just checking in here too, still without power.
Here’s another set of good wishes going out to all our Memphis Dopers and the other denizens. Hope it remains cool today, this goes national now, like it should have already, and that the damn power comes back on ASAP.
{{{hugs!}}}
Another Memphis person: no power, no phone, no cable. Been this way since just before 7:00 AM Tuesday the 22nd.
I’m seeing more work crews cropping up in my area though, here’s to hoping…
Here’s Day Six. Still no power, and the laptop is beeping at me that the battery’s dying. Drat. We’ll keep y’all posted though.
Jesus. I’ve heard nothing of this in St. Louis. We usually keep abreast of Memphis-related stuff here, or so I thought. I hope you get power back soon, and if you don’t, just ride up 55 to St. Louie and spend a week or so. We have lots of fun tourist attractions, like ice and running water. (Sorry.)
Holy fuck, dude. I live in Cleveland, maybe thirty miles from Chattanooga and I didn’t hear a thing about this.
I can somewhat understand the national media not picking it up but Memphis is Tennessee’s biggest god damn city and we hear nothing about it?! What the hell?
Jack, ain’t that some shit? You’re in the dark, and are going to be for quite some time, apparently, and about ten years ago, when an icestorm took out something like 90% of Maine’s powerlines, they had the entire state rewired in less than a month! Yet, we can’t even get a city rewired in the same amount of time. It’s crazy. And while it’s nice that you don’t have to worry about freezing to death, if the power had gone out in the middle of a cold spell, you could have saved the contents of your fridge simply by sticking them in a cooler outside. (You’d be surprized at the number of people who can’t figure this out.)
Still, it’ll give you a cool story to relate to your grandchildren someday. (“You mean you actually spent days without electricity! What about your portable Mr. Fusion unit, wasn’t that working?”)
I think I owe Memphis an apology.
I was vacationing in Morristown, TN this week and I heard vague reports of 100 mph straight-line winds, the governor checking things out, etc. - what I heard was basically picked up from the car radio on the way to and from the Food Lion - my in-laws don’t watch TV or listen to the radio or read newspapers.
Here in the greater Chicagoland area, we get 80-100 mph winds once or twice a year. HOWEVER, because we get more extreme weather than Tennessee we tend to build structures that better withstand such weather. (Rockford, Illinois got hit just a few weeks ago, but they got all power restored in just a couple weeks) It slipped my mind that, of course, Memphis wouldn’t build to that standard (on the flip side, your architecture is probably better adapted to surviving a heat wave - in 1995 Chicago had a heat wave that killed 700 outright, in large part because our buildings are designed to hold heat in due to our nasty winters).
Take care, be safe, drive carefully, do your best to keep cool, and be careful about unrefrigerated food.
Broom, you probably don’t owe Memphis an apology. It recently came out that TN is number 2 in fire deaths in the nation. Apparently, it’s looking like the lax enforcement and lack of codes in certain areas are to blame. So, it’s entirely possible that things should have been capable of withstanding what happened, but because the contractors knew they could get away with not obeying codes, it wasn’t built that way.
As a transplanted Yank, I’ve screamed in frustration at some of the things this state does, which make no sense as far as construction goes. Yet they can get away with it because codes laws are out of date, non-existant, or unenforced.
Well, I read vibrotronica’s thread, and I have been thinking of you guys. I know how bad it is to be out of power for even a few hours, let along days, so I feel for you.
OK, I got the laptop charged at a friend’s place, plus did my laundry (which was LOOOONG overue) and juiced up the cell phone. So now my problem is the HEAT. The unseasonably cool weather has passed and it is presently 88 F inside my apartment. Oh, for a fan.
At least I’m young(ish) and healthy; I’m sure some of the frailer elements of the populace will start having serious difficulties pretty soon.
Thanks again for everyone’s good wishes. I’d love to relate some magic formula that Dopers could follow to help us out, but I think it’s just a matter of waiting at this point. I may go out in a bit to try to sit in some A/C for a while, though I’m not convinced that that doesn’t make it worse to get back into the heat.
I think I’m going to start writing vicious letters to CNN about their non-coverage of this.
Thanks, all; your good wishes really do help.
Well smack me senseless!
If it hadn’t been for vibrotronica’s thread, I would have never known about the storms in Memphis, and wouldn’t have checked in with my folks to make sure they were okay. They were, thankfully. They live about 40 miles north of Memphis, but Pop works at the airport. Mom said she slept through the storm (she sleeps really hard when she finally does get to sleep), but said Pop had to ride the storm out at work. Not a pretty thing.
It never occurred to me to post to vibrotronica’s thread, and I’m so sorry about that. So let me just say now that I’ve got y’all in my thoughts and prayers.
Dazz
How is it that we in the Nashville area haven’t even heard about this? It boggles the mind. I’m so sorry to hear of your troubles. What can those of us in the Mid-State area do to help?
The newspapers are really crappy about covering anything here. My brother says that everytime he goes out of town, he picks up a newspaper so he can find out what’s going on here. I remember reading about a toxic waste spill in Murfreesboro, in USA Today, but neither The Daily News Gerbil, nor The Tennessean could be bothered to cover it.
This appeared on cnn.com on Thursday.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WEATHER/07/24/severe.storms.ap/
However, it was Hit #15 on a Google news search for “Memphis storm.” #1-14 were all local, except for the Arizona Republic’s story on Friday. Weird.
Sorry to hear about your recent storm and power outage, jackelope. I grew up not far from Memphis, and I can sympathize about the lack of national coverage. The situation is a little better in St. Louis, but not much.
Thanks for the good wishes, everybody. Things are really rough down here.
I’d just like to shoot out a big hearty “fuck you” to the whole fucking news media with the exception of jackelope’s paper, the much-maligned Memphis Commercial Appeal. The CA has really stepped up to the plate on this one. And much, much thanks to jackelope for keeping these threads alive over the weekend.
I went ballistic in a restaurant yesterday looking through the New York Times. Not a word about Memphis, even in the Week in Review section. They did mention the earthquake in Japan, however. Oh, and I understand that the same storm that smashed Memphis caused some flooding in Ohio.
Nobody gives two fucks about Memphis.
I hate it for ya, Memphis Dopers. Here in Raleigh (the piedmont area of NC) we get ice storms in the winter which topple trees and cut out power, and hurricanes in the summer which topple trees and cut out power.
Winter’s not so bad, since there’s fireplaces and blankets, and you can always keep your fridge stuff outside, but summer SUCKS w/o power. Actually, summer sucks with power too. Is it October yet?
Yowza!! I don’t even know what to say … so sorry to hear about this. If you can get here, you are more than welcome to stay with me here in Philly. I don’t know why you’d want to, but we can at least feed you. And we have plenty of cold beer.
Yet another reason to not watch the news - what they do report is (usually) false, and they DON’T tell you what you really OUGHT to know.
Kyla, can you link to your friend’s LiveJournal? I’d be very interested to read it.