How are we doing after the storm, Virginians?

[sofa king]

On Friday night, a good chunk of Virginia was hit by a violent storm front preceded by sustained 60-80 mph winds. For nearly an hour, the winds tore through the trees and probed at roofs and siding.

It happened to hit my beloved Valley just as the walnuts are reaching full size, which in turn ripped down branches everywhere, which blasted the ugly hanging power lines everywhere, which knocked out power to thousands here and hundreds of thousands across the state.

Not atypically for my particular area, the actual rain behind the storm broke on the Allegheny range and did not fall here, which combined with high temperatures and steady breezes is quickly pushing the Valley toward drought. In the meantime, the industrious people of the valley have already largely cleaned up the mess--without electricity, in most cases; yesterday my neighborhood thrummed with the sounds of generators, chippers, and chainsaws.

Now literally thousands of tons of green biomass is being collected into little piles, where they are quickly reacting in the sun and creating thousands of potential fire hazards. And the Fourth approaches.

Please make wise choices in the coming days, my friends. Familiarize yourselves with combating and preventing mulch fires:

http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/print/volume-161/issue-3/features/combating-and-preventing-mulch-fires.html

And good luck to us all!

[LiberalLoner]

1. Good luck to all and hoping those without power regain it very soon

We were very lucky and our power stayed on, no trees down at our place either. Counting my lucky stars for that.

[ohheckyeah]

2. I'm in a motel in

southwestern Virginia. Power has been out since Friday night at 9:00 p.m. The storm tore through here like a F1 tornado and took down trees and power all over the place. The motels are sold out and restaurants are packed. We made a reservation just in the nick of time.

My brother ended up having to share our motel room last night but his power is back on today. We may go to his house if the electricity is still out at ours tomorrow. It's a 50 mile drive from our house to his and we like being closer to our house to keep an eye on things......we live rural but that doesn't guarantee that nobody will mess with an empty home.

My elderly parents couldn't find a motel and we were able to get on a waiting list at the motel where we are and they finally got a room Friday night.

It's been stressful just making sure that all of our friends and family are okay. Fortunately, we were able to contact everyone eventually.

Things are a mess but it could be a whole mess worse.

Hope all the DUers are okay.

[sofa king]

3. Glad you're sorting it out.

One of the more unusual things I noticed is that younger people seem to have no clue as to what a power outage really is.

My friend was running a convenience store with flashlights and a single battery pack to run the register, and faced an endless stream of youths asking some pretty dangerously naive questions, like, why can't you use my credit card? and, where is the nearest ATM?, and, why don't the gas pumps work? and, can you charge my phone for me that I burned out texting with friends, and--seriously--why don't you just make more ice? Seriously?!?

Some folks simply could not understand that a cell phone tower requires electricity to transmit and receive signals, so when the electricity goes, so do all the cell phones that everyone thinks will be working in an emergency.

Arthur C. Clarke once observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to outsiders. I did not realize that maxim applies to the people within the society, as well.

If the zombie apocalypse comes, we're fucked.

[ohheckyeah]

4. LOL I know what you mean.

People are seriously uneducated about this kind of stuff. We are back home and our electricity is on but my parents' is not so they are coming here. We're tired but so damn happy to be home you would think we had been gone for a month.

We seriously need to upgrade the electrical grid in this country and in these rural areas we need to get the lines buried. Yes it would be expensive but just think what it's costing to pay these crews over the 4th of July week.

A storm that blew through here in 20 minutes took out the power to thousands of homes and millions on the east coast. That's just not acceptable. Yes, we would need to raise taxes but hell after we replace all the food that went bad, paid for the motel and all of our meals, etc. we will probably spend $500 or more for this outage.

[sofa king]

5. Imagine if we had buried the power lines.

That movement has been simmering in Virginia for at least 30 years, steadfastly opposed by the Republicans the whole time.

I'm willing to bet that the damage caused by trees falling on exposed power lines created more damage in 20-50 minutes than it would have cost to bury all the lines in the first place.

Now, we'll likely have to consider paying for both, to pay to repair the damage, and then to bury the lines like we could have been doing as part of routine maintenance and infrastructure improvement since 1980.

[ohheckyeah]

6. Exactly....

it's friggin' ridiculous that a 20- 50 minutes storm can take out 3 million households of electricity. Restaurants, grocery stores and convenience stores are out of power in Roanoke and are having to dump tons of food.....not donating it but throwing it in the trash BEFORE it spoils. How wasteful. Power repair teams from all over the country most likely being paid at least double time for the 4th of July week are working around the clock.

We just had another storm come through and lost power twice. Fortunately it is at the moment back on. But 10 miles down the road from me my friend lost power and it's still off - who knows how long because all of the repair teams in the are are elsewhere.

What's wrong in this country that people are so foolish. Save a penny and then waste a dollar. It's pathetic and stupid.