Although I’ve lived in Tampa for 25 years, I grew up in St. Louis (specifically Kirkwood) and I still consider it “home.” So when I heard on the radio that you’d had the “worst storm ever,” I started to worry about you guys.
I immediately checked the Post Dispatch online. It looks like pretty much the whole metro area got slammed! :eek:
The pictures look like here in Tampa two years ago after the hurricanes! :eek:
So now I’m worried about everybody I know up there. St. Louis Dopers, please let us know that you and your family and your stuff are okay.
Nancy
P.S. If there’s anything we can do to help, let us know. And, please send me a bottle of Maull’s BBQ sauce!!
I suspect you won’t be seeing many responses for a while. AmerenUE reports that they have 2.4 million customers without power. No reliable reports on when they’ll have power restored, but it’s supposed to reach 100-103 F today.
No deaths I heard reported, although there were apparently three building collapses. Downed tree limbs all over the place, and traffic lights out most everywhere.
“Fortunately”, power is on at work. yipee.
But if I had any Maul’s, I’d send it, since it’ll be spoiling anyway… Tho’ now I’ve got that stupid jingle stuck in my head.
We live south of Tower Grove park. Our power is still out at home. (Although power is on at work – aren’t I thrilled? I would prefer the reverse, but apparently the universe doesn’t care.) We came through pretty well. No damage to our house or our trees. The neighbors all around us weren’t so lucky.
When I drove past Tower Grove this morning it was pretty devastated. Leafy carnage everywhere and the sound of chainsaws going. Apparently a tree crushed a car at the corner of Arsenal and Morganford. They must have cleared that away by this morning, but there was still a huge tree blocking one lane of Arsenal near Kingshighway. Our neighborhood is pretty messed up too. Big chunks of trees down everywhere, requiring a lot of swerving down the street to avoid them. Especially the sycamore trees, which seem to have been particularly badly hit.
Our friend who lives near Forest Park and Wash U had the roof of his condominium blown off. Fortunately he lives on the first floor.
Last night was a bit warm without air conditioning, but the storm cooled it off pretty nicely. Later today is supposed to hit over 100 degrees, so it could get pretty nasty. My 3 dogs are confined to the cool basement, which is still in the 70s right now. If the power is still out, that’s where we are sleeping tonight.
p.s. The burning question in my mind is, how did Carol House furniture do? They have a really bad disaster track record.
I live right outside the Loop in U City, and the power is out all around us. We got really lucky though, we have power at home, and didn’t even lose it last night. The power is on here at work, though all but one traffic light was out on the way in. I’m really surprised we have power here, since everthing surrounding my office is out.
We were grocery shopping when the storm hit, and the lights went out just when we were getting to the meat. They came back on, though dimly. They must have been running on a generator. They were still able to check out those of us that were there. It’s rather surreal to grocery shop when it’s that dim - if felt kind of like a horror movie. Most of the ceiling lights stayed off, but the coolers and the lights in those were on. We got soaked getting back out to to the car, and most lights were out on the way home. We also had to avoid quite a few trees, and numerous drivers who don’t know that when a traffic light is out, you treat it like a 4-way stop sign.
Busch Stadium was damaged, and there were some injuries, though nobody was killed. Someone ended up with a dislocated hip, and there were a few more minor injuries as well. Concession stands tipping over, etc.
Most of our friends who don’t live immedietly near us lost power as well, as did my husband’s parents.
It’s supposed to 103 today, with about 90% humidity, so there’s a weather advisory out as well. I’m from NH - I can barely tolerate this kind of weather, never mind imagine what it must be like for all those poor people who don’t have AC.
Well, a friend of mine reports that he saw nothing badly damaged when he drove through Valley Park where the one Carol House is. Dunno about the Page Ave. store, though, which is the one built on a trailer park graveyard or something.
And my answering machine is answering again, so I guess power is back on at home. Which is a relief, since AmerenUE’s “helpful” 24-hour call-in number and their “informative” website are so useless that only a Pit thread could adequately describe them. Even the radio DJs have been ranting about how bad Ameren is on informing customers when to expect service – because the news services can’t get any information out of Ameren.
Quick update. I ran home at lunchtime. It is now 1 pm of the Day After the Storm and still no power. But I quess those new windows we just got installed are turning out to be a good investment, since the house isn’t actually broiling yet.
Turns out our one neighbor wasn’t as lucky as we were. A couple of big tree limbs came down and ripped the power lines right off her house – so even if power gets restored to our neighborhood, she may still be out of luck for the time being. On the happy side, our 80-something neighbor on the other side appears not to be bothered by the temperature and is busy chatting it up outside with the other neighbors. I was worried he would expire from the heat.
Work is quiet as a graveyard, because everyone has gone home to clean up their yards. Personally, I’m happy to wait until the heat breaks before picking up the few tree limbs that fell in our yard. Might as well sit around in air conditioning and post to the SBMD than swelter at home.
If the power is still out tonight, I’ll have my partner bring home several bags of ice from out where she works. According to my neighbor, there is none to be found within about a 20 minute drive around my area.
The power at my home has been out since 7:00 pm last night and is still out. I’m bracing for at least 2-3 days without power. There were a lot of fallen branches in my neighborhood but no house or car damage.
A spokesperson for Ameren said on NPR this morning that this storm caused the worst and most widespread damage to their infrastructure in the company’s history.
Since the one near the airport was hit by tornado, flood, and fire over three consecutive years, I figured they’d for sure get damaged by the big wind storm, but maybe they got lucky this time.
I’m not even bothering with AmerenUE. I think they are a little overwhelmed right now. We’re just making up our minds to wait it out – with many coolers of ice – for however long it takes.
I haven’t had the tv or radio on yet this moning so this is the first I’ve heard about the storm. My best wishes to those who got hit bad and to all of you who are likely to have to endure several very hot days without AC.
I wonder if we should call this Hurricane Loutrina.
I live just south of Lambert Field. My electricity is out, and probably will be out for 3 or 4 days. Luckily nothing major hit my house. Although there were a few trees down in my neighborhood.
The downtown area has power for the most part, although there is broken glass everywhere.
I think I am going toget out of Dodge for a couple days.
I live on the other side of the river (about 30 minutes from the arch, depending on traffic) and it looks like we escaped the brunt of it. Some heavy branches are down in the backyard, but we haven’t lost power.
On KMOV last night they showed footage of people in the new Busch Stadium trying to take shelter from the storm. But there was nowhere to run. At least the old stadium had somewhat sheltered places to go.
Oddly enough, I was in the city earlier that day. Guess I picked the right time of day to go.
Still no power this morning! A few houses in my neighborhood have gotten power back through, so I’m optimistic that mine may be back on sometime today.
Phase two will apparently be higher gas prices. The Wood Rivers refinery is without power, and so they’re down. Now we’ve got gas shortages, and there are already reports of price-gouging. whee.
I’m really glad I filled my tank the day before the storm. Hopefully it will last through the weekend until power is back up.
The only traffic lights that are working on my commut to/from work are the ones that don’t really get heavy traffic, so that’s kind of useless. I really love driving across 70 with no lights, it’s awesome :rolleyes:
Our power came on last night around 8:30. What a relief. I am completely addicted to air conditioning (even though we keep it at 78 degrees, it’s the dry air that makes all the difference). We had a couple of friends sleep over last night because they still don’t have power. They live pretty close by, right across from Tower Grove park, but it’s pretty much block to block whether there is power or not. Traffic lights on the way to work are on in one block and out the next
Apparently some looting was going on on Morganford near Holly Hills yesterday. There aren’t enough rolleyes in the world to express my disdain for the low-life jerks that decide to rip off people during times like this.
Insurance and roofing companies seem to be responding quickly. My friend whose condo had its roof ripped off is meeting with an adjuster today and the roofers are also due this morning. In the meantime, several people in his condo building got together to patch it up yesterday – an effort involving much sweat and hot tar, which sounds like no fun at all.
My sister lived in Affton, and she’s reported that her power is miraculously the only one still on up and down her street. She’s invited everybody she can think of over to enjoy the a/c.
She works at a hospital, and she said the power actually went out during surgery. She told me the hospital she’s at had it come right back on after a few seconds, but apparently there were hospitals that completely lost power, and even a couple (I think she said Missouri Baptist) whose generators didn’t work at all. I know they were evacuating patients, but I gotta wonder what happened in the middle of all those surgeries.
She works the overnight in the OB, and they haven’t had any air conditioning. She said it’s completely miserable having a dozen ladies in labor in this heat. I can only imagine.
