Well, just got our power back, 72 hours almost to the minute since it went out on Thursday. (I know because the kitchen clock was stuck at 4:24 all weekend) So since I'm always around here learning from everyone else I thought I'd post some thoughts about this weekend in the hopes someone may take soemthing from it. (Probably not, since most if it will be reasserting things you've probably heard here before.)

The storm was not a suprise, it was all over the news here for at least 6 days before it made landfall because it was coming in as a category 5 hurricane. At this time people were preparing and getting thigs ready for a long term damage cleanup, but when it was downgraded to a category 2 storm (I think two days before making landfall) the news media was downplaying it left and right and were actually telling people that they didn't have to worry about much damage or power-loss, as if 105 mph winds are now common in VA.

The storm hit here Thursday afternoon, and most buisnesses and schools, even the Federal Govt. did the prudent thing and didn't even open that day, maybe because they were worried about the safety of their employees, or maybe because Metro decided they weren't running trains or busses and no one else had a choice but to close. The worse of the storm was from roughly 11pm thursday to 1am Friday.

The first problem was that we didn't have a backup power source for the sump pump. I was able to rig up a siphon that worked pretty well, but if we had gotten the rains that were on the higher end of the forecast, I doubt it could have kept up.

Later that night I was hearing lots of cracks and thuds and was becoming really worried about the big oak trees accross the street. By dawn the storm had moved on and during the damage assessment I realized how lucky we'd been. We lost 7 trees in our yard, all at least 20 ft tall, but none of them hit the house. Toss in a few missing shingles and one broken storm window and that rounds out all the damage we had. Like I said, we were pretty lucky.

It will suprise no one here that bottled water became our new best friend. We never lost our tap water, some people did, but the county has said that drinking water should be boiled (anywhere from one to ten minutes, depending on which "expert" you listend to on the radio) until Tuesday, which is a minor problem if you have an electric stove and no power. We could have boiled it on the grill in a pinch, but it was far easier to have fresh water stored.

We lost almost all the food in our freezer over the next couple days. We grilled a lot of the meat we had when we realized we weren't getting power back anytime soon, but still lost quite a bit.

I finally got to justify having a chainsaw. I've spent the better part of the last three days cutting up downed trees and limbs throughout the neighborhood. My back and arms have not appreciated all this extra work, though, so I'm glad I have a bottle of Advil handy. Tip::When using a chainsaw on pine trees, either wear long pants and sleeves, or have a plan for removing sap from arm and leg hair.

I should get a commission from Princeton Tec because everyone that saw my Attitude said they were going to get one. I started carrying this in a cargo pocket after the Northeast blackout this summer and I now feel as naked without it as I do without a pocket knife (ok, it's not quite that important, but you get the idea)

Fortunately, everything in the FAK got to stay there.

Cards, candles, oil lamps and batteries came out after the sun went down, but I was too exhausted from sawing all day to stay up much past then anyway.

Things I've learned::
Overall, this was a wonderful learning experience. It was bad enough that I learned some things, but not so bad as to put us in any real danger (once the trees stopped falling)
--Cell phones did not work hardly at all on Friday, but worked decently on Saturday (one more reason I'm looking into HAM radio)
--A battery back up for the sump is important, and I'll be looking into that as well.
-- I'm also going to check into generators since my grandmother is living with us now. It's not too bad for me at 22 to go without AC for a few days, but at 87 it's a little rougher on her
--Although we're some of the last people in our area to get power back, there's still lines down accross the street just a block over, which really suprised me. I assume they're turned off, but I didn't get close enough to find out.

All in all, we came out all right. Some friends of mine down in Norfolk did not fare as well. I talked to them just long enough to make sure they're still alive, but they told me their entire street is destroyed. Thankfully their area was under manditory evacuation and they were with some other firends when the storm hit.

Anyway, I hope everyone made it throught alirght.

Chris.