OK, so I slept through Hurricane Isabel. :)
From what I have seen, I’d say it was comprable to having a very strong Nor’easter come through. Property damage doesn’t seem to be too bad, biggest problems now being power outages and water problems. My power was out for somewhere between 24 and 36 hours, and I am really surprised I have it back already.
Thursday Metro closed at 11AM - good call for general safety. Basically, they didn’t want to take a chance on someone getting blown off one of the platforms into the tracks. Can’t fault them for that. Because of that, the government closed as well - folks would have to turn around and go home as soon as they got into the office. We went to work. Around 3 PM, they sent us home, support dialed in and we kept working. The drive home wasn’t too bad, but there was a fair amount of crap flying around, which I will fully admit makes me nervous. After finishing work, went over to
Headed home, slept in the dining room. Sounds silly, but my bedroom is at the back of the house and that is where all the trees are. If one came down, it would hit the bedroom, so I didn’t really want to be there if it happened. Cats were smart and stuck close by all night. Set the little battery alarm clock for 6 AM, hit the snooze button when it went off, and then slept right through it until 8:30 AM. Still no power.
Now, at that point, I look at my watch and realize that I should either be at the office, or dialed in - and I am neither. Quickly call in, tell my boss I overslept. She laughed and said, “You must not have power!” I couldn’t lie, told her I had even set the travel alarm and just slept through the darn thing. She informs me that they have power, coffee & donuts in the office. Well, I am on my way!! Almost jumped in the shower and remembered that no power + electric hot water heater = no hot water. Feeling very smart - I remember we have showers in the gym at the office, I’ll do that at lunch.
Get to the office, and we have gotten around the boil water alert through the fact that we know the coffee makers hold 3 pots worth of filtered water that would have been in there before the pump stations went down Thursday night. So we have hot coffee, donuts, power, and we’re working. At this point, I am just looking forward to my lunchtime shower! Then, at 5 til noon, they throw us out of the office - no water pressure. So much for my shower. Now - most of us don’t have power at home, but support isn’t closing. Customers are directed to call the emergency beeper, which goes to our boss and she’ll route calls out to us. Fortunately, most of our customers must have decided that their problems weren’t that bad, as I only got one call all afternoon. It was a nice afternoon - spent most of the time working on a bracelet and necklace. Bracelet is done, necklace is about 98% done. I’ll get pics and post them at some point soon.
Mom called around 5 to let me know that they had announced on the radio that the water was back, but it would take about a day to come back to full pressure and there was the boil alert. Good thing she did, since I didn’t have the radio on.
A little after 5,
Slept elsewhere last evening, with the promise of a hot shower this morning. Unfortunately, there was only about 3 minutes worth of hot water in the system. Don’t know what that’s all about since where I stayed never lost power and has a gas hot water heater anyway. Ah well, at least I got rinsed off, but I am still looking like 9 miles of bad road. Called home, got the answering maching - POWER!
So, I am home, with hot coffee and internet access again. My DSL went down on Thursday and hasn’t come back yet, so I am dialed in. It’s slow, but it works. Got to get in touch w/ the ISP to find out if it is a line problem or a modem problem or something else…
We’re on a boil water alert until Tuesday, which isn’t bad since I have power again and can boil water. They had been suggesting on the radio putting a pot of water on the grill if you didn’t have power, but, I don’t have one of those… But, I have several pitchers of water sitting on my counter that I filled up on Wednesday, so I am good to go for a while.
I have to say, I am really surprised I have power back. The outage in our neighborhood was relatively small and contained. If you went out to the main road to our development, the first traffic light in either direction was out and then everything beyond had power. The less people affected, the lower you go on the list for restoration of power. The power company goes for the most bang for the buck when getting people back up and running, which makes sense to me, I just figured we were too small a group to get it back so soon. Props to Virginia Power for bringing in an additional 7,000 people to work the storm from other states. Pepco, on the other hand, is telling people they may be without power for up to a week, and they have run out of dry ice. (Seems their dry ice supplier in Baltimore lost power…)
Now, I just need to figure out if I have enough hot water for a real shower. Figure the power has been back on for at least 2 hours - would that be enough time to heat up the water that was in the hot water heater?
