Yeah, candle-light is not too sexy when you are brushing teeth by it.

Nancy.

Oh, Georgeanne, that's terrible! Such a loss, all that food. Your experience points up what the Weather service means when they say that a hurricane "is not a point."

I'm glad you are safe and the power has been restored at your place and you had no damage to your house.

Nell

What a shame about all of that spoiled food. They ought to give priority to restoring electricity in areas which depend upon well water. Three days is a long time to be without electricity. I'm glad the electricity and food spoilage were the worst of your woes.

I'm on well water, too. That is my only real concern about living in a rural area. Wish I had the bucks to get a solar pump for the well and solar and wind power. I've been checking around to see if costs have been reduced, but it is still prohibitively expensive.

Lorna

The problem with getting power restored quickly is the way electric lines 'work.' When power goes out in a wide area, they have to restore starting with sub-stations and work out, clearing the downed lines that transmit our power before they get to us. We live in an area where everybody has a well. We're all priorities and they work as quickly as possible. We were without power for 24 hours recently.

A generator becomes a priority for those of us who have even infrequent power outages that last for hours or days. We didn't use the generator during the last storm because DH was 2 days post surgery, it was pouring rain and we kept thinking it would be 'soon.' Next time it will be set up where a little old lady can start it, LOL.

Nell

That sounds really scary, Georgeanne, glad to hear there was no damage to your house or to yourselves. We once lost power for over 24 hours and I was in a panic all the food in the freezer was going to waste. Fortunately we had moved recently and the freezer had limited stuff in it, plus it was Winter and rather cold, so we ended up not loosing much. But it was not fun, that surely wasn't... Hope the weather settles in a gentler mode for you.

Eduarda

From what I've heard there wasn't a generator to be found anywhere up here. Several folks were on the news after getting sick by not using them properly. We're going on a "field trip" in a couple of weeks down to Amish country to hunt for one.

When we built out here 7 years ago we almost got geothermal power. Wonder if that would have made a difference.
kick kick kick kick kick
georgeanne

We can all make do when the power is off for just a few hours but when it's out for long periods that's a different story. Thank goodness you didn't have a tree fall on your house. We've had a couple of these types of winds in the last couple of years doing mega damage, real scary stuff.

Annette

There are 3 scary events that can happen when generators are improperly used.

1) Some people don't seem to understand that generators have gasoline engines and are not for use INSIDE.
Children, can you say, 'Carbon Monoxide poisoning?'

2) Failure to turn the main circuit breaker OFF means that if the power comes back on while the generator is in use, the generator is toast -- literally.

3) Even worse, if the main breaker isn't off, the lineman on the pole (in the bucket truck these days) down the road may be toast, literally. He's up there secure in the belief that the power is off coming from the substation, and some idiot who doesn't know how to properly use a generator sends electricity back down the wires from the other direction -- it's a two way street!

I'm sure everybody here who might use a generator knows all this. DH always checks behind me if I'm the one to pull the main breaker, just to be doubly sure. There's a lecture that goes with starting the generator, LOL, and a protocol for plugging and disconnecting things. We don't have a generator big enough to run the A/C or use the water heater.

Nell

Oh, georgeanne, how I do sympathize with you. Have you checked with your insurance? Ours paid for the loss of food in the freezers when we had the big ice storm. At least it was a help.

After the 11 days with no power and limping along with a small gasoline powered generator, we decided to have an automatic propane one installed. It comes on all by itself and is large enough to run the entire farm and all the outbuildings, including an electric hot water heater and three freezers and two refrigerators and the pump on the well. It sure took a load of worry off us. I don't know why we waited so long to do it! It was pretty costly, but at our ages, worth it.

We have had strange weather this year....everywhere.