9/21/2004: Hurricane Ivan damage

[xoxoxoBruce]

the moon is actually significantly closer to the earth, causing an increase in tidal activity, and a change in weather patterns that is spawning more and more hurricanes.

What are you, nuts? Everybody knows it's the fault of those people driving Hummers.

[FloridaDragon]

Greetings all, I am been a lurker for a long time but felt the need to post these couple pictures. Like in the WPB area of FL and got hit by Frances, then went to Pensacola to help family after Ivan. Saw this sign on the way back after having to drive around the bridge over Escambia Bay for I-10 being "removed" by Ivan.

The other picture is of a red cross convoy heading into Northwest Florida after the storm...I am sure the beer truck is not an "official" member of the relief convoy but I am sure he was popular when he got there anyway.

Hunkering down for Jeanne now

FloridaDragon

[xoxoxoBruce]

Welcome to the Cellar, Fdragon. Good luck with Jeanne.

[FloridaDragon]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Welcome to the Cellar, Fdragon. Good luck with Jeanne.

Thanks Bruce....hopefully this storm will not wack us too much. Winds picking up pretty good and little trees down but nothing big yet.

I could focus on the damage and suffering that Charley, Frances and Ivan have caused so far but we have all seen too much of that so I tried to look for the humorous parts. Like the story of a coworker who lost the screening over his pool from Frances...much to the surprise of the squirrel which normally uses it to go from one tree to another...needless to say the squirrel ended up in the pool and then a quite pissed off squirrel came tearing out of there scattering the humans that were in the way....that kind of stuff. Would have loved to have had a high speed camera on that squirrel as he passed through the space where he thought the screening would be

FD

[stlbob]

Originally Posted by FloridaDragon

I am sure the beer truck is not an "official" member of the relief convoy but I am sure he was popular when he got there anyway.
FloridaDragon

That beer truck would be loaded down with cans of water. Anheuser-Busch is always one of the first companies to aid in disaster relief. In the past five years, Anheuser-Busch has donated more than 40 million cans of water to victims of natural disasters.


Last month (Aug), Anheuser-Busch donated 24,000 cases -- or more than a half-million cans -- of drinking water to aid the victims and rescue workers in Florida who were impacted by Hurricane Charley. The Anheuser-Busch Foundation also donated $100,000 to hurricane relief efforts in the state, giving $50,000 to The Salvation Army and $50,000 to the American Red Cross.

http://www.anheuser-busch.com/news/

[FloridaDragon]

Originally Posted by stlbob

That beer truck would be loaded down with cans of water. Anheuser-Busch is always one of the first companies to aid in disaster relief. In the past five years, Anheuser-Busch has donated more than 40 million cans of water to victims of natural disasters.

Well that takes all the fun out of thinking of opening up a nice cold can of beer after chainsawing trees all day that fell on and around your house....
(I can say this as I am still all scratched and banged up from doing just that)

FEMA supplies plenty of drinking water ... Anheuser-Busch would be more welcome if it was loaded with Bud and Bud Light!

(Note: I am not trying to negate the great humanitarian efforts of A-B in the slightest! Wish more corporate giants were that kind hearted).

FD

[Undertoad]

Oh but it's a mere 75 mph for you this time around. Hardly worth a reporter standing outside to show us.

[CharlieG]

it doesn't require any FEDERAL money - folks, the government doesn't run the electric company, so the "Iraq Money" comments have nothing to do with it.

It IS easy to solve - but it takes time. The first part is the state, or even local community to pass a law:

All new development shall use underground utility services

Guess what? It starts getting fixed

The later they can say:

By XXXX date, all feeders below YYY volts must be moved underground (a LOT of VERY high voltage lines are in the air for VERY good reasons). Thing is, you lose the real big stuff, you lose a lot of homes, BUT you have a lot fewer wires to worry about, so they get fixed faster

[Kitsune]

All new development shall use underground utility services

I'm all for it. I'm tempted to write the city/county on it now that its become a major discussion point.

Actually, all the new development I see down here has lines going underground. In fact, for my area, there are no overhead lines visible except for the really high voltage stuff. During Frances we still lost power because, somehow, those lines ended up going down. I kind of wish I'd been around to see it, too -- they're the lines that you can hear in the rain so it had to be a spectacular explosion when they dropped! Sizzle.

Damn, I love high voltage.

[FloridaDragon]

I don't know which lines went down that resulted in us losing power during both Frances or Jeanne since our local ones are underground but it certainly was spectacular with Jeanne as we sat on the somewhat protected front porch as the eye approached and watched the sky light up every 10 seconds with another blue/green transformer explosion...now if they could solve THAT problem we would be all set! (when we lost power during Jeanne there was a quite spectacular flash off in the distance as something big went)

FD

[xoxoxoBruce]

You won't have to worry about hurricanes in your new location.

[tw]

Originally Posted by CharlieG

it doesn't require any FEDERAL money - folks, the government doesn't run the electric company, so the "Iraq Money" comments have nothing to do with it.

An outright and naive statement. One need only learn the lessons of recent history. A lesson from history so obvious that I appalled I have to explain it.

When a federal government spends money it does not have, then it does so at the entire economy's expense. Vietnam literally sucked the economic growth out of America. Massive (and secret) spending on Vietnam in the late sixties and early 70s caused American cars to suffer massive quality problems starting in the 1970s and lasting into the 1980s. American tires had a 50+% pre-mature failure rate as companies cut costs. Buildings were wired with aluminum - a problem we still live with today. Homes were built without plywood reinforced walls (instead we used a soft fiber board called Celotex). Pot holes and street resurfacing literally stopped - does anyone remember the massive pot hole problems in the late 1970s?

To continue paying those debts, America had to literally sell off the world's third largest manufacturing base - American owned industries in Europe. American wealth and economic stability (every part that was not part of the federal government) deteriorated because the federal government spent money it did not have. When a large economic entity suddenly spends beyond its budget, those funds come at the expense of everything else. Obviously.

Did we not learn from Napoleon? Turning a strong economy into a disaster even though a government budget is separate from all those other economic entities. Napoleon's wars literally undermined the entire French economy - even though the entire economy does not budget the wars.

Again, posted here is common knowledge to those who studied history or even learned the "I was there" lessons from Vietnam. Posted here is an insult against those who think it costs nothing because they are different budgets. Another painfully obvious lesson created by a lying president who spents beyond his budget - stagflation. What is affected by stagflation? Stagflation literally destroys all other budgets.

Athens was once THE world power. Then Athens decided to save the world from Sparta. Invasion of Sryacuse undermined the entire Athenian economy. Why? The war was fought in Syracuse - far from Athens. Accounting says losses in Syracuse have no effect on domestic Athenian budgets. But accounting can lie if we spin it. Reality. Massive overseas spending on useless wars causes everything else to be more expensive and the domestic infastructure to wither.

Overspending in one budget undermines all others. $400billion in Iraq means we must now stop doing the maintenance and infastructure upgrades that once kept America strong. For example, we cannot put those FL utilities underground and we cannot properly educate our kids. We spent almost nothing to rescue Kuwait. The entire expense of that war was paid for by all other nations because America did not have a 'screw you all' attitude. Japan paid the most. We spent little because we had a president then with intelligence. Therefore that war did not cause massive budget problems in state governments and electric companies.

Don't give me bean counter nonsense about those $400billion coming from another budget. Otherwise I will suspect you are George Jr - MBA and therefore a liar. It is rather silly that I even have to post what should be common knowledge to all who took history courses. Foreign boondoogles paid by a federal government means all other budgets get stressed. Simple things that would make America resilient such as underground utilities in FL will not happen because we decided to spend more on a personal vendetta in Iraq. Learn from history. The economies and infastructure that maintain massive militaries fail fastest - even though the military comes from *other* budgets.

[CharlieG]

Oh please - all those wires stung in the air over the last 30-40 years are all the fault of the war in Iraq - yeah, right

Cars were shoddy in the 70s because the big 3 got lazy, and then had a bunch of "interesting" laws pushed on them - the 1st being polution controls, and then the 1973 gas crisis leading to the CAFE laws (which directly lead to the rise of the SUV, but lets not go THERE)

If your company has built a plant figuring on a 30 year life span (which the big 3 used to do) if costs a fortune to re-tool to make something else. In the mean time, if the guys you compete aginst made the right guess (small engines) they have a huge advantage

[Kitsune]

Oh please - all those wires stung in the air over the last 30-40 years are all the fault of the war in Iraq - yeah, right

Be kind to him, CharlieG. Its obvious that tw is really unhappy that his house near the beach has lost power so many times due to all these hurricanes. That'd make anyone blame it on Iraq. Right, tw?

[xoxoxoBruce]

That wire cutter is called a post hole digger. Sharp, double bladed and can be driven down with considerable force. Direct bury romex, one shot. Buried service entrance, a couple shots but probably short on the first.
Now if you go down to the rental center for a powered post hole digger, Oh baby, can you wreak some havoc.