A World of Hurt

Here I sit in my WARM home office doing some reflecting. I am not only doing this because of the season but of the other forces that have effected my family, friends and neighbors in recent days.

Where I live, Fort Wayne, Indiana experienced a bad winter storm of snow, ice, and bitter single digit temperatures. A result of that wicked combination was over 100k households in the span of about 3 hours lost power on Friday 12/19/08. My house was one of them. I was not worried. I am prepared. I have a disaster plan and supplies, but I was in a world of hurt. The problem was that with any disaster is that most people DO NOT prepare, and thus the problems begin. With this storm, the bitter cold was the enemy. I had hooked up "Mr Grumpy" my 6800k generator, to keep the furnace and basics working. I also rigged up my neighbors furnace and had their house covered too. All around me was darkness, for 30 blocks in every direction, I had a serious concern about theft and looting. I have no worries in that dept. either, I am armed. Since most of my neighbors had left and knew I was staying, they ask me to look over their houses.

To keep my sanity, I kept a routine, fire roaring, lights off, and every two hours make the rounds of the ten or so houses around me and of course check "Mr. Grumpy". Between rounds, a little shut eye, catching up on reading ( with my led headlamp) and stoking the fire. The storm had also dropped a large amount of tree limbs across roads, over cars and on houses. The sound of all the ice and wind was the most unique sound I have ever experienced. On day 3 I really got worried, most stores were out of supplies, and the gas station nearest to me lost power. I did have 18 gallons in reserve, but in this instance, I had 3 extra gas cans and so I ventured out to fill them. (a four hour venture). OK, so on top of all this, I had to go check on my Alzheimer's mother and her facility. All good there, they actually had a primary and secondary generator and had not lost power. In addition, I am watching over my 98 year old Great Aunt Clara. A few problems there, the "Independent Living" facility where she lives was dark. Apparently, state code does not require them to have back-up power. Needless to say. I gave them a bitching out after discovering the lack of generators. I tried to get them to describe to me what the difference is between profits and doing the right thing is. I made arrangements to get my great aunt to a relatives house with power.

Enough of my long and boring story, lets jump to today. Power is restored and everyone is back where they belong in my family. Others are not so lucky. As of this writing, approx. 17k homes still have no power. A note on the Power Company. American Electric Power took a shotgun blast on this weather event. Their response was nothing more than heroic. They have done an outstanding job, bringing in crews totaling 1300. I personally saw over a dozen different convoys of trucks and charter buses of crews. On the second day, at a staging area, they must have had 300 trucks gathered in a Wal-Mart store parking lot. I saw that and knew the Calvary had arrived! I saw trucks from North Carolina and Tennessee. They have gone beyond the duty to work around the clock to get the power restored. One thing I failed to mention are the 35+ mph winds after the storm. This posed a dangerous threat to the crews trying to work outside and a threat to tearing down the repairs already done. I cannot say enough for these workers, they really saved the day!


Think about how you will prepare for 2009, think about how you will handle the adversity, think about how important your family is and what they mean to you. If you are prepared, you can handle anything...


Merry Christmas to all-May Christ warm your heart with his love.

A Sweet New Post

Here is another post from me. I know, you don't have to say a word. I am very pathetic on keeping the blog updated BUT I am trying to change my ways!

The Climate Prediction Center has released its revised forecasts for December 2008

It seems as we might on the run for a colder than normal December...

The subtle art of nothing

I really like doing a blog BUT I seem to always forget...I really like the phone in ability with Jott but still I have to actually do phone-in to update. So as promised, I will try to keep things neat and tidy here! I moderate the comments, so if you make fun of my shoes or mother I probably wont let your comment be seen.

Hope you all have a great fall

Yes, Billy, I am still around. I have not been updating this site as much as I should, I do apologize to all the thousands of fans. Right. Doubt that. I have actually been busy chasing. I was out in the the plains over memorial weekend and captured some amazing footage. I found the time to detour to Grennsburg, Ks to see it a year after the EF5 struck. I was stunned at the amount of damage and scarring, even after a year of rebuilding efforts. My heart goes out to all of the Greensburg, KS residents who are facing the task of starting over.

Seems as tho the summer is upon us, hope you have a good one.

Well, today looks like...

Well, today looks like a very good set up. Unfortunately, I will not be able to out and chased today. One thing I am keeping my eye on now is how the high the do points go up into eastern campus and how high the do points are in Northern Missouri. I believe that region will be the spot where was seasons to be weather, the SPC is put out a moderate risk for that area today but I just wanted to update everybody and let them know that I will not be going out chasing but I will be watching it as close as I can on the computer and on the website so I hope you all have a great day. Thanks. listen

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