Unequal Restoration of Power
We had a celebration breakfast this morning for our restoration of power. Schools are closed today, the Y was closed in the morning, County and State work was limited so we had a free day and AdventureMan did a BIG breakfast, with his famous biscuits, fried potatoes, sausages and eggs-to-order.
In the middle of breakfast, our son and his wife received messages that their power would not be restored until Wednesday, while almost every Florida Power customer in Escambia was told it would be restored no later than 5 today. They were so disappointed, flummoxed. Going without electricity and internet gets old in a hurry.
Florida Power sent out the following notice to customers, and I believe it is a very fine, honest and open piece of communication describing the enormous probles restoring the electrical grid after a hurricane of this size:
| Crews continue working around the clock to restore power following Isaias. Restoration is essentially complete in Bay, Holmes, Jackson, Okaloosa, Washington and Walton counties. Our focus remains on Escambia and Santa Rosa, where tree damage was more severe and widespread than initial assessments showed. By the end of today, we expect to restore power to most affected customers in Escambia and Santa Rosa, including all schools, hospitals and other critical facilities. We expect to essentially complete restoration in the remaining hardest-hit areas by end of day Tuesday, Oct. 13, for customers who can safely receive power. We know every additional hour without power is difficult. For the latest update, view your personalized outage information. You may not see crews nearby because they may be repairing parts of the energy grid miles away that must be restored first. Some homes and businesses may have damaged customer-owned electrical equipment that must be repaired by a licensed electrician before we can safely restore power. After service is restored, some customers may experience outages or flickers as crews identify and repair additional storm damage. Please keep safety your top priority. Stay far away from downed power lines, flooding and debris, and follow guidance from local emergency officials. We appreciate your patience and won’t stop working until power is restored to every customer. Stay safe. |
As disappointing as this news is – the damage in our beautiful, treacherously treed area is extensive. Street after street is blocked by fallen trees, still. Many of these trees brought down power lines. Many of the poles were snapped in half!
It is 6:15 p.m. and our garbage was just picked up. Such is the service oriented attitude of all these employees, working so hard to get Pensacola back to normal as quickly as possible.
We’ve told our family they are welcome to come over, hang out while charging up their phones and computers, and to take hot showers here, even bring their laundry. We expect they’ll take us up on it.
Isiais: Winding Down
As I put this all together I am at my desk, overlooking the Bayou, while the sun is going down. For years, I looked at houses, wanting a house like I grew up in, a house with a view of the water. What I got was better than I ever dreamed – a house where I could see the sun set every night of every day of every year.
Three days of drama have ended well. Little loss of life. A community that helps one another. Neighbors with different backgrounds and different philosophies and different politics find we have more in common than we have differences. The National Guard comes in to assist and to help us. And at the end of the day, we have a beautiful sunset.
My son and his wife drop by to give us a couple of grilled fillets of salmon, this Alaska girl’s favorite. We sit and talk and laugh our heads off, telling funny stories. They are coming back tomorrow morning; AdventureMan is making his famous biscuits, with eggs to order and fried up sausage patties. The forecast is for more laughter.
Stronger than Isaias: Pensacola Strong
The second morning after Isaias, I am up early and concerned because my phone is on red. My gas tank is full, and I need, really NEED, coffee, so I plug my car charger in and head to the Apple Market. The Apple Market is closed! The generator is on, and there is a sign saying they will open at 9 with food and hot meals for all. I am more relaxed today. The first day after the storm, I think I was too stunned and overwhelmed, it was hard for me to take photos of all the damage. It felt hurtful. Today, things are looking better.
I drive around; I need more time for my phone to charge, and it is a gorgeous day, and there are trains of electrical rigs and their crews gathering in and about my neighborhood and we are ready to cheer.
Yesterday was all about cleaning out enough of the tree fall and detritus for the electrical crews to be able to get to work; the clean up is not complete, but enough that the crews are out in force. I am not in a hurry to get back to work raking, bending and picking up boughs and logs and hauling it to the pile, but AdventureMan will be up soon and I need to get home and the phone is mostly charged.
Its a terrible photo; I am on the main road, there are cars behind me and I know I shouldn’t be taking this photo but the subject is graphic and illustrative. What you see is a very large tree tangled in electrical wires, those silvery lines running top left to center. This is everywhere. That’s why the storms are so expensive, the amount of time and labor it takes to clear the wreckage and put the electrical system back in order. These people are our heroes!
Back home, AdventureMan sets the priorities; I am mostly manual labor. He is raking; I am bundling into barrels and hauling to the debris pile. The barrels are not heavy, just full of leaves and twigs and all the junk that keeps falling out of the stressed and damaged trees. We love our trees, and this is the price we pay – picking up after them.
As we continue to clear our back patio area and drive, we see electrical rigs at our near corner. AdventureMan goes over to say hello and is told that we should have electricity again within 24 hours. That is great news.
By one, we have made significant progress, and feel good about stopping and going over to the Apple Market to see what they have for a hot meal. There is a parking spot by the noisy generator, and we don’t complain, that noisy generator is what allows the Apple Market to be open. That, and their continual commitment to the community. Locally owned, carrying a lot of local products, the Apple Market has a crew that is committed and loyal. They are there in full force. Every check out has a cashier, and the food area is well staffed.
The coffee shop is closed. That would be really bad, I really needed coffee, and here is what the Apple Market did. They brewed coffee, put out real cream (in a bucket with ice) and sugar and gave it to their customers for FREE, with an apology that the coffee shop was not open. All I needed was coffee, and there it was, and nicely done. I was so grateful. Coffee never tasted so good.
We had hit between breakfast and main meal time, I picked up a chicken and waffle sandwich and AdventureMan had biscuits with pork sausage and bacon and laughed, he who eats little meat enjoying two porks in one meal. And said it was delicious. I had never had a chicken and waffle sandwich before, and it was also delicious. Perspective is so important, don’t you think? And hard labor makes you really hungry, and when you are really hungry, food just tastes good!
We have decided to take the rest of the day off. We are happy with our accomplishments. I am in here trying to summarize what we (all) have been through and the impact of the storm, while AdventureMan takes a snooze. My little Zenobia is sleeping on my feet, just so happy for a peaceful, relaxed moment.
Post hurricane can be really, really bad. In this case, yesterday was stunningly overwhelming, just facing all the damage and all that will need to be done just to get back to normal.
Today is a gorgeous day. People are more neighborly, more supportive post-hurricane. If it were raining – and it often is, post-hurricane, it is more of a mess. The weather is also cooler; this morning was in the 60’s, and that is really helpful for heavy outdoor labor. We are sleeping well at night with no air conditioning, windows open.
At the non-operational streetlights, people are civil. They are taking turns. On the side streets, people are being more courteous, not honking (much) and giving way when we have to accomodate trees in the road kind of driving.
All of these are not-so-small blessings. The texts flying back and forth “Are you OK?” “Did you have much damage?” “Would you like to come stay with us?” are so reassuring. We are a community and we are looking after one another. I can’t wait to see the Grafitti Bridge. Someone will paint something wonderful reminding us we are “Pensacola Strong.”
Isaias: The Overwhelming Aftermath
We are both up early the next morning, carrying our lanterns as our house is still very dark. AdventureMan’s first goal is to get the shutters open so we have daylight, and mine is to clear the driveway so our son and grandson can come help us with some large boughs which were blown down. Below is the first thing we see, the bottom of a very large tree overhanging our neighbor’s yard to the left. It is wedged between two trees in our far back yard in the middle, and most of the branches and tree top have fallen into our neighbor’s on the right. We couldn’t figure out where the tree came from, and then discovered it was one of our trees. The wind had lifted it, twisted it and somehow it became wedged between two other trees and hangs in the air like a teeter-totter. A very lethal teeter-totter. We call our Arborist, a tree specialist with special equipment – this removal will be tricky. And expensive.
But first, we scan the nearby neighborhood. As we are walking, our neighbor catty-corner across the street comes over to ask about damage; we assure her we are fine. She is also fine. This is the first hurricane after the death of her husband, and she weathered it alone and has no damage, not even water in her basement. We did a happy dance.
An early morning walker comes along, one we know, and she says “Do you smell gas?” which we did. We can’t figure out where it is coming from so I call the gas emergency number where I leave a message with their automated service. A couple hours later I get a call back and gas people show up and find the leak at one of our neighbor’s house where a tree had broken his gas pipe when it fell.
Around the corner I can see where a huge tree has uprooted and fallen on another neighbor’s house. It doesn’t look backly damaged, but I later learn the tree penetrated the house, and if anyone had been in the part where the tree landed, they might not have survived.
I first met most of my neighbors during Hurricane Sally. We all wave as we come and go, but now we are having real conversations, all of us outside cleaning up.
Cleaning up. It’s like a major move. You look at all the pieces, everything that needs to be done, and it is overwhelming. You look down the street, and see a big tree down totally closing off the street. You see live power lines down on the street (we reported the one close to us, and crews appeared almost immediately to clear it from the street.) We know better than to go near a live wire. All around us, the streets are full of boughs and leafy debris. We clean the worst off the street so traffic can pass. We work together.
It’s bizarre to have such a beautiful morning following the horrifying winds.
The hugeness, the enormity of all that needs to be done saps your will. We work for a while, eating that elephant one small bite at a time, and slowly, slowly, we see progress. The shutters are open, and the bands stowed away. The drive is cleared enough to be passable.
Our son brings his chainsaw, and he and our grandson cut a heavy limb into 2 foot pieces; Public Sanitation won’t pick up larger peices. Even these 2 foot logs are heavy, and they carry them to the debris pile. We are so grateful for their help, and the heavy duty chainsaw breaks. It did its job. We’ll buy him a new one for Christmas if it has totally kicked the bucket.
While we are cleaning, the National Guard arrives, doing what they are trained to do, help people who have been hit by emergencies. They are doing an initial survey of loss, making a quick list of priorities. The trees have to be cleared off the roads before the power teams can come in. Major streets are blocked, and the fallen trees have taken down power lines as they fell. Hundreds of power lines down. Thousands of National Guards people here to help, and we are so thankful for their presence.
The job isn’t done by a long shot, but it’s all we can manage for today. We have light, and our drive is passable, and the largest boughs are stacked on the debris pile. Our son and grandson head home; they still have a lot to do, and they have a fence that blew over in places.
It’s past lunchtime, and AdventureMan and I decide to see how clear the streets are and what kind of damage has been inflicted outside our neighborhood.
There is SO much damage. Trees ripped out of the ground, blocking the major roads. A BMW is stuck under a tree, and we wonder, “Was this guy out driving during the hurricane and had a tree fall on him, or was he driving shortly after the hurricane and did not see the tree fallen on the road and crashed into it?” With no streetlights on, it is a possibility.
When we come to the first stoplight, it is not operating. People are all of a sudden very civil and polite now, and take turns going through. In the commercial center, there is no electricity. It is Saturday, and nothing is open, not even the service stations – they can’t run without electricity. We decide it is safer to head back home, and as we do, we come across a local Greek food truck just on the verge of opening, “Five minutes!” he calls out and we wait. As we wait, five more cars drive up and when the truck opens, they have more business in one hour than they will normally have in a day.
When we stop, they only have one meal to sell, lamb gyro and Mediterranean salad, so lamb gyro and salad it is. AdventureMan doesn’t eat lamb. He did today, and said it was great. The salad was wonderful; I have been worried about not eating enough vegetables, but this meal was perfect. Everyone behind us also ordered lamb gyro and salad, thankful to get a hot meal. Most people in the area do not have electricity.
The drive home is awe inspiring, in a very depressing way. So much damage. So much work to be done. Pensacola knows how to deal with storms, but Pensacola is not the richest place in Florida, and all this extra work will stretch the budget in very negative ways. Just paying the cleanup will hurt other public services.
On Scenic, a sparkle. The Apple Market, a locally owned IGA store, is open! They have a huge, noisy Generac. They have electricity! The cars are rolling in; Apple Market has hot meals and some of the best groceries in town. We text our son and his family so that they know, too. Everyone loves the Apple Market.
Once home, it is time for a nap, and then we are out once again, trying to clear debris. AdventureMan spots a dark jungly section of our yard where there is more damage, more limbs down, more trees to assess for safety, and he gets us on the list with the local arborist. We will need specialists and special equipment to get our horizontal floating tree taken down. It won’t come cheap, but our flying tree is also endangering two of our neighbors’ yards.
Dinner is peanut butter sandwiches. We read briefly, and then, like folk in the olden days, lights are out and we are fast asleep after a long day of physical labor.
Isiais Coming In
We lost power just as I was making one last entry. It returned today, Sunday, late in the afternoon. I kept notes, and I will share them with you.
We lost power around 5. It happened slowly. We would lose power for a few seconds, then it would come on again. Even the last time, when we heard the transformer outside our house SNAP!, we had hopes it would come back on. It didn’t.
Here is a blessing. The weather is cool. What really makes it hard is the lack of air conditioning, but the air is cool enough: we are comfortable. With the shutters on and locked, it is very dark, and worse, we cannot see what is happening outside except for glimpses out the corners of our shutters and the back door. We have no internet. The phones are working, and we learn the storm is wobbling toward Destin.
Our phones are all charged, but we don’t want to use them because we may need them – urgently – if we are directly hit. No one really knows. We hear the storm has moved east of us, and later it learn that it hit Destin/Navarre more directly, but the preceding bands of lashing winds and rain hit here earlier in the day and got stronger as the day went on. We learned that the bridge over to Gulf Breeze closed at 3:30, in that old abundance of caution (which we learned is a good way to go when the bridge was badly damaged during Hurricane Sally, and we lost its use for months.)
We have lanterns. They are strong and glaring. The winds speed up and then pick up again. It gets very wild outside; the cats are freaking out, and a loud thump and brushing sound hits the north side of the house, and we know a limb is down, and maybe a power line with it. I go to look out the back door – it is covered with a piece of ballistic mesh, a requirement for houses so that occupants have a way to exit quickly if something violent happens – a treefall directly on the house, a gas explosion, a fire – anything requiring a quick exit.
We can see through the mesh, dimly. The winds are crazy: the trees are twisting, writhing, it is painful to watch. There are no lights at all, no streetlights, no human lights. But something looks weird in our far back lot, and I call AdventureMan,
“I think I see a huge tree sort of hanging horizontally, but maybe I’m not seeing what I think I see. Will you take a look?”
He peers; I point to what I think is one end and the line the maybe-tree is taking. He agrees, and we agree that to go outside to check in the midst of wildly chaotic winds might satisfy our curiosity, but might also kill us. Being people who laugh during the worst times, we speculate on the headlines, like Pensacola couple steps into backyard, killed by falling tree.” Using our wiser judgement, we stay inside.
The winds are over by nine. It is very, very quiet. No cars are going by. There are no streetlights. There are no lights in any of our near neighbors’ houses; there is a light farther up the street where someone has started up a generator.
The stress is over, as we are exhausted. There is no electricity, no internet. We can read by lantern light, but we are tired from the stress, from all the preparations, so we turn out the light early and are asleep as our heads hit the pillows. We are thankful this day is over, and more than a little afraid of what we will find tomorrow.
Awaiting Landfall
I usually swim on Friday mornings, really early so I can get on with my day. I didn’t set my alarm last night, just figured I would sleep until I couldn’t sleep and get up, so I was about an hour behind my normal, but not bad. It was raining when I stepped outside, enough so that I wanted to have a coat on.
The pool was packed! It was like everyone wanted to swim because we never knew when we might see the pool open again. Hurricane Sally, six years ago, changed a lot of things, and helped us never take anything for granted again. I just did a short swim so I could go home and help AdventureMan finish closing up the shutters. Once the final shutter is closed, it is very dark inside.
While I was at the pool, Hurricane Isaias increased to a level 3 hurricane. AdventureMan was already out fixing the last of the shutters. I had thought maybe the shutters were overkill, but once we learned Isaias was now level 3, we were glad to have them. Our house looks like a fortress now.
We closed out our checklists and went to lunch. AdventureMan was kidding me about doing one last load of laundry, but . . . you never know what is coming next. It might be a while before I can do laundry again. We were at Mama Tacos, up on Olive, and crew after crew of big electrical vehicals pulled in and they all met up for lunch.
And when we got back, the house was dark, and we had no electricity. The rain had increased, we could hear someone running their generator, and I called Florida Power and told them we had an outage. I don’t know what magic spell they incanted, but we had our electricity back within 15 minutes. I kind of laughed to myself, I thought it would take longer because they were all eating at Mama Tacos. We took Scenic on our way home, and at the intersection of I-10 and Scenic we saw a hotel with at least fifty electric rigs, all present to take care of the damage Isaias is expected to inflict.
I decided to take a bath, not knowing when I might bathe again. AdventureMan came in to visit me as I bathed and looked a little lost. I asked what was up, and he told me he’d completed his list, he knows he shouldn’t be out on the road, it is time to settle in for what is to come, but he is restless and feels like he should be DOING something. I’m hoping he will take a good nap 😊.
Here’s the latest map I can find:
And in twenty four hours, it should be over.
“We’re Preparing For Isaias”
Serious electrical trucks are pouring into Pensacola; these are our heroes. Once the storm hits land, felling trees and turning common objects into missiles, and surging bayous, electricity can go out, leaving thousands without light, heat, or basic appliances. It is a modern miracle that these heroic teams can restore power so quickly to so many.
Anxiety and Hurricane Prep
Hurricanes are instructive. They don’t go where they are supposed to go. They wobble. You can prepare like crazy, and they go somewhere else. Today, Pensacola is preparing. Here is today’s forecast. Where the map explodes is Pensacola.
The last time Pensacola was struck by a hurricane was Hurricane Sally. She was supposed to go to Alabama, but at 2 in the morning, big surprise, she hit Pensacola.
Early this morning, they filled their tanks (so did I).
By eight in the morning, the parking lot at the local Publix was full! I had to park in the outside ring
AdventureMan had picked up most of what we needed at the commissary; I just needed a few additional supplies:
Apples, snow peas, and cookies at Buy one-Get one. I bought enough to share with the neighbors or any family that might drop in,
We spend the rest of the morning closing the steel shutters:
Very sturdy, and they let in some light, but the inside gets really dark when the shutters are on.
“Eau de toilette”, in case we have no water.
Our granddaughter was out of school early, so we picked her up for lunch and an afternoon together.
Even by noon, rumors are making their rounds that the storm will fade almost as quickly as it hits land, people are looking much more relaxed.
Getting Real When Jim Cantore Shows Up
Facebook started blowing up when Jim Cantore showed up but my favorite is this totally AI version of him interviewing a Pensacola Pirate (above).
You know it’s getting real when the national weather guy shows up. People were taking his photo at the airport when he arrived, and today he is broadcasting from Pensacola Beach.
I Spoke Too Soon
I made a big mistake this weekend. We were out at Peg Leg Pete’s for lunch – it was a dark and stormy day, and I thought all the tourists would go home, but I was wrong. All the tourists headed to Peg Leg Pete’s. (That was just a small mistake, and it worked out fine, we had a nice booth before the place maxxed out and the line outside started.)
The lunch, as usual, was great. No, the mistake was not going to Peg Leg Pete’s. The mistake, over a Lafitte Grouper sandwich, was mentioning how thankful I was for rainy weather, and had AdventureMan noticed we haven’t had any hurricanes this year?
I know better.
So Monday there are some vague mentions of a disturbance out in the Gulf of Mexico, down near Mexico. Tuesday night there begin to be warnings about a Tropical Storm headed this way. (We’re used to that; a drenching, some strong winds, maybe a short electrical outage and some extra clean-up afterwards.) But no, the predictions become more and more dire. (We’re actually used to that, too. Everyone gets dramatic at the possibility of WEATHER coming in.)
Today is Wednesday.
Events are being cancelled. They’re giving instructions on what we need to have on hand for emergency conditions. AdventureMan is on a quest to resupply our aging AA Battery collection for our, yes, hurricane lanterns. When ALL the lights go out, it is surprising how very dark it is.
We’ve learned a couple of things. Most of the time, the drama is all out of proportion, and it doesn’t hit us. Life gets normal really fast, and we laugh at our anxieties.
We’ve also learned that a hurricane that’s headed a couple hundred miles east or west can suddenly make a jog and hit us unexpectedly in the middle of the night. And then, life is a mess. The worst part, for me, is that no electricity means no air conditioning, and it can be very sultry and hot and hard to sleep at night. Our little propane stove is great for heating up coffee and soups, and that gets old in a hurry. And the mosquitoes.
There is only so much you can do. Much of it needs doing on a regular basis, like having your trees trimmed of branches that can fall and crush your roof or fly and break your windows. Put away all your big potted plants in a sheltered area where they will not become flying objects. More immediate is waiting to see if we will need to hurriedly affix our shutters, a real pain in the neck, which takes time, and makes the house dark and airless, but it does protect the windows.
We had a big chainsaw; just about everybody has a chainsaw to cut up big trees that block your driveway or road, but we gave it to our son and asked him to come over and help us if we need help.
I have two meetings this afternoon. Until the storm gets closer, life will go on with an eye to the sky.
AdventureMan just sent me this from the commissary saying “I won’t call it panic buying, but there is definitely some purposeful preparation buying going on.”
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