11 Days

On Fridays I usually stop at the local bakery and pick up some form of coffee cake to bring to the office .  It engenders good will and ends the week on a little note of  a smile.

This morning there was a young woman in the bakery getting a birthday cake for a child.  She remarked that her child was a little disconnected as they have been without power for 11 days now.  We got into a discussion about the reasons why, and it seems as if there is a shortage of poles and transformers.  That is of little help to the people without.  She was remarkably calm, but she was clearly concerned at the effect this prolonged outage was having on her child.  There was no Halloween this year, school has been on again off again and she said the child was wondering about her birthday.  It was hard not to want to give the woman a hug.


When Katrina struck, I recall my sister saying that the idea that the "government" was going to mobilze and sweep in and make things right was a folly.  So with that in mind, I prepared for the inevitable and it has arrived in our neck of the woods 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years.   Government makes noise, but recovery is really laid at the door of the power companies and their hard working tough men. 

We had the Nor easter of 2010, which put me personally without power and into the cold of March for 6 days.  We had the Nor easter of October 29, 2011 which killed power for millions , but was shadowed because of  Irene of two months earlier which produced epic flooding, which devastated our region. Irene followed from the flooding of earlier in the year that was almost as epic.  Now we have Sandy.

The weather gurus tell us to expect more of the same all over the world as we see increasing extremes in weather patterns. 

So get ready, really get ready, lay in the firewood, find a generator, have non perishable food, spare cash, a couple of 5 gallon gas cans at the ready.   The days of complacency in the face of disasters  is over.