We have electricity! Woot!
Thanks, Mr. Edison!
We've had a lovely time pioneering, but are very happy to get back to normal. Our dog Shiloh raced around while I made a tour of the house flicking lights. She likes her routine, and has been depressed since the storm hit.
We did have a good time last night. By candlelight, we watched our Roomba vacuum the carpet, then we watched a DVD of the 'Fellowship of the Ring' on my charged-up computer. Ah, good times.
Today I'll tackle the backyard. There's a giant royal poinciana out there in pieces, amongst other landscaping debris. Mr. Cracker has headed off to check on his company, as he can see their systems are all up now.
It's about time, too. Yesterday people had already gotten cranky. As I was getting home from my mother-on-law's yesterday, I heard the neighbor bitching at his wife that the exit lane into Markham Park for free ice and water was five miles long. I walked over and gave her cake that my mother-in-law had just baked. It's not that lady's fault there's a line.
I've not been out on the roads further than a few blocks, but with only (as of last night) 13 working stop signals in Broward County, things were interesting. In a heavily landscaped area such as where we are, the problem is tree barricades across the roads every few yards. In Ft. Lauderdale, though, my husband saw a lot of businesses with no roofs, and lots and lots of missing windows.
We got way more than we bargained for with Wilma, and I think next time people will be more assiduous in their hurricane preparations. They've only told us a million times to have at least 72-hours worth of essential supplies on hand, and to board up our windows. Not a whole lot you can do about something like this, though:
Pompano Beach resident Zilma Barbosa stands in her front yard trying to figure out how to start the clean-up effort at her home. A huge ficus tree was uprooted by the storm, falling on the roof of her home and lifting her and her husband's car 12-15 feet in the air.
Posted by floridacracker at October 26, 2005 06:53 AM
Congratulations on the electricity, Donnah. You can pioneer in the South without most things, but not a fan or air conditioner.
I just returned from several weeks on the Mississippi coast, where my brother still had no telephone land-line six weeks after Katrina hit. We went down to the beach area to look around. Imagine the first mile from the beach as looking like a big garbage dump -- where there used to be neighborhoods. Imagine that mile-wide garbage dump stretching for hundreds of miles along the Gulf Coast. It was absolutely astonishing. My dad's town of Pass Christian is rubble, as if it endured a WWII shelling. Church groups have cleared areas in parks and set up tents for volunteers. My brother and I watched some of "Band of Brothers" while I was down there and I was struck how much the scenes of devastation in the movie resembled those on the coast.
You mention people getting cranky. Six weeks later, Katrina's survivors are still cranky; cranky has become a way of life. With many, many stores destroyed, there are only a few places to buy groceries, so then the lines are long. Before katrina my brother avoided the crowds by shopping at Wal Mart at midnight, but Wal Mart does not run 24 hours now because half of the employees have left the area, because their homes or apartments were destroyed. There are thousands of jobs advertised in the local paper because the employees left due to having no homes. Everywhere you go you see (and smell) refrigerators on the roadside -- supposedly you can never get the smell and fungus out once food has rotted in them for two weeks. Likewise, FEMA trailers and blue-tarped roofs are ubiquitous, as are semi-destroyed homes, mutilated forests, and landscapes of garbage.
The people down there still live in a disaster zone. You don't think of something like that happening in America. And, of course, I only saw one small part of it all.
BTW, I heard tons of anti-Red Cross stories, mostly about the bureacracy and red tape. Church groups and the Salvation Army got high praise because they could move faster and give aid without questions.
Just thought you'd be interested. Sorry if this is all old news; I ain't been reading too much print or internet lately.
Posted by: Salt Lick at October 26, 2005 08:29 AMSo glad to here you're doing OK. :-)
Posted by: Bohemian at October 26, 2005 10:33 AMGreat to hear. Now open those doors and windows and help cool the whole neighborhood.
Posted by: marc at October 26, 2005 11:19 AMThanks so much, y'all.
Salt- I know they're having a rough time in Mississippi. They got a direct hit from a much bigger storm than we got. I'm not trying to diminish their hardships in any way.
I'm off Red Cross FOREVER. I don't give so they can glorify themselves through the hard work of others. It's Southern Baptist Emergency Relief and Salvation Army for me.
Posted by: Donnah at October 26, 2005 05:13 PMSalt Lick: I enjoyed reading that, although "enjoyed" is an awkward term here -- enjoyed reading as in enjoyed knowing you are alright and being more informed as to your details, moreso than I read anywhere else. The scope of the damage from Katrina has been limited by the New Orleans' travesties, and what news about other areas has been nearly non-existent beyond the initial day-or-two-after stories (now silenced). I do hope the best for everyone, as meager as that sounds, but it is sincere.
Donnah...glad you have your power! back. Better you than most, ha.
Posted by: -S- at October 26, 2005 06:41 PMGot a good 5-6 in. of rain up here in Lake County from Wilma. Rain stopped around 12:30, sun came out for good by 1:30, and by 5:00 you wouldn't have known it had ever rained in 99% of the area -- it evaporated that quickly. :-o
Posted by: Dave at October 26, 2005 09:57 PM