[ARCHIVED THREAD] - A few things i have learned so far from the tornado disaster in Alabama (Page 4 of 5)
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TBS, Could twitter play a role in disseminating information in these circumstances? My wife has long hated twitter, yet found it useful to contact specific groups for special purposes. If they have smart phones or internet connection, even by 3G cards, it might work. IIRC, TBS mentioned cell signals being sporadic, while another person down there said that he hadn't lost reception. Having an internet connection would be dependent on a number of variables, the first of which would be power, which a lot of people don't have. Take home, it would work, but would be hit or miss depending on where your target group was located. IIRC, thereisnospoon mentioned using Facebook as a way to communicate. Facebook and Gmail were more reliable than SMS text or voicemail in Huntsville. Voice calls were very hard to get out. I did 80% of my communication with friends, family, and coworkers with the Gmail app on my Droid phone. As an aside, we had as much as several hours of lag between sending and receiving SMS text. My neighbor's boss recieved all of his voicemails from the past three days in one big dump of 40 messages. Phone switcing was a bit odd–– you'd have to dial half a dozen times, but if you did get through the calls mostly didn't drop. Also, the first place near us to get their internet connection back was Sam's club with free wifi which could be reached from inside the store or in the parking lot. |
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I even saw them requiring EUC's for some red Coleman canoes once.... Yeah, but those were tactical red canoes. 
I hope they removed the "shoulder thing that goes up" before selling them to you. you never know when one of those pesky russians will try to get out canoe technology. |
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I came from TN to ARAB. The coordination seems to be getting better, NG is set up POD for water, MRE, ice. I am trying to reach Ruth FD, I have generators and lights not being used. Do you mean you want to contact them or find their physical location? Here's what google turned up: Ruth Volunteer Fire Department 3075 Matt Morrow Rd, Arab, AL (256) 586-5199 Heading North up 231 out of Arab you'll want to turn left (West) on Ruth Rd. You'll go about 3 miles and then turn right (North) on Matt Morrow Rd. Volunteer FD should be about 400ft up ahead, probably on the right, if Google Maps can be trusted. I've never been to that part of Arab, so ask a local for directions if you can. |
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you never know when one of those pesky russians will try to get out canoe technology. This is no joking matter. Those bastards reverse-engineered our towed-array sonar from a surplus jonboat. Canoes require a background check, but I just got some military M16 racks without one 
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TBS, Could twitter play a role in disseminating information in these circumstances? My wife has long hated twitter, yet found it useful to contact specific groups for special purposes. If they have smart phones or internet connection, even by 3G cards, it might work. IIRC, TBS mentioned cell signals being sporadic, while another person down there said that he hadn't lost reception. Having an internet connection would be dependent on a number of variables, the first of which would be power, which a lot of people don't have. Take home, it would work, but would be hit or miss depending on where your target group was located. IIRC, thereisnospoon mentioned using Facebook as a way to communicate. Facebook and Gmail were more reliable than SMS text or voicemail in Huntsville. Voice calls were very hard to get out. I did 80% of my communication with friends, family, and coworkers with the Gmail app on my Droid phone. As an aside, we had as much as several hours of lag between sending and receiving SMS text. My neighbor's boss recieved all of his voicemails from the past three days in one big dump of 40 messages. Phone switcing was a bit odd–– you'd have to dial half a dozen times, but if you did get through the calls mostly didn't drop. Also, the first place near us to get their internet connection back was Sam's club with free wifi which could be reached from inside the store or in the parking lot. Did you happen to notice data speeds through your phone? Wondering if you could've used google voice or skype over your phone. Odd on the storing/dumping of text/voicemail. |
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If you were referring to my comments regarding text, I was in Arab alabama while t b s is in a major metropolitan. May have something to do with volume.
I was in Ruth the day of the tornado and again yesterday after churchqhanding out food. If you can't get through to Ruth with the lights and generators take them on to rainsville or albertville. They got hammered as well. Be careful though, tbe scammers and looters are finally showing their hand as the power has been restored and things return to sorta normal they are running out of time. We ran a couple off our place today who had been eyeing our generator and other preps. For the most part, the Arab and surrounding communities pulled together very nicely with the help of a local radio station. 92.7fm began emergency broadcasting the day of and are still helping folks solve problems onthe air. An example, theybrought in a licensed nurse practitioner to answer medical questions and just today as power was being restored, a woman called knob obvious respiratory distress. She hadn't had her nebulizer treatmentsin 3 or 4 days. They put out a call and had and ulizer and albuteral deliverdto the woman in minutes. |
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Civillian help for searching is extreamly welcome as is delivering supplies to search teams. Someone else asked but I did not see an answer. Have you seen any CERT members, or do you know if there are any CERT programs in the area? Had another question about communication. What roll do cell phones play? Great alternative to dedicated agency radio, or last choice after smoke signals? we have several cert groups that show up at the ham fests and such. i have seen non of them on scene nor in uniform. i also suspect they would be kept out of the search areas along with everyone else right now. cell phones are just now begining to become useable again. for 48 hours they were effectiviely useless here. text messageing was also dead but oddly data was up. i could send emails and access the net on ym phone but voice and text were jammed. Same observation from my corner of the world. Landline to cell worked out most of the time oddly enough. Cell to cell was useless. Got dispatch to notify my wife about second one because all emergency contact functions were nonfunctional here by that time. All power was out for the entire county and any radio station you could hear that would tell the storm track had already been knocked offline. Still haven't figured out how that worked. |
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TBS, Could twitter play a role in disseminating information in these circumstances? My wife has long hated twitter, yet found it useful to contact specific groups for special purposes. If they have smart phones or internet connection, even by 3G cards, it might work. IIRC, TBS mentioned cell signals being sporadic, while another person down there said that he hadn't lost reception. Having an internet connection would be dependent on a number of variables, the first of which would be power, which a lot of people don't have. Take home, it would work, but would be hit or miss depending on where your target group was located. IIRC, thereisnospoon mentioned using Facebook as a way to communicate. Facebook and Gmail were more reliable than SMS text or voicemail in Huntsville. Voice calls were very hard to get out. I did 80% of my communication with friends, family, and coworkers with the Gmail app on my Droid phone. As an aside, we had as much as several hours of lag between sending and receiving SMS text. My neighbor's boss recieved all of his voicemails from the past three days in one big dump of 40 messages. Phone switcing was a bit odd–– you'd have to dial half a dozen times, but if you did get through the calls mostly didn't drop. Also, the first place near us to get their internet connection back was Sam's club with free wifi which could be reached from inside the store or in the parking lot. Did you happen to notice data speeds through your phone? Wondering if you could've used google voice or skype over your phone. Odd on the storing/dumping of text/voicemail. data speeds were normal for me. in areas i normally had full 3g it worked fine. |
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Did you happen to notice data speeds through your phone? Wondering if you could've used google voice or skype over your phone. Odd on the storing/dumping of text/voicemail. Sorry for the delay–– I still only have access at work. Speeds are pretty slow, and service was intermittent. We had the best 3G access early in the morning, presumably when everyone was still in bed. Even then it took 20-30 seconds to load the ARFcom/mobile homepage, so rates must have been pretty low. We have issues with Skype at work even on good days, so I'd be hesitant to try it. The voicemail dump may have been an outlier. My voicemails came through ok but sometimes with a couple of hours delay. It was the unreliability of SMS that really surprised me. |
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TBS and RoB, thanks for the info.
This thread has been extremely useful, and sobering. I'm now putting money away for a ham setup and battery box setup. And maybe another generator, a small one. And more fuel, a lot more - 20 gallons I have just doesn't seem enough now. |
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my power come up last night. i used about 14 gallons of gas between thursday morning and last night. that equals about 3-4 gallons a day running 6-7 hrs each day. on those numbers planning for a 1 week outage i should be stocking at least 20 gallons. one thing i was glad to see was other than search and rescue getting power to gas stations was a priority. i think things will REALLLY have to be bad to be more than 7-10 days without fuel resupply here. |
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TBS and RoB, thanks for the info. This thread has been extremely useful, and sobering. I'm now putting money away for a ham setup and battery box setup. And maybe another generator, a small one. And more fuel, a lot more - 20 gallons I have just doesn't seem enough now. I loaned my 100W cig lighter inverters to my sister because she didn't have any other means of charging electronics at home. I'm looking at building a small battery/inverter kit with an SLA battery and a 400W inverter for some charging needs and to run the electronics on our gas stove's oven when needed. (It won't quite run on 100W.) My wife's Energizer-brand car jumpstart pack has been invaluable. It has a built-in 100W inverter and the battery charges directly from 110VAC. We left it plugged into the wall to charge whenever the genny was running and then used the inverter as needed to charge phones, wife's iPad, etc. It worked out very nicely. Also, on fuel, try to only store ethanol-free fuel and do yourself the favor of treating it with Pri-G when you put it up. Keep it rotated and treated. We do all of this and had no fuel-related issues. I had 10 gallons on hand plus an extra 25 in vehicles if needed. We ended up using maybe 1/3 gallon per hour x 4 hours a day keeping electronics charged, chilling our fridge and the neighbors', and powering our tankless NG water heater (which uses very little power, but still requires AC to run.) Something I hadn't ever thought of but found very useful is the 'fast cool' button on our fridge. It drops the setpoints from 38F fridge and 0F freezer to something like 33F fridge and -10F freezer. I hit this button whenever I started the genny and the it cooled the fridge down much faster. Never would have thought about it when we were fridge-shopping last year. |
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Question for you guys running your fridge/freezers with a genny –– how do you determine what amount of run time is sufficient to cool it down until the next gen run? Do you just run it until you hear the appliance's compressor stop due to the internal thermostat? Or a thermometer inside?
I'm also curious how long it takes each day to cool them sufficiently until the next day. Seems like about 4 hours is what some of you are using. I put the kill-a-watt meter on the fridge this weekend and was pleased to see it only takes about 1200 watts to start and about 170 to run the compressor. With no compressor it's pretty much nil. However opening the door (turning on the incandescent light) draws a lot, so I think a priority will be to take out the light bulbs while on emergency power. Do these numbers seem in line with what others are seeing? |
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Question for you guys running your fridge/freezers with a genny –– how do you determine what amount of run time is sufficient to cool it down until the next gen run? Do you just run it until you hear the appliance's compressor stop due to the internal thermostat? Or a thermometer inside? I'm also curious how long it takes each day to cool them sufficiently until the next day. Seems like about 4 hours is what some of you are using. I put the kill-a-watt meter on the fridge this weekend and was pleased to see it only takes about 1200 watts to start and about 170 to run the compressor. With no compressor it's pretty much nil. However opening the door (turning on the incandescent light) draws a lot, so I think a priority will be to take out the light bulbs while on emergency power. Do these numbers seem in line with what others are seeing? I can't hear my compressor and, unfortunately, the front panel only shows the temp setpoint and not the actual temperature measurement. I set out to run it for an hour three times a day, but ended up averaging about 4 hours of runtime daily. The 'fast cool' button really got things chilled-down quickly. Also, keeping more mass in the fridge will help keep it cool. If you see an outage coming, make sure the fridge is filled with water bottles and fully chilled. Likewise the freezer–– fill it with water bottles to freeze, or keep it full of food. A full fridge has more thermal mass and will therefore heat up more slowly when it is shutdown. I never ran my generator overnight and always had a cool fridge the next morning. 1200W sounds reasonable for starting. Ours loads the generator a bit when it kicks on, and 1200W was what I had guessed for it. I wouldn't really bother with the light bulbs–– they'll only be illuminated for the 30 seconds or so that it takes you to get food out and close the door. |
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Question for you guys running your fridge/freezers with a genny –– how do you determine what amount of run time is sufficient to cool it down until the next gen run? Do you just run it until you hear the appliance's compressor stop due to the internal thermostat? Or a thermometer inside? I'm also curious how long it takes each day to cool them sufficiently until the next day. Seems like about 4 hours is what some of you are using. I put the kill-a-watt meter on the fridge this weekend and was pleased to see it only takes about 1200 watts to start and about 170 to run the compressor. With no compressor it's pretty much nil. However opening the door (turning on the incandescent light) draws a lot, so I think a priority will be to take out the light bulbs while on emergency power. Do these numbers seem in line with what others are seeing? I've got two battery banks and inverters for the fridges and freezer. The batteries are sized to run the fridges and freezer for about 18 hours or so. My plan is to run a generator for about six hours during the day to recharge the batteries while still running the fridges. In other words, I plan on powering them 24/7, just on different supplies during different times. I used a Kill-A-Watt meter to determine the required energy and therefore battery bank capacity. |
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Quoted: Question for you guys running your fridge/freezers with a genny –– how do you determine what amount of run time is sufficient to cool it down until the next gen run? Do you just run it until you hear the appliance's compressor stop due to the internal thermostat? Or a thermometer inside? I'm also curious how long it takes each day to cool them sufficiently until the next day. Seems like about 4 hours is what some of you are using. I put the kill-a-watt meter on the fridge this weekend and was pleased to see it only takes about 1200 watts to start and about 170 to run the compressor. With no compressor it's pretty much nil. However opening the door (turning on the incandescent light) draws a lot, so I think a priority will be to take out the light bulbs while on emergency power. Do these numbers seem in line with what others are seeing? i keep an eye on the freezer temp for starters and basically let it go until the comressor begins it's normal on off cycles. from that point on it's at temp. i let it continue to run as normal until we shut the gen off to go on bettareies. a fridge/freezer in good shape should easily go 1-2 full days without power. this basically resets that timer everytime the gen is cranked. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Question for you guys running your fridge/freezers with a genny –– how do you determine what amount of run time is sufficient to cool it down until the next gen run? Do you just run it until you hear the appliance's compressor stop due to the internal thermostat? Or a thermometer inside? I'm also curious how long it takes each day to cool them sufficiently until the next day. Seems like about 4 hours is what some of you are using. I put the kill-a-watt meter on the fridge this weekend and was pleased to see it only takes about 1200 watts to start and about 170 to run the compressor. With no compressor it's pretty much nil. However opening the door (turning on the incandescent light) draws a lot, so I think a priority will be to take out the light bulbs while on emergency power. Do these numbers seem in line with what others are seeing? i keep an eye on the freezer temp for starters and basically let it go until the comressor begins it's normal on off cycles. from that point on it's at temp. i let it continue to run as normal until we shut the gen off to go on bettareies. a fridge/freezer in good shape should easily go 1-2 full days without power. this basically resets that timer everytime the gen is cranked. I wonder if there is a way to rig a switch to a thermometer...... |
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day of event... when the Shit hits the fan LE and fire are overwhelmed. Emergency calls not involving direct threat to life will not be answered. Civillian help for searching is extreamly welcome as is delivering supplies to search teams. Interagency coms is a joke. most departments could not talk to each other and were depending on cell phones to dispatchers to contact and relay info to other agencies. the mutual aid channels were overwhelmed with traffic and departs have pathetic radio disciple. Ham radio operators were VERY effective at passing traffic between agencies and getting supplies where they needed to be on the civillian side. For accurate information monitoring LE and fire traffic has been useless. They only thing you can really get it knowing the location. Ham radio has been the most accurate source of damage reports i have found. they have also been vital in coordinating civillian assets and getting them either into areas LE has arrived or getting supplies to rescue units that can't get them from their agency due to lack of manpower/vehicles. Quoted:
Note to self; get ham radio certified so as to be a real asset in a serious crisis. if anyone reading this thread is interested in obtaining an amateur (ham) radio license and learning basic operating procedures suitable for such an event as the OP has described, please click here: the CAN'T FAIL thread for getting a ham radio license and learning basic VHF/UHF operations regards, ar-jedi |
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if anyone reading this thread is interested in obtaining an amateur (ham) radio license and learning basic operating procedures suitable for such an event as the OP has described, please click here: the CAN'T FAIL thread for getting a ham radio license and learning basic VHF/UHF operations regards, ar-jedi Jedi, Thanks for all you do here. I've learned a boatload of great info from your posts. |
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I wonder if there is a way to rig a switch to a thermometer...... If you decide to file for a provisional patent I suggest you call it a "thermostat". Kinda catchy, huh? 
dear god i needed that laugh Choking, tearing up. Trying to supress laughter during daughter's choir recital. Wife mad. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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I wonder if there is a way to rig a switch to a thermometer...... If you decide to file for a provisional patent I suggest you call it a "thermostat". Kinda catchy, huh?
dear god i needed that laugh Choking, tearing up. Trying to supress laughter during daughter's choir recital. Wife mad. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile I reckon my work here is done.
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you are the first person not to blame me for wayward spending at various ham radio-related online stores!  Don't hold your breath. I'll be getting around to it.
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Jedi, Thanks for all you do here. I've learned a boatload of great info from your posts. you are the first person not to blame me for wayward spending at various ham radio-related online stores!
ar-jedi With much knowledge comes much responsibility young padowan. |
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For those of you discussing fuel consumption with generators, a while back Skibane posted a formula that I've found to be very accurate:
"As a very rough rule of thumb, a small-to-medium-sized gasoline generator (i.e., 1KW to 7.5 KW) will burn around 0.2 gallons per hour, per 1,000 watts of load. As an example, if you're powering a 3,000 watt load, your generator might consume around 0.6 gallons per hour (or around 14.4 gallons over a 24 hour period)."
The formula only applies to moderately loaded generators. [roughly 25% to 75% of the generator's capacity] Due an ice storm a while back I ran my 5500 watt generator 24/7 for a week. The average load on the generator was probably a little less than half capacity (2250 watts) and I averaged about 10-11 gallons per gas a day. |
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For those of you discussing fuel consumption with generators, a while back Skibane posted a formula that I've found to be very accurate: "As a very rough rule of thumb, a small-to-medium-sized gasoline generator (i.e., 1KW to 7.5 KW) will burn around 0.2 gallons per hour, per 1,000 watts of load. As an example, if you're powering a 3,000 watt load, your generator might consume around 0.6 gallons per hour (or around 14.4 gallons over a 24 hour period)."
The formula only applies to moderately loaded generators. [roughly 25% to 75% of the generator's capacity] Due an ice storm a while back I ran my 5500 watt generator 24/7 for a week. The average load on the generator was probably a little less than half capacity (2250 watts) and I averaged about 10-11 gallons per gas a day. Thanks for reposting that formula. I copied it to evernote for future reference. |
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A friend related an interesting story to me tonight. He and his wife had some damage where a fallen tree knocked the power lines off their house at the meter box masthead. He was missing coffee badly and went into a big Kroger's supercenter on day three of the outage. The Starbucks there was up and serving coffee, but the line went around the inside of the Kroger's and was an estimated two hours long. This was on a day when gas lines were a couple of hours long and only a few stations were pumping. |
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––––The Starbucks there was up and serving coffee, but the line went around the inside of the Kroger's and was an estimated two hours long. This was on a day when gas lines were a couple of hours long and only a few stations were pumping. I like coffee, but I just don't understand peoples' obsession with Starbucks. |
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The_Beer_Slayer, sitrep? things slowly becoming "more normal"? ar-jedi Madison (just west of Huntsville and a little south of where the EF5 went through) is back pretty much to normal. Everything's open, including the Arsenal, gas stations, grocery stores and what not. Gas jumped from around $3.79 to $3.89 and up in the last week though. Still a lot of cleanup and damage repair going on just north of us where the -5 went through, you've all seen the pics, it's going to months before that's done. They should have a +500KVA line into Brown's Ferry by this Saturday or Sunday, bringing up to 2GWs back on line (they are going to keep one unit off line to do some maintenance). Until that happens, we're hanging by a thread power-wise. Some parts of north Madison county (north of Hwy 72 and my family) lost power last night, but I don't have any details. TVA has over 4k personnel working nothing but power line issues - it's the first time in their history they've had to bring in outside TVA personnel to help with storm damage. Thanks, |
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The_Beer_Slayer, sitrep? things slowly becoming "more normal"? ar-jedi I live in Bham, and outside of affected areas things have pretty much returned to normal. There is still a crawler on TV about shelters, what supplies are needed, etc. I live south of town, and other than the huge root ball in my yard I guess I wouldn't know anything had ever been wrong. Inside the affected areas life is still a bit different. Small areas directly affected by the storm are still under a 8pm-6am curfew and have roadblocks with natinal guard troops carrying Ar15s without magazines in them (I guess you call those "clubs") . This is good, it keeps sightseers from clogging up the road and impeding cleanup work. You have to be a resident or support personnel to get through them. Phone lines are being restored much more slowly than power lines. Many people are still without phone and internet service. Debris is being piled by the roadside by volunteer cleanup crews faster than it can be picked up by contractors. In some areas it feels like your driving down a hallway. BTW, I am hearing a different story out of NE Alabama, that response is still very slow and some communities seem to be somehow forgotten. I can't verify this. I believe Schmoopy went to Rainsville, Al. Perhaps he can comment on what he saw. If you guys want to observe volunteer relief effort go to the facebook page toomers for tuscaloosa. It was established by some Auburn fans and has really taken off. It's a great way to keep up with volunteer relief efforts, and speaks to the generosity of others in need. |
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Quoted: Quoted: The_Beer_Slayer, sitrep? things slowly becoming "more normal"? ar-jedi I live in Bham, and outside of affected areas things have pretty much returned to normal. There is still a crawler on TV about shelters, what supplies are needed, etc. I live south of town, and other than the huge root ball in my yard I guess I wouldn't know anything had ever been wrong. Inside the affected areas life is still a bit different. Small areas directly affected by the storm are still under a 8pm-6am curfew and have roadblocks with natinal guard troops carrying Ar15s without magazines in them (I guess you call those "clubs") . This is good, it keeps sightseers from clogging up the road and impeding cleanup work. You have to be a resident or support personnel to get through them. Phone lines are being restored much more slowly than power lines. Many people are still without phone and internet service. Debris is being piled by the roadside by volunteer cleanup crews faster than it can be picked up by contractors. In some areas it feels like your driving down a hallway. BTW, I am hearing a different story out of NE Alabama, that response is still very slow and some communities seem to be somehow forgotten. I can't verify this. I believe Schmoopy went to Rainsville, Al. Perhaps he can comment on what he saw. If you guys want to observe volunteer relief effort go to the facebook page toomers for tuscaloosa. It was established by some Auburn fans and has really taken off. It's a great way to keep up with volunteer relief efforts, and speaks to the generosity of others in need. pretty much back to normal here. as said above north alabama has been virtually ignored from what i have heard. mostly smaller communites of less than 2-300 people population wise. the NG her is pulling out of many locations. My neighbor brought home 20 cases of MRES he picked up as they were dumping them all to anyone willing to take them. they told him they had not given out a single mre to anyone. too much BBQ going around |
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The_Beer_Slayer, sitrep? things slowly becoming "more normal"? ar-jedi I live in Bham, and outside of affected areas things have pretty much returned to normal. There is still a crawler on TV about shelters, what supplies are needed, etc. I live south of town, and other than the huge root ball in my yard I guess I wouldn't know anything had ever been wrong. Inside the affected areas life is still a bit different. Small areas directly affected by the storm are still under a 8pm-6am curfew and have roadblocks with natinal guard troops carrying Ar15s without magazines in them (I guess you call those "clubs") . This is good, it keeps sightseers from clogging up the road and impeding cleanup work. You have to be a resident or support personnel to get through them. Phone lines are being restored much more slowly than power lines. Many people are still without phone and internet service. Debris is being piled by the roadside by volunteer cleanup crews faster than it can be picked up by contractors. In some areas it feels like your driving down a hallway. BTW, I am hearing a different story out of NE Alabama, that response is still very slow and some communities seem to be somehow forgotten. I can't verify this. I believe Schmoopy went to Rainsville, Al. Perhaps he can comment on what he saw. If you guys want to observe volunteer relief effort go to the facebook page toomers for tuscaloosa. It was established by some Auburn fans and has really taken off. It's a great way to keep up with volunteer relief efforts, and speaks to the generosity of others in need. pretty much back to normal here. as said above north alabama has been virtually ignored from what i have heard. mostly smaller communites of less than 2-300 people population wise. the NG her is pulling out of many locations. My neighbor brought home 20 cases of MRES he picked up as they were dumping them all to anyone willing to take them. they told him they had not given out a single mre to anyone. too much BBQ going around I still have a couple of cases of MRE's from Katrina in the basement. Same deal, once real food started coming in MRE's fell out of favor. TSB, I spent 8 months in Hancock County MS after Katrina, I'd love to pick your brain and compare notes sometime. |
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Quoted: My neighbor brought home 20 cases of MRES he picked up as they were dumping them all to anyone willing to take them. they told him they had not given out a single mre to anyone. too much BBQ going around Ask him what he wants for them- I'll take 'em! keep your eyes open and note where the NG staging areas are. when they leave they are dumping these things fast as they can. |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The_Beer_Slayer, sitrep? things slowly becoming "more normal"? ar-jedi I live in Bham, and outside of affected areas things have pretty much returned to normal. There is still a crawler on TV about shelters, what supplies are needed, etc. I live south of town, and other than the huge root ball in my yard I guess I wouldn't know anything had ever been wrong. Inside the affected areas life is still a bit different. Small areas directly affected by the storm are still under a 8pm-6am curfew and have roadblocks with natinal guard troops carrying Ar15s without magazines in them (I guess you call those "clubs") . This is good, it keeps sightseers from clogging up the road and impeding cleanup work. You have to be a resident or support personnel to get through them. Phone lines are being restored much more slowly than power lines. Many people are still without phone and internet service. Debris is being piled by the roadside by volunteer cleanup crews faster than it can be picked up by contractors. In some areas it feels like your driving down a hallway. BTW, I am hearing a different story out of NE Alabama, that response is still very slow and some communities seem to be somehow forgotten. I can't verify this. I believe Schmoopy went to Rainsville, Al. Perhaps he can comment on what he saw. If you guys want to observe volunteer relief effort go to the facebook page toomers for tuscaloosa. It was established by some Auburn fans and has really taken off. It's a great way to keep up with volunteer relief efforts, and speaks to the generosity of others in need. pretty much back to normal here. as said above north alabama has been virtually ignored from what i have heard. mostly smaller communites of less than 2-300 people population wise. the NG her is pulling out of many locations. My neighbor brought home 20 cases of MRES he picked up as they were dumping them all to anyone willing to take them. they told him they had not given out a single mre to anyone. too much BBQ going around I still have a couple of cases of MRE's from Katrina in the basement. Same deal, once real food started coming in MRE's fell out of favor. TSB, I spent 8 months in Hancock County MS after Katrina, I'd love to pick your brain and compare notes sometime. any time. shoot me an im i'll send you my number |
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I spent 8 months in Hancock County MS after Katrina... What part? Wife and I spent some weekends helping rebuild from Katrina in Pearlington and I spent the weekend there after Gustav tearing drywall, carpet, and furniture out of houses in some of the same neighborhoods.
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