Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: BlueJ1 on October 16, 2006, 03:43:58 PM
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Well...it was a long weekend.
Thursday I went to bed around 10pm to get a head start on a early day friday. Woke up around 11:45pm in complete dark and freezing cold. When I opened my window not only did I notice the snow falling but also a sound of the trees poping and groaning. I can almost swaer it sounded exactly like the trees in the Band of Brothers series when the 101st was in the woods with the trees groaning and poping around them. (The popping not caused by the Germans) Was very creepy.
Anyways woke up Friday morning around 6am and called into work to let them know I couldnt make it considering the snow and the car was behind the garage door which only works with electricty. (The key dosnt work) All morning was spent collecting batteries, bailing water out of the sump pump, and listening to the AM radio. My manager called me from work and told me they really needed help. So long story short I made it in. Our store (supermarket) was the only buisness open for miles. It was being run on generators. Most popular item was beer, chips, and propane...
Saturday and sunday were pretty much the same. Spent most of the time clearing trees from elderly neighbors yards. We had to boil all water out of the taps as per warning by numerous people on the radio. (Still have to boil all water)
Sleeping at night plain ol sucked. The humidity had built up in the house. Being that the temps in the house were in the 40's and 30's dew quickly formed on most objects. The joke was our hose was below the dew point. Anyway, you would wake up at night freezing cold and everything would be damp.
Bailing water out of the sump pump to prevent the basement flooding was a pain. It became more so when mother nature decided to make it rain on Sunday.
Power came back on last night. Boy it was nice to sleep in a warm bed.
The supermarket I work at ran out of regular gas and started selling premimum at the price of regular.
The first day close to 300,000 homes did not have power. Today it stands at 169,000 homes without power.Over 5,000 crews are now working around the clock. Some crews are from Kentucky, Quebec, Virginia, and multiple other states and Canadian Provinces.
The death toll is at 8 people. Deaths include carbon monoxide poisoning from running generators inside the house to loss of limbs in chainsaw accidents.
The National Gaurd will be here later this week to help with cleanup. FEMA is already here and causing problems in which I'll do my fingerpointing at a later date. The fake FEMA has also showed up, people pretending to be FEMA and going door to door.
Most of the damage was caused by the fact that the trees still had most of their leaves still.
Before I get to the pictures I would like to put a huge thankyou out to all local firefighters, emergency personel, and the electric company crews from here and all over trying to put our lives back to normal. Also a big thankyou to the Canadian people and politicians helping us recover.
Trees over my garage
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029415_001.jpg)
Posted a picture of these trees a few days ago. Now quite different...
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029424_002.jpg)
Neighbor's tree in their front yard. A few feet from my drivway.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029431_003.jpg)
Plant.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029438_004.jpg)
Car few houses down.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029446_005.jpg)
Neighbor's tree across the street from me.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029453_006.jpg)
My tree in my front yard. Bounced back for the most part.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029461_007.jpg)
My street facing North. (Towards the lake)
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029472_008.jpg)
The two trees in our backyard between the fence and the driveway. We were lucky nothing fell on our garage.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029479_009.jpg)
Downed limbs in our backyard. Pool on the right.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029488_010.jpg)
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Some of our trees after the melting started.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029497_011.jpg)
Neighbor's tree on the other side of our house.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029505_012.jpg)
Downed powerline.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029514_013.jpg)
More trees.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029523_014.jpg)
People enjoy driving over powerlines. This one a cable line, the only one I felt safe enough getting close to.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029531_015.jpg)
Tree on house.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029540_016.jpg)
The lake and city after the storm.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029547_017.jpg)
More coming.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029553_018.jpg)
Sun.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029562_019.jpg)
My 3 year old lab. He took the cold alot better then my 9 year old german shepard.
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029573_020.jpg)
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P.S. Some of the pictures are kind of blurry. Thats because my hands were shaking bad from the cold outside and inside my house.
Few more notes.
Alot of money will be spent soon on generators and restocking our freezer.
We will be doing both. Some people have been driving to Ohio to find generators sold out.
This snowfall was the 6th largest in Buffalo's history. The worst in the terms of damage. Alot of older folks saying this is worse then the Blizzard of 77' only because the loss of power.
Over 300 cases of small children experiencing early signs of carbon monoxide posioning says local hospitols.
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Dang, that's a lot of damage. Hope you get it back together okay, Blue, stay safe!
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Looks like Russia, but less cold :P Nice dog :D
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The news just said authorities found a family dead inside their home due to carbon monoxide poisoning. :(
Also, estimates in the 100,000's are now back up in the 200,000's for people not without power.
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Did I tell you it was sunny and 74 deg on Friday? :p
Sorry to hear about the family back there. :(
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wow, just think how bad it could have been, if there was no global warming.
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Originally posted by Ripsnort
Did I tell you it was sunny and 74 deg on Friday? :p
Was in the 50's today. Beautiful day. Im sure it made it easier on those who still have no power. Ive never had the feeling of being so cold I was afriad to fall asleep before until this past weekend. I dont ever wish that on anyone.
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Reminds me of the ice storm we had up here in Maine during 1997. Except where you have very wet snow, we had several inches of solid ice. It took a lot longer to thaw.
The one smart thing Al Gore ever said...was at someone's house and picked up the telephone...it had tone and power, yet the electricity had been out for days. "Why do the phones work but the power doesnt?"
A few minutes later, he went to touch a downed powerline. A worker stopped him, it was a live one with several hundred volts in it. (Had we known then what we know now.... :D )
Most of those trees will bounce back. But a lot wont.
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(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/581_1161029438_004.jpg)
[SIZE=9]PWND!!!!!11o[/SIZE]ne!!1!1
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Originally posted by LePaul
Reminds me of the ice storm we had up here in Maine during 1997. Except where you have very wet snow, we had several inches of solid ice. It took a lot longer to thaw.
Yeah, that was a big one. Hopefully the experience our guys got will help out Buffalo.
Glad to hear you are safe BlueJ1.
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Originally posted by Debonair
[SIZE=9]PWND!!!!!11o[/SIZE]ne!!1!1 [/B]
:lol
Another story/note. The crews coming in from out of state are on the news alot now. Almost all of them are saying how amazing the local people are treating them. A crew from Long Island said they dont want the all the power to come on. They are being treated like rock stars. Local buisnesses are offering free food,gas, and lodging to crews and emergency workers. My family got some large ziplock bags of candy together and handed them out to the crews passing by on our street. (Candy being the only thing we had left) I gave a bag to a crew from Ontario. The driver I handed the bag to thought it was a joke.
The candy brings up another short story. We had M&Ms on the table. My dadcomes into the room and eats a few. He says "mm...frozen M&Ms right off the table." The combination of boredom and being exausted I laughed so hard I cried.
Oh yea, our biggest loss was our fish. We lost all of our fish that we had in our largest aquarium due to the cold. Angelfish that were well over 4 years old, a eel, bunch of small catfish, the largest redtail shark I had ever seen, a large leaf fish, bunch of others. Our large goldfish in the smaller aquarium survived being that they are better to handle the cold. Were going to upgrade to more agressive fish this time or start a salt water tank again. My dad, being a marine biologist, has been aching to start one since we took his last one down years ago.
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Those images remind me of the blizzard of '03, except most people had power I believe, and we were out of school for 4 days. My friends in another school district got screwed because that was during their spring break (yes, SPRING). It was a good time though, about 2 feet of snow in our backyard so we just dove into it like careless teens.
Good to hear you're alright BlueJ, sad about the people dying though.
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Originally posted by BigGun
wow, just think how bad it could have been, if there was no global warming.
I'll post some pics of our drought if you like.
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Large amounts of rain today. Only to make matters worse for those without power.
National Guard troops are showing up today.
The town of Tonawanda is putting damage estimates atleast at $300 million.
FEMA is giving $5 million to all of Erie county. :rolleyes: Better then nothing I guess.
Down to 150,000 total without power.
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Originally posted by BlueJ1
Large amounts of rain today. Only to make matters worse for those without power.
More rain heading your way unfortunately. Local flooding here in central Ohio. I woke up to find my sump pump running every 10 seconds and have never seen it fill so fast. Hopefully my power doesn't go out because I don't think my backup can handle that volume. :confused:
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Flood watches all across WNY. Mother nature is pissed. Bout time we put her on meds.
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We dont have to boil water anymore! Woo!
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You guys in Buffalo usually get hit pretty hard with winter storms cuz of the lake effect...and to think it's only middle October.
There'll be more of these coming and worse ones too. Glad you're ok BJ
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Originally posted by BigGun
wow, just think how bad it could have been, if there was no global warming.
Was this sarcasm? Because this is exactly the kind of change in weather patterns the biased money hungry scientists were warning about.
Even if the general heat will rise, some areas will get very cold and weather patterns will get violent.
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man i miss the snow.. im origionally from Pittsburgh. Im down in Kentucky now and it doesnt snow for shiat...
i still hang on the memories of the blizzard of 93... that was something!!
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BlueJ1, looks like you got hit pretty hard. We lost power off and on for a total of maybe 30 minutes with the longest outage this morning for about 15 solid minutes. Most of our trees got hammered and spent yesterday and today moving the limbs near the road.
Took me awhile to get at them because my back was real tight from shoveling the end of the driveway on Saturday morning.
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in the DFW area we welcome snow and ice storms with open arms
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Originally posted by fuzeman
BlueJ1, looks like you got hit pretty hard. We lost power off and on for a total of maybe 30 minutes with the longest outage this morning for about 15 solid minutes. Most of our trees got hammered and spent yesterday and today moving the limbs near the road.
Took me awhile to get at them because my back was real tight from shoveling the end of the driveway on Saturday morning.
We didnt even bother shoveling. Mostly because the shovels were in the garage we couldnt get into. But still.
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FEMA is leaving. They cannot see any visable damage wirth their time and effort. :rolleyes:
They are leaving for Hawaii. Leaving only a small portion of their people behind to tie up loose ends.
Carbon Monoxide poisoning cases are still rolling into hospitols. 85% of homes without pwer has now been restored.
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I heard they shuffled off to Hawaii and then found there was nothing for them to do. We have all this damage and they are blind to it.
Our government at work.
Guess we need to call Ghostbusters.
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Originally posted by fuzeman
I heard they shuffled off to Hawaii and then found there was nothing for them to do. We have all this damage and they are blind to it.
Our government at work.
Guess we need to call Ghostbusters.
Our local goverment is no better then fema.
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What the heck are you doing posting on the internet. Aren't you supposed to be outside rioting and looting the countryside since the power went off?!?!?! I mean realy, didn't you take ANY notes from new orleans?!?!?!?!?!
Note for sarcasm impaired.... get a freaking life!:huh
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Our reasons being for not looting were...
#1 it was to cold out.
#2 the national news quickly turned their cameras on N. Korea.
#3 theres nothing good enough to loot around here.
:aok
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Originally posted by BigGun
wow, just think how bad it could have been, if there was no global warming.
Wow is right, amazing how most in here are "Meteorlogical Experts" and really are clueless.
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Masherbrum, my thoughts on global warming are purely sarcastic.
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Originally posted by BlueJ1
Masherbrum, my thoughts on global warming are purely sarcastic.
Are you BigGun? I was quoting and responding to him.
I live in Michigan and can sympathize with your situation. Jan 2-3, 1999 we received 27.3" of ACTUAL snowfall, but drifts completely buried cars within a couple of hours. All said, I say 4ft-6ft drifts were VERY COMMON. I had a 1996 F-150 on 31" BFGoodrich Mud Terrains and the snow came up to the hood. I bet Shamus remembers this, I believe only that 1978 storm had more actual snowfall, but not by much. I passed a Michigan State Trooper on the way home, and he was trying to clear snow off of an abandoned car.
Heck on the 3rd I ate with the wife (almost married a month) at Outback. Only 10 other trucks were in the parking lot. One of the stupedist things I have ever seen though, was on the way to Outback. There was a retard in a WS6 (yes, this is what the chode was driving), continually doing fishtails and smiling with his retarded buddy. I got on the shoulder, downshifted, floored it and left a roostertail's worth of snow on his windshield. He wasn't laughing after that.
Again, I've been there. It's a pisser that FEMA is being "cheap" with their assessment, but then again, we don't need Mayor Nagin feeling "left out".
I hope you get through this soon. <> bro.
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There have been reports of repair crews being pelted with rocks and GPS equipment stolen from a few repair crew trucks.
In a few instances, the delay in repairing stuff and getting electric back to some folks was hampered because the downed lines were cut and removed by thieves.
I'd bet they didn't complain when they watched someone steal the wires but surely did on the dealy in getting electric back.
Least I managed to host FriKOTH today :)
I only left killshooter on once too!! :D
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Should have shipped some down here Blue, we did get about .5-1" on Tuesday which was neat. Other then that it's been some light drizzle and cold temps.
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Originally posted by Masherbrum
Are you BigGun? I was quoting and responding to him.
Jumped the gun, sorry.