My SIL just called. She’s still without power. I told her that I’ve had power since 4am this morning because one of my family members works at Duke Engergy. She wasn’t amused. Her husband is the relative who works for Duke Engergy.
Note: Please don’t yell at the Duke employees who stop into MickeyD’s to get lunch after working 18 straight hours. It’s not nice and, contrary to your cynical viewpoint, he doesn’t have a magic electric button that restores power to his own home while leaving you in the dark.
I would never do that – partly because I’m a nice guy, and partly because I’m an AEP customer, and AEP seems to have even more customers without service.
We’ve been without power for 27 hours and counting. Thankfully we have a gas cooktop, so I’ve been cooking some things that would otherwise have gone bad in our fridge. We have enough ice to make it through the night and then take the stuff in to my husband’s work tomorrow. All the furniture and ceramic planters we had on our back deck blew off into our backyard and shattered, but there’s no real damage to our house that we know of yet (obviously the satellite could be totally screwed and we wouldn’t know it). I was hoping that they’d get it going tonight, but as it gets darker my hopes diminish. Right now I’m posting on a charged laptop with a Verizon internet card. I stayed home from work to clean up the backyard (doggy + glass don’t mix), but I’m actually looking forward to it tomorrow, if only for the internet access! I’m also very glad I have a lot of Downy Wrinkle Releaser and a low-maintenance hairstyle.
We are near Owensboro, Kentucky. We had shingle blow off our roof, but we got off easy compared to people a little closer to town. Our power flickered off, but never went off for an extended period, but about 3/4 of the town was without power for a good while. A lot of trees and limbs down. I saw at least 6 electric poles broken or lying down. I also saw 5 stop lights that had blown off the wires. They say we had gusts up to 73 mph.
Ugh. The top third blew out of an aged and declining concolor fir near my driveway entrance and took down all the wiring between the house and the pole – phone, cable, electric. Power is out generally in the neighborhood, so even when they get that restored, we’ll still be out, because of the lines to the house.
A HUGE effing maple came down in the woods behind our house and made like tree dominoes, taking about three other trees – a second maple, a hemlock, and the beech tree that was a retirement gift to the music professor who lived in the house for a long time and referred to the tree as the J. S. Beech. All of them, including the huge effing maple, are now in my back yard.
When I called American Electric Power this morning to report that one of our trees was tangled in the power line, I got that lovely synthesized voice telling me, “We expect to have power fully restored by…Eleven! Fifty! Nine! p.m. on…September! Twenty-first.” :eek:
I’m in Columbus for Farm Science Review, and Ike was NOT kind to all those gigantic tents out there. What a mess!
Damn, from the Duke Energy map, my sister in the Hyde Park area (Cinti) must be out. She called me once she got home; said it was a bitch trying to keep the car on the road.
Sort of amusing/weird anecdote: Her husband is in a rehab/rest home in Fairfield. He’s on a vent at all times. He’d fallen early Sunday morning so they took him to the hospital (Mercy system, whichever one is closest) by ambulance and called my sister. Of course she tore out of the house, back up to the hospital. (He’s been in-and-out of hospital care for the past 3 months, having a very rough, scary time of it.)
Anyway, they determined he was okay, put him back in the ambulance and headed him back to the rest home. Which had just lost power due to the high winds, and they didn’t have a back-up generator. The ambulance crew refused to offload him, given his utter reliance on a ventilator, so then they trucked him on back again to the hospital. At least he’s in a place guaranteed to have power for the vent he needs, which is literally life and death for him.
Then my sister ran for home, trying to beat the storm winds. She called when she made it but said it was the absolute worst driving conditions she’d ever experienced. She said she thought several times her car was going to blow over sideways.
Checking in from Columbus. My power was out from 5:30 p.m. to about 7:30 a.m. Really can’t believe that none of my trees lost more than a few leaves, twigs and crabapples. Walking up and down my street, almost everyone has lots of branches out by the curb.
One of my neighbors lost a tree quite spectacularly yesterday. It was an older Bradford pear (they’re notoriously unstable) and came down in three parts. I got home just after part one came down across our street. I was watching the street and saw a cop drive up and talk to my neighbor. Maybe 10 minutes later, I heard a crash and saw the next third come down, also into the street, onto the spot that the cop’s car had recently left. Not sure when the third part came down. It’s on the neighbor’s lawn and extends over onto their neighbor’s lawn. The amazing part was that - as far as I can tell - the only thing that was harmed in all of this was the tree itself. It barely missed a truck that was parked on the street.
I live in one of the near-Downtown suburbs and the city has been out since yesterday afternoon clearing streets (the neighbor’s tree was gone within 2 hours of falling). Today was supposed to be yard waste and recycling pick-up day for most of us. I can’t believe anyone thought they’d even have a hope of getting to it. I ride the bus to work downtown and we had to take a couple of minor detours (including going down the wrong side of a boulevard for about 1/2 a block :eek: ) because streets were being cleared.
Looks like most of my neighbors have their power back. The only exceptions are people who had lines directly into their house knocked down. Restaurants were packed tonight when I walked down our main thoroughfare. (Monday night is NEVER that busy; it looked close to Saturday-evening volume).
Based on reports at work there are still lots of people without power and people who already know it’ll be the weekend before their power is back.
I’m feeling really lucky today. Wish I could offer local Dopers in need shelter, but my teeny-tiny house is currently filled with displaced stuff because I’m re-doing my bedroom. I can offer a little bit of fridge space, if anyone needs it, though…
ETA (as if I hadn’t already said enough): I think that million is households, not people… Never seen ANYTHING like it.
My sister in Columbus has had no electricity for over 30 hours. Fortunately, she has one phone working, gas hot water and stove, and no trees down (though the yard is full of large branches). The neighbor has a tree down and tangled with all sorts of wires.
Another Columbus OH doper checking in.
We lost power yesterday evening about 6 pm or so & it came on at 5 am or thereabouts this morning ( We live in a hospital zone & I think that’s why we got ours back so fast.) We have an electric stove & so we did a bit of grab’n’growl last night, as it was way too windy to use the grill. I ended up having peanut butter & tuna fish for dinner.
The sky was a really ugly color & we had a lot of wind & a little bit of rain, downed tree branches, and the like, and I think one of the building in our complex lost a piece of the roof. My brother had to fly in that mess yesterday & he said that the plane felt like it was going to shake itself apart. Thank God he made it safely.
AEP predicted 24-48 hours without power, some people will be out all week. we got lucky.
We lost power late Sunday night. It flicked on an off at least 10 times starting at 6pm Sunday night and then the power went out completly at 9:45pm and stayed out until sometime early this morning.
I woke up at about 3am and the power was on.
We spent most of the morning and early afternoon chasing down ice and batteries for ourselves and my mother. My mom has a gas stove and we have a grill so at least we could cook. Some food was lost but mostly just salad dressing, mayo etc. We have two small battery operated TVs so we could both keep up on the news, other than that I did a lot of reading.
At least it was not hot and humid like the blackout of 2003. That was horrible and the lack of drinkable water made it even worse.
We lost our deck canopy because of the winds and our neighbor lost a small tree but other than that everything else held together. Those were some serious winds.
Working from home today. All is well, but the schools are still all closed.
We had an appointment Thursday (Sept. 11) for a tree service to come and trim our oak and locust trees. The oak is a beauty we love and cherish; the locust is a pain in the ass we wish would disappear, but we don’t want to spend the $1000+ to have it removed, so they were going to take out some dead branches and generally make it safe. Well, they cancelled because it was raining, and rescheduled for Sept. 25.
Then Ike Jr. came, and with him much devastation. Fortunately none of the dead locust limbs hit our house or anything else, but we’re hoping the tree company will be able to keep its appointment. I’m sure they’re busy with emergencies. I guess if they have to postpone, those are the breaks. Somebody with a tree through his roof trumps us.
My neighbourhood had power out for a bit over 24 hours (about 6 pm on Sunday to 8 pm yesterday). I was out in the street chatting with some neighbours when the power came back on, and you could hear people cheering all around. We had no gas, so I cooked yesterday’s dinner on the charcoal barbecue. At least it felt like a bit of fun, like camping out, doing that.
Yet another Columbus-ite checking in. I have never seen wind like that in my life. We were lucky enough not to lose any trees, but neighbors up the street certainly did. Our power flickered on and off about 15 times during the storm, but never went out for good. We did, however, lose phone service for about 6 hours and Internet service for two days. It just came back on about an hour ago.
Our yard is nothing but sticks and branches. The kids were out of school yesterday and today due to widespread power outages, although reportedly they will be back in session tomorrow.
Wow! That’s a scary one. If it wasn’t real life, I’d say it was spectacular.
In the paper today they said that the National Weather Service can’t find records of winds higher than what we saw on Sunday for this area. :eek:
There were more than two million homes and businesses without power in Ohio yesterday. 84 of 88 counties have damage and the governor declared a state of emergency for the entire state.
Seems like an awful lot of people are being told it might be Saturday or Sunday before they have power, although I’ve heard that many? (most) people should have power back tomorrow.
Most people seem to be grateful that things weren’t worse. We didn’t get heavy rain or flooding and a whole lot of the damage seems to be trees and branches that fell on the ground and not on structures.
Hope everyone’s staying safe and getting power back and everything picked up and/or fixed.
Apparently Cincy had problems today. I got an email from the Bar advising all members that Casebase, or Casemaker, or whatever the hell it’s called was down due to power outages up that way. Oddly enough, I was on LEXIS at the time, and it had no noticiable issues…and they are located just south of Dayton.
Also heard on the radio that there were four dead in Ohio. Four dead in Ohio. As Nixon seemed partially responsible, I’m guessing this was an unrelated event.
