empty shelves within a matter of hours. Widespread blackouts during Hurricane Ike left large sections of the Houston power grid down for up to four weeks. In all these cases gas was almost impossible to find, what was in your pantry was what you had until food distribution resumed, local water was not safe for consumption, and government response was limited to reinstating essential services first and foremost.
The bottom line, as Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project notes, is that after billions have been spent by Department of Homeland Security, FEMA and local law enforcement, we are no more prepared today than we were the day before September 11, 2011.
(Excerpt) Read more at shtfplan.com ...
Yet they call the preppers the idiots.
This is a precursor to the chaos of a coordinated “religion of peace” attack.
Actually, you want a totalitarian government to think you are an idiot. It is when they think you are smart, that the real trouble begins.
I happened to be in my optometrist’s waiting room this morning at 9AM EDT, and Fox News was covering it well. Didn’t mention Obama, but you knew there was a big disaster out there in VA, WV, and OH.
Before you imagine some kind of anti-little people conspiracy: the places where utilities are buried, like Columbia, Maryland (a DC suburb that was built about 35 years ago) have air, water, and power. But the DC area is heavily wooded, every street lined with magnificent, gracious old trees. Any ice storm, heavy snowstorm, or high speed wind causes branches or entire trees to fall on the above-ground power lines. For a very old area like this, it isn’t financially practical to bury utility lines in residential areas. It can only be done in newly-constructed areas of the region. We’re just going to always be vulnerable.
After Snowpocalypse, the power companies aggressively trimmed trees and branches from near power lines so that falling branches would be less likely to take out power to an area. But then liberals complained that the tree-removal process was too aggressive and the power companies were preparing for an event that would never happen.
It really isn’t necessary to bury these lines in the older neighborhoods. There is a process using PVC pipe of the highest crfush resistence species and junction boxes, all laid on the ground rather than under it. There is even a raised sidewalk cover drawn up, to be used where sidewalks provide a substantial access to neighborhoods. I have wondered since I saw that system on the Internet why it isn’t in use in alot of tree lined areas. I suspect it has something to do with ‘handicap accessibility’ or some such federal rigamarol as that.
I’d guess it has more to do with local code, which is among the most restrictive and anal in the world, and with the fact that changing anything on this scale is expensive. I can’t quite visualize laying live electrical wire in a pipe on the ground and having that be safe—will take your word for it—but retooling the power supply system has to cost billions and billions that nobody can afford right now.
God has rendered his opinion on the Obamacare opinion, and Washington is still reading it. :o)
What’s three days of food when the whole thing is down for two weeks?
CPA4You, you walk one mile an hour? I don’t understand.
Anyway, here in Northern VA, we did ok during this little inconvenience.
Some lessons learned - or re-learned:
CASH: No power, no lights, no motorcars - but entrepreneuring store owners found a way, and did BOOMING business. But you had to pay in cash, forget plastic. Oddly, after a day or so, the credit card networks worked - but those using straight ATM cards were hosed.
Comms - If we had not had a radio on, we would not have heard the “don’t drink the water alert.”
WATER - stock up on more. Or, in a minor situation, boil for one minute, and let cool before use. Or, add 8 drops bleach per gallon, stir well, and let rest 30 minutes before use.
Disinformation - radio says water not safe, everybody boil it. Actually, it was only four small areas on the water system, where the backup power to the pump had failed, causing a low water pressure situation within the distribution system. For everyone else, it was perfectly safe - but it took the local news idiots two days to mention that.
Disinformation - take everything on the radio with a grain of salt. And recognize where your water comes from - mine comes straight out of the Patomac, gets filtered, and has a few drops of bleach added. Been drinking it all my life, including straight out of the river when swimming. Above the Great Falls, of course - - but I think I am used to whatever lives in it.
FUEL: One can never have enough. We had fun searching the AO for generator fuel each day - sort of like a family outing. We used about five gallons a day. That ran a fridge, freezer, one window a/c, a number of lights, chargers for all the phones, etc, and a few fans. But we ran the generator 2 on, 2 off.
Commo: Your smartphone will come back pretty quick - but not with internet. Texting works first, phone next, internet last.
Commo: The landlines will REALLY be the last thing to come back.
911: Went down for two days, not sure it is back yet. Nobody noticed except the democrats, but...
FIRE: It is a miracle there were not any large ones, with 911 out, and no water pressure. This gives me nightmares.
911: Subsribe to 912. It is 911 for rich people, no waiting. (Just KIDDING, ok?)
FOOD: Preserve what you can, invite everybody over to have a cook out with the rest. It was a weekend family cookout. We loved it, and no spoilage.
Generator: Share with your neighbors. Especially fresh coffee in the morning. The goodwill value is priceless.
In short, we didn’t touch our cash, water, or fuel reserves - we had fun scrounging for the weekend, and a couple of great cookouts.
But the poor guy around the corner had a 7-foot-thick tree land on his beamer, and squash it like a bug.
Thank G_D he wasn’t in it.
How Volting!
Yeah and a surprising number of them that do are fellow FReepers, now go figure that!
Yeah and a surprising number of them that do are fellow FReepers, now go figure that!
Really? Post a link to one.
Why should they? Politicians are elected to take of us, why else do we pay our taxes?
You'd think so, huh. Many people now days order out so much they have forgotten how to cook. Or maybe it's that they haven't a clue about managing and making do. I'm thinking they don't understand you can open, with a hand can opener, a can of corn and call it a meal. Even for people who have just the minimum food and don't have an alternative power source, the first day is ice cream day. Next it's the delicate perishables in the warming fridge. The freezer will keep for 3 days so day three is for the grill. Day 4 is whatever can be salvaged from the fridge and freezer. Day 5 and after, it's canned and pantry foods. For the unprepared, that gets them a week into the crisis and a fair amount of power being restored.
In my AO, new services and service upgrades have to be buried, by code.
But the distribution circuits are all overhead - and you should see the legacy trees that wiped them out!
Great Falls at Cherry Hill Park has a HUGE oak right across the street, landed between two houses, fortunately. Some joker pinned a sign to it, “Free Firewood, You Haul.”
I laughed. It will take a crane to get it out, and I don’t own a chainsaw with an eight-foot bar.
Further down the road, there is a 35.4 kva circuit, two levels, suspended upside down over the street.
Man. Poles sheered off and flipped over.
>> Why should they? Politicians are elected to take of us, why else do we pay our taxes?” <<
.
Remember the “ponytail guy” at the presidential debate in Atlanta in ‘92?
“We’re your children, tell us how you’re going to take care of us.”
.
True story: Outside our subdivision, along side the road, telephone lines were buried. One day I got a call - from 911. The guy wanted to know what my emergency was. Said I didn’t have one, I didn’t call. He said yes I did. I said no I didn’t. He finally believed me.
Short time later, I get a call from 911. By that time my husband was home and he had called his adult daughter. 911 guy said to tell my husband to stop telling dirty jokes because it was being broadcast on speaker to everyone at 911 including the police dept. I was speechless.
The buried phone line had somehow mixed our phone with 911.
I was told not to use our phone until they called me. Immediately if not sooner, they were digging up that phone line to fix it.
Told my husband do NOT use the phone and clean up your jokes. He thought it was really funny and laughed and laughed.
Well, I am laughing.
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