This weekend as I drove from Ohio to Chicago, I probably passed at least a thousand electrical line trucks heading east. No exageration - and that was only during a 6 hour drive. It was almost eerie. I have a couple friends that are linesmen in the WI area and they were already deployed by Excel energy to go work with an east coast company of linesmen. It's such a refreshing site to see companies cooperating and teaming together to help out in emergency situations!
Good to know. I have a dear friend in Maryland. She has gone through some difficult life changes in the past 3 months. Her dad passed in August and her husband in September. Now this huge storm, I'm just hoping she is safe.
Our supplier here in Illinois is Commonwealth Edison, which is based in the East Coast, so they have deployed hundreds of trucks to help restore power.
It is getting very windy here in CT. Our governor said "Biggest threat to human life that you will ever see in our life time" - I am not sure what I think about that statement!
Will keep you all updated!
We saw a lot of that back home. We had a horrible ice storm in southern Missouri. A lot of people (including my folks) were out of power for over two weeks. People came from all over to help. It gave me the warm and fuzzies. :)
I'm in central CT. For those of you in other parts of the country, last year just before Halloween, we got a huge ice/storm storm. With all the leaves on the trees and the extra weight, limbs were snapping offing trees like twigs and downing power lines. Schools were closed down for a week, and many went without power for a few days up to 3 weeks. I was lucky, we only lost power for about 30 hours. Our local untility companies were totally unprepared and completely unorganized. It's good hear that help is on the way if needed.
I know this is going to be a bad storm, particually for people in NJ, NY and on the shoreline. However, IMO it's being over exagerated. Although, better to be safe than sorry.
Yes...because we've all been hearing about Frankenstorm for a week, so high wind, rain areas were a me to request backup. We see that all the time here in Western PA!
Debra,
I live in the south along the coast. Every year during the major hurricanes, we see this same activity. The companies always do this.. they stage crews in "safe" locations as close as they can to the predicted damage, so that they are ready to go in as soon after as they can... to get things back online for those affected by the storm. When the hurricane is predicted to hit south or middle Florida, they stage near Jacksonville, and we see LINES of electrical company trucks traveling south on interstate 95 from NC and other places that don't anticipate damage from the storm. When it is expected to hit in the western Gulf (LA, AL, etc) they stage them along the FL panhandle...
This is actually a pretty normal response for a hurricane, at least down in the south where we go through these preparation motions every year regularly.
And yes, it is nice to see how everyone comes together. But it is not specific to this storm, just so you know...
I have zero faith in PEPCO. Gaithersburg has power outages during clear weather, nevermind a big storm. They make a big deal of cutting trees (near DH's office, they cut a whole row of them that were not anywhere near a line and they've left our neighbor's house in danger of a limb that they refuse to cut even though they've been down our street) and then ignore other things. I *like* our trees. And if that makes me a 'tree hugger' then whatever. What I don't agree with is how PEPCO is going about it and I don't think they are doing what else they need to do. The "can't afford" is b.s. But I digress.
I am glad to see that there's a response, but part of it depends on the wind. Can't have people up in buckets in a hurricane.
In MD - they have to be prepared - they habitually have power outage issues. They can't afford to lay the lines under ground and they tree huggers won't let them trim back the trees to keep them from pulling the lines down.
it is GREAT to see the cooperation from other agencies and states to help out!!!
That is great to hear! In NC we are supposed to have rain and 40 mph winds tomorrow. I might get some water just in case... Praying for all those in the path of Sandy.
One done. Yeah we get wind and rain up where I am not. Not so much hurricanes of this magnitude. I have not heard of a hurricane like this hitting Pa recently. Hope you are ready.
