Irene is moving on to bigger and better things, but we’re getting pretty severe wind gusts on the back side of the storm. Power could still go out, but since the rain has moved on, Â any power outage now the backup pump will handle just fine. But if we do lose power, the blog will be offline for some time, as they have so many customers out, they say it’ll be days before we get power restored. On the bright side, I could use my big old marine deep cycle battery to buy some extra time for the blog and Internets.
All I have to say is that people who live in Florida must be nuts. This was the first hurricane to strike the Jersey Shore in my lifetime, it was a category one, and I’m 50 miles inland. One of those for one lifetime is quite enough. I have never seen that much water in my life, and the records they are reporting for flooding back up that assertion. I literally had water shooting out of my basement walls. The local creek apparently is cresting 17 19 feet over flood stage.
We came out of this very very lucky, as we did not lose the power necessary to keep the basement dry. I hope I never again have to rush to clear out my basement while I watch the neighborhood excrement rise higher and higher in my utility sink, watch the water level in my sump pit rise as the intake overwhelms pump capacity, all the while worrying about a power outage forcing us to the backup pump, which would have no prayer of keeping up.
Now we have to put everything back in a dry basement, which will probably take 3x longer to accomplish than moving everything out did. But I’m grateful for that. We were quite close to a massive catastrophe insurance wouldn’t have covered, but were were spared. Thoughts and prayers go out to those who did not weather the storm as well as we have so far.
UPDATE from Bitter: Apparently, they are evacuating about a 3/4 of a mile from us due to the creek today. Fortunately, that distance is uphill so it’s no threat to us. The crest should happen in about an hour and then start to recede.
UPDATE from Bitter: About 2 hours later, and the local creek crested at 19.5 feet above flood stage and is now receding. There’s an apartment complex nearby that was evacuated in the last couple of hours due to sewage leaks & possible gas leaks. I admit, most of our neighbors appeared to have gone to bed last night based on how few had lights turned on when we looked out windows. I wonder how many are cleaning up sewage in their homes if they weren’t on top of the flooding.
We Floridians are used to them. Our houses have much stronger building codes that not only hold pretty well to hurricanes but once the shutters are up, keep us pretty safe from flying debris and the occasional zombie invasion.
And we don’t have basements…..
Bonus: We play Grand Theft Looters for real. What other natural disaster allows you to have a night cookout with your neighbors next to a stack of rifles and the cops waving hello as they drive by?
“All I have to say is that people who live in Florida must be nuts.”
Can I remind you of this during the next winter blizzard?
I’ve gotten through plenty of blizzards. Blizzards don’t scare me as much because all the water is frozen. That makes for a much happier basement.
In the aftermath of a hurricane, we have a BBQ, we can OC without the police saying anything, and best of all, we don’t have to listen to the HOA trying to justify wasting our homeowner’s fees.
And then there’s the “how much stuff can you run without overwhelming the genny” contest….and since I have the router/modem plugged into a UPS, I don’t even lose the internet.
Small generator and submersible pump would be on my “when I get back to working and being paid” list!
Look online for that basement wall paint that seals the walls, I will send it to you if I remember the name! My buddy used it, and it helped him remarkably well.
What the hell is a “basement”? Us Floridians don’t have basement problems as we don’t have basements. Also, anyone who’s lived here for more than one active hurricane recognizes the value of hurricane panels and hopefully has installed them. Makes hurricane prepping much simpler and takes a lot of the worry out of the deal.
I recall one hurricane hitting jersey, back when I was in 7th grade or so. I remember it fondly as a girl I went to school with had moved to Germany after 4th grade (her dad was a civilian military contractor) and had just returned to the states at the start of 7th grade. We went out to dinner with them earlier in the night, and their house was in an older section of town had the power knocked out, so her family stayed at our place the night of the storm.
She introduced me, that night, to the joys of females. Ended up in a corner of our basement making out long after everyone else went to sleep.
Turns out, oh so many years later, she’s a lesbian in Portland Oregon. But that was quite a hurricane for me :)
My basement takes on water in march from the blizzards in January and February…