So many stars

Huntsville, the town where I live, has not had power since last Wednesday at 4:30pm.  Wednesday was the day that tornadoes roared across the South, killing a few hundred people.  We set a new record for tornadoes in the month of April this year in 2011:  679 - up from a record of about 250, set in 2003.

Main transmission lines went down from TVA, our electrical supplier.  The utility company reports that our grid is intact, just that no power can get to it just yet.

Traffic lights are dark, gas stations cannot pump gas, and stores are operating their registers from generators, selling whatever food they have.  Even though we had 4 bars of AT&T service, we could make no outgoing calls, receive no incoming calls, and could only text and email sporadically until yesterday.  Fortunately a neighbor has a land-line that still worked.

We have been furiously grilling all usable food from our freezer before it rots.  But we still ended up throwing away a huge amount of food that we couldn't keep.

Water is still flowing; one water pumping station is back on the grid, the other one is generator-powered for now.

My husband and I drove to Nashville yesterday so that he could go back to work tomorrow (he telecommutes).  I drove us up - I'm currently not working since the building where my business lives is not powered yet - I'm self-employed, so I'm not making any money, either, and rent and mortgage is due today.  We took my car up here since we used all of his gas the day before to take a friend to a car rental place so she could drive to Ohio to be with family.

Through grilling on the lawn during the evenings, we've gotten to know our good neighbors :-)

Stars, so many stars!

Our infrastructure which supports our high-tech life is fragile, friends - be prepared for when it breaks, for break it will.  Even though Wednesday, April 27 2011 began with tornado sirens at 6:00am and continued all day long (12 separate warnings), we were not prepared.  Thankfully we just happened to have enough food to eat, running water to drink, neighbors who shared with us, and enough gasoline to get us out of the blackout zone when we needed to leave.

I know I'll be more conscious of what dry goods and emergency supplies we have on hand from now on; the remembered words of my grandparents from when I was a child about emergencies are ringing in my ears now. 

I would encourage you to have an emergency kit ready, even if you don't live in a place that normally succumbs to extreme weather - our electrical infrastructure is fragile.

Prepare!  As of this writing 500,000 people in my county still have no power.