Many people left their homes to stay with friends who had running water and occassionaly electricity. I’ve venture most of them never bothered to turn off their water at the main and drain their pipes only to come home to burst pipes and blaming everyone but themselves.
More than one has been highlighted in the headlines whining they lost power so their fridge food rotted/they had no food to last the week and their pipes burst and they’re broke.
Geez, take some self responsibility and put that one brain cell to work. Set the food outside in the freezing snow and it wouldn’t have rotted or take it with you to whomever’s house you went to to help them out. Not to mention Americans refrigerate items that other countries don’t like eggs and condiments. If nothing else, in a freezing house, just open the fridge door.
One San Antonio woman was whining about her fridge food when she went to her parents’ house where they had running water and a fireplace. As if she couldn’t have taken her family’s food with them to help out. She even had to bother the neighbors to heat a pan of water for her baby’s formula. Really? As if she couldn’t use the fireplace or put the bottle under her arm. She also whined their infant was bored and whatever were they to do so he wouldn’t be bored. Hmm, so she, her husband, the two grandparents and whomever else was in the house couldn’t keep an infant entertained between naps and his warm bottle? SMH.
Another late 20s woman, a recent arrival from Boston (doesn’t Boston get snow?), was warned just like everyone in advance of the storm but didn’t bother to buy some food so had to rely on total strangers to brave the roads to bring her food. She looked, imo, financially capable of buying food for herself and the whole block so that wasn’t the problem. The problem, again, is not using the single brain cell in her head. Thank goodness she can go to Starbucks now.
FYI, yesterday was day 11 after the thaw and our grocery store just got lunch meat, eggs and cheese on the shelves. Still no cream for coffee and there are even stricter limits. I’d say a good two weeks would be the benchmark if/when this ever happens again for the stores to get back to “covid normal”. Thanks to Xi, we haven’t been able to purchase cream for coffee for 2+ months.
My plumber advised me 25 years ago to shut off the water at the main whenever you go on vacation or leave the house for more than a couple days in the winter(NH) especially.
He told me of a family that got back from a Florida vacation to find that their furnace had died and then the pipes froze.
We lose power here in NH at least once or twice every year.
Ice storms are the worst.
Almost everyone I know has some kind of back up generator.
We had a bad wind storm Monday night(50-70 mph gusts) along with single digit temps. My power went out at 10pm Monday night. It was not restored until last night @ 9:30. When I woke up yesterday around 6am the temperature in my bedroom was 56 degrees. I went down, pulled the Honda generator out of the garage and fired it up. Flipped the switched in the basement at the panel and life was pretty much back to normal in about ten minutes. It still took a couple hours to warm the whole house back up.