Well, like those of you along the east coast of North America we had an add on to our Corona virus fun yesterday – a visit from Hurricane Isaias. I hope any of you affected by it are okay – personally, your home intact and have electricity, etc again.
We were each about to run out of one medication – husband's last pill of same would be Thursday. Sunday night I called our pharmacy (at a local regular Walmart) and reordered what we needed on their computer. We did not need refills of everything as husband is taking less of his medications due to our eating less to stretch our trips out for food and I stop taking one pill in summer as my blood pressure drops too low in summer otherwise, but there was a good number of pills.
We also had to call and change our RV park reservation – due to the Covid - 19 situation we do not feel comfortable going – and add on not knowing what would happen from Isaias, we decided best to postpone as it had to be done by yesterday – the day of Isaias here. I left a message Sunday night for them to call us Monday. We have changed the reservation to be our July 4th trip next July – we hope.
Saturday we went out and took in the loose items. We have two small solar lanterns which hang from iron posts – took down the lanterns and posts. Our “Betsy Ross” flag is also on an iron stand – took that down also. We have 3 iron stands that hold pots of flowers – normally we buy 3 pots of geraniums in spring and they through the fall (and for Christmas we put artificial poinsettias, which we potted and we reuse annually in them) – they came in also. Also our garbage pail – all went into the garage.
Monday night I put 2 ice cubes in each of 2 small plastic bags and put one bag of cubes in each freezer – if one loses their electricity and the ice is still frozen, then the food is okay to use. We charged our electric lantern and took out candles in holders. We plugged in our cell phones (even the old ones with no service – they can still call 911 in an emergency) and our laptops – normally our cable company's wifi which runs through the wires in the street will work when electric out and we can use the laptops with it. I also dropped a very small flashlight in my jeans pocket – during and after Hurricanes Irene and Sandy they were of great help. (The ones that Harbor Freight used to give out free with coupons before they switched to the blue plastic lights they give out now free with coupons.) We went to bed Monday night, hoping we would not need any of our preparations. I also cleared the walkways in the house - so that we could around without tripping on anything. In the 18th century rooms were used for multiple purposes. Furniture was kept against the walls and what was needed for the purpose at a time was moved to the center of the room and used – then put back against the walls. In semi-darkness to darkness one could walk through the room without needing a light. I work with this idea making sure that one can walk from room to room and around the room where one needs to be without a light when there is a possible blackout coming.
Isaias came in overnight – sounded terrible. News and weather reports had said it should be out of our area by around 3 pm and headed further north. So when we were getting ready to make lunch at 2 pm, we felt better as there was only an hour or so left before it was gone. Then the lights went out and the TV went off. I called our electric company and gave our information. (Our electricity poles, generating facilities, etc are owned by a non-profit which contracts with a regular utility company to run the system. The company that was doing so, and had been doing so for a long time before, when we were hit Hurricane Sandy did a terrible job of not getting everything going again, but also there was a major lack of communication and a new company was brought in to do run everything for the non-profit – following I will be talking about the new for profit company which runs it all for them.)
We expected to hear back from them at some or several points as the message had asked what phone number to call us back with updates – which I had figured would be recorded messages. For lunch we had peanut butter sandwiches – from an unopened jar as the opened jar was in the fridge, while I eat mine plain, husband likes jelly on his – he put some honey on it instead and I used disposable plates so I only had to wash the utensils (we leave the drinking glasses out on the table from lunch through our prebed snack). We found one of our battery operated radios and put in batteries. Not knowing how long the outage would be, we turned off our cell phones and did not turn on any of our laptops (old ones were also charged). We opened the front door (left the glass storm door locked) and husband sat on a chair to read on his tablet while I read BBC History magazine sitting on the staircase. After awhile I went upstairs to open the mail which had been sitting for 4 days (to kill any Covid-19 virus on it) – I opened the curtains and put up the shade to see what I was doing. I then went back to my reading on the stairs. It was bright and sunny, but still a bit windy outside at this point. The NYC (am)news radio stations would occasionally mention out here on Long Island, but not much info. The few Long Island radio stations (also am – radio does not have FM) just kept playing music. So no info. No calls from electric utility. Internet in street was not working. This was extremely annoying and frustrating.
One of our next door neighbors came walking on our driveway. We opened the front door and yelled back and forth as we socially distanced. She has a friend at the electric utility. A tree was down on a wire. It was affecting 2000 customers on the circuit (in my mind – good thing – more customers affected, the sooner they repair – fix a one house outage and the number of customers restored goes up 1, fix an outage affecting 2000 customers and that one repair makes the number of customers restored go up 2000. But she was told by her friend that we would be back on – Thursday PM! She was walking the street making sure that everyone had called in their outage so the utility would be aware how many were out on this circuit. I told we had – and she shared the info above about the outage. Her young daughter was with her – we both said hello to her also . Then they went on their way to talk to the other neighbors. (We have no children, when one has children one knows other people on the street with children, due to the nature of living on a main road, it is not a small street where everyone knows everyone else.) I thought husband was going to break down and cry or pass out when he heard Thursday pm – I managed to talk him out of either. Just because we are 18th century reenactors, does not mean that we like to live in the dark and without air conditioning on a hot day.
Dinner time was approaching and I knew we needed more than sandwiches. I went looking through our supplies - lots of cans of soup. I should mention that our stove is electric – no electricity, no stove. But we do have our other stove – in our RV. We have used it before during Hurricanes Irene and Sandy and some other electric outages. It is small, but it does have a 2 burner propane stove. I have actually only used it for situations like this – when we travel in it, we eat out. I had another thought – see if the Chinese take out place we use was open and take out dinner, but figured that husband would be upset at going out. I mentioned cooking the soup to him. He brought up the Chinese takeout, so we went with that. The place has only been taking orders online or in person – no telephone orders, but I called, explained and asked (and they know us) and they took the order and our credit card info by phone. As we were about to walk out to pick up the order, our telephone rang. Since the answering machine is not working and being concerned that there might be a problem with our order, I answered it. (We answered the telephone several times during the day – we now know who the hangup calls when they get our answering machine are from – all spam calls.) This call was not spam nor the take out place – it was my mother – who I have been trying to reach by telephone for a week! I explained that I had to talk very quickly and what we were about to do – she was surprised – she had known that we had a hurricane go through – and she lives where it is was the worst! Mom is in an assisted living so they always have electricity due to a generator (something we really need to get, a house generator which comes on automatically, but the price scares us) but I would have thought she would have heard the winds or seen something about it on TV?!
We picked up dinner and came home to eat it. I was using real dishes for dinner as did not want to deal with smaller paper tableware. I had tap water. Husband was drinking iced tea from mix and tap water (he hates drinking “warm water”). We had our soup and had started our main courses. I was figuring out in my head how I was going to see to wash the dishes – I had figured to bring over the battery lantern to the sink and leave husband with the candles. Mid first plate of food – the electricity came back on! How wonderful and lucky. We could use the air conditioning again – husband had been terribly warm – and lights – and TV! We did not open the fridge for cold drinks or the freezer for ice and left them closed until we had our nighttime snack, as we wanted them to get colder inside again.
The house has been put back together again. Seemed it was all behind us. Tonight shortly before I sat down to write this post however, the electricity went out again. I heard husband heading towards crying and wailing. As I calmed him down, I started calling the electric utility again – but in less than time than it took me to find, pick up, and memory dial them – it came back on again. I am figuring that they gerry rigged something yesterday to get our circuit back up and this was our transfer to the normal system we are on as it was so brief – as if it was turned off and then back on.
I should mention that we were lucky to reach the utility yesterday morning when we lost our electricity. Per the local newspaper people could not reach them by phone (apparently their phone carrier was having problems in addition to their own problems) or by their app. So now they are in the same problem as the former company.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Problems like this will happen. Plan ahead so when it does YOU know what you need to do. Know where your candles, electric lanterns, flashlights (last two being safer than the first) are. Charge your cell phones (and remember, as I mentioned, old cell phones with no service can still call 911 in an emergency so charge them also and leave them charging as long as you have electricity. Charge your laptops or tablets (even if you have no wifi available as we did not this time, they still can serve as a diversion) – but use your cell phones and laptops as little as possible in case you need them later. If there are children who are old enough – have a flashlight for each of them, it will help keep them from being frightened. Obviously have spare batteries for everything. A battery operated radio is a good idea for information.
I have an “accordion folder” (one of those large folders with sections) as my “grab and go”. When I reconcile a bank account the statement goes in it – and the last matching statement comes out and gets filed. I have copies of my computer data on DVD in it and update it monthly. Most recent paid bills for all our insurances. Copies of our small amount of stock info. Copies of house deed and car titles. Copy of marriage license. If we had to leave home in an emergency, I just grab this and go.
Water is rarely a problem here as our water comes from municipal water towers here. Having said that - we used to keep 3 gallon bottles of water in the basement and also some cans set aside for emergencies (apparently they were last changed before 2005 as we came across them in the early days of stay in place and that was the use by date on them, we are not using them, but husband made me keep them for now - “just in case”. When Hurricanes and Irene and Sandy were coming, we filled our RV water tanks (30 gallons of water) just in case. We did not do so this time.
Where my family lived we were relatively near the ocean and needing to live home in a large storm, in case of flooding in the area, became more and more common after I left home. If you live in an area where this might happen make sure you have a plan for what to take and who will drive what and know where to evacuate. (We live near the evacuation center so we are far enough inland on the Island not to need to do so. My mom did need to do so during many storms in more recent years (did not need to do so other than one time when I was still living there 40 years ago). I would tell her to come here, but she liked going to the evacuation center – “I see everyone I haven't seen since the last evacuation”. Make sure in advance that you have enough of your medications (as we picked up ours on Monday to be sure). If you have a pet, find out where you can go with them and have their things also.
Yeah, I know we have all heard this so many times – but DO you have a plan and know what to do? If not, start planning now – when you need to do so, it is too late.
Stay safe from storms and stay well from Covid- 19 all!
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