Eight days without power... And Counting
 

No power, heat, Internet or gasoline to be found anywhere near my house... Thankfully I'm with friends in Connecticut riding it out and all we are missing here is Internet. Getting spotty cellular coverage but that's about it.

The power company has stopped estimating when specific areas will be fixed. Neighbors have told me workers have been working on it around the clock, but no luck yet.

When power is restored ill be back full force. Thanks to all my clients for your patience and kind words during the past week. It's much appreciated. In the meantime if anyone needs anything, email is the best way to reach me for now...

Good you have friends to stay with, it would be no fun to be without power for that long.

I actually have neighbors of mine staying with other friends of mine. The damage was so widespread that many people's entire family and social tree is offline. So pairing up people who can take others in with people who need a place to stay has become a hobby for me while waiting this out. So far I've manage to 'place' 10-15 people who would have been in the cold.

The real problem is gasoline... Can't get it anywhere and nothing I can do about it for people. It's being sold on Craigslist now for $20+ per gallon...

I bet people in the Northeast aren't laughing at Preppers anymore.

Best of luck to you man.

Well the good thing is that some of the union power people have turned away the assistance of non union power people.

Sure we are...

Preppers are just as screwed. Nobody stockpiled 100 gallons of gas, full house generators tapped on their circuit breakers, food for two weeks, a way to run their offices and transport for all their employees...

A gun, a can of tunafish and some glow sticks won't do you any good when a storm like this hits. Nobody was prepared for anything of this magnitude. The people doing well are the ones who are adapting as circumstances change, not people who built underground bunkers (that would be entirely flooded with water at the moment).

As well they should. I owned a NYC electrical shop for a long while. The New York City electrical code is a much thicker book than you might imagine. Fire suppression systems and power for skyscrapers are not run on Romex and low voltage splice work. Having the job done wrong would be exceptionally more dangerous and harder to fix than waiting an extra day of two to have the job done right.

I'm all for out of towners removing trees and helping with recovery, but I wouldn't let anyone touch a major electrical nexus in Manhattan who wasn't already very familiar with the work and stringently credentialed. It's a very different world from what most competent electricians are used to...

Lots can be done and is being done by additional manpower but doing it right has to come before doing it fast with some parts of the recovery in my honest opinion.

Thanks very much

What a load of shite.

You could not be more wrong about what "preppers" have set up.

Actually, as an AVERAGE person that lives in Florida, I have pretty much all of the stuff that you laid out each hurricane season, (at least 2 weeks of food and water, generator and gas for electricity for two weeks, propane camping stoves with enough propane for probably a month, gas filled cars when a hurricane is coming, etc...).

I personally can't understand any adult, especially with a family, that doesn't build up and renew this kind of supply over time.

The "preppers" that I know have a HELL of a lot more then that. they typically average 6 months of food, generators, stabilized diesel, etc, etc, etc.....




.:2 cents:



p.s. I do wish you the best,btw.... That situation is definitely no fun. I know first hand.



.

Hope you get back to your home soon and get back to normal.
Sandy only made it a little breezy here and it rained for a few days.

Not sure you'd feel that way if you lived in one of those buildings or worked on one of them. Shutting down your office for a week and moving work to satellite locations is preferable to having unqualified people burn the place down or trigger halon systems on a bank trading floor accidentally.

Not my problem any more, thankfully, but wiring a ceiling fan in your kitchen is not the same as high voltage work in a forty story building. Most of Manhattan is back now, but for the flood areas, so is say Bloomberg and ConEd have done an excellent job under the circumstances.

Anything you say after that isn't all that relevant to folks in the Northeast. Granted the one last year happened there too, but it's not even close to as common an occurrence there as in Florida. It would be like me in Cal expecting you in Florida to be 110% prepared for a major earthquake or brush fire.

That said, there are too many people in general who aren't prepared for ANY emergency. Power is out for days, they're completely fucked. THAT needs to change for sure. But New Yorkers just haven't been going through the kind of shit that Florida is used to. I realize some areas of Florida are more hurricane-prone than others, but quite frankly between that and the ridiculous humidity, I'd never want to live there. If the "big one" happens here eventually and breaks California off into the sea, so be it. :/

Sperbonzo,

Can you imagine the day to day danger of residents in skyscrapers storing a couple 55 gallon drums of gasoline in their homes?

Living on 20 acres in Montana or 2000 square feet in NYC isn't the same thing. Homes on Long Island that have never seen a drop of floodwater before, now have boats on their front lawns. The magnitude of this storm dwarfs anything anyone here has ever seen before... Waste treatment plants have been knocked offline, the entire manhattan grid was down, Chelsea Piers had seven feet of water inside it.

It would be like prepping for a comet to hit your house. The surrounding damage is so widespread that having a generator on your refrigerator and a kerosene heater does you pretty much zero good. I live on Long Island.. I'm in Connecticut now because that's the closest safe place to the damage. That's a pretty far ways away.

now there is a great biz plan!

CBC was saying just this week that there is no such thing as 'price gouging', it's all just supply and demand

Yep. we all only ONLY New Yorkers have any idea how to run a complicated system. Because no place else has them.

Sorry to say but they were even turning them away from tree cutting and that means they are doing it just for the money.

The people that turned them away should face federal charges for that.

Actually the exact opposite is true. I would not send the best NYC electrician to go fix power outrages in San Francisco after an earthquake. They would be terribly underqualified. They have no experience with the building codes there, earthquake protocols or the way that locality does things.

It's not that New York is harder or better, it's that it is unique and needs people familiar with it to handle delicate dangerous work... Much like any other major city would.

Hope things get better first,

confused how the recovery looks very slow.

There are a slew of 'foreign' workers handling tree cutting, waste removal, water removal etc... Along with the army corp of engineers and every able bodied resident. I've helped clear roads, remove carpets from flooded houses etc etc

My strong suspicion is that whoever is reporting workers were turned away is doing it for political gain because you can barely find a street around here that doesn't have bucket trucks on it around the clock.

I don't think people appreciate the size and scope of the affected area. All of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, parts of Virginia, Delaware, a friend of mine said they had trees down in Massachusetts from the remnants of the storm. It went by very quickly but the size of the area it damaged is awe inspiring...

Governor Cuomo said it best...
If your power is on, the recovery was very well done. If your power is off, everyone is incompetent and much too slow.

I grew up like that..

good luck. nasty spot to be in.

Wow that sucks ... No power ... We are lucky to not have lost power during the storm !

Got got this for my RV and it worked so well I installed one on my home. Just add a couple 12 DC volt batters and a power inverter if you want 120 volts AC.
http://www.harborfreight.com/solar-p...att-68751.html

http://www.harborfreight.com/media/c...mage_19818.jpg

I can't imagine how difficult that is for SO many people affected.
This one, Sandy, and of course Katrina were so very devastating...and the only hurricane (having grown up and lived in South Florida) that I can even come close to relating to was Andrew....but that didn't get to my part of Miami as bad as many other parts. So, to say "I can relate", wouldn't be truly fair for me to say.

I hope all your family, friends, and the thousands and thousands of people affected get it all sorted out as soon as humanly possible...
That's got to be a tough thing...
;-(

Stay strong,hope it gets worked out quickly.I seen on the news a bunch of lineman from Canada made the trip to try to help.they were even sleeping in their trucks

The turnout has been great. Thanks.

I guess a generator is on the to buy list for next time ;)

I am so glad we left the east coast when we did. We were going to stay another week on Hatteras during our trip.......we started out from Maryland, shot over to Cape Hatteras for about 5 days, then myrtle beach for 3 days and left about a week and half before this storm hit land. We ran the entire east coast to Florida and picked up I10 to run the gulf coast back to AZ.....no storms along the way.

Be safe Stuart, I heard you guys are going to get hit with a nor'easter this week.

Gas generators are worthless in a seven day outage with a major gas shortage. Gas lines have been literally hundreds of cars long, in part because people are bringing gas cans to fill their generators. Having a generator with no fuel is worthless and storing more than a few gallons of gas is very illegal for good reason. I'll be perfectly fine, for me it's been an inconvenience... But there are plenty of people really suffering, losing loved ones and their entire home. It definitely reminds people what is really important... And what really is not.

Hope it gets better for you Stuart. Sandy sure made a mess of the upper east coast.

Unless the weather is arctic cold why would you want/need a generator? You should be able to dress warm and use blankets. So what if you have to eat cold or camping stove food/soup for a couple weeks. No internet, cell phone or tv? Give me a break.

Preparing for and living thru a once in a lifetime period if inconvenience is nothing. Be glad you are alive and having to live like everyone did a hundred or so years ago for a very short time until luxuries are restored.

Light a candle, eat cold soup, hug the one you're with, actually talk to each other, read a book until the power comes back on.

Wondered why I havent heard from you ?:winkwink: Be well :thumbsup

Best of luck to you and anybody else that got hit with the storm

Guess you have a point. I never heard of storing a few gallons of gas being illegal....something new for me. With lines for gas they way they are, I am sure some are hording gas, or they were until they set a limit on how much you can buy. With fuel prices at $4.65 a gallon, I think that would make one think twice about buying as much as they could.

And you are right, times like this sure let you weigh what is important and what is not.
Hope all is well, be safe!

I would much rather have no power than have an idiot neighbor with a few 55 gallon drums of gasoline improperly stored on a property next to mine. Sometimes the 'cure' is worse than what ails you ;)

Hope all is well with you and your lovely lady Nikki.

Just imagine if this was storm a couple categories higher. There wouldn't be an election because the entire east coast would be Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 5 days.

Hope you get power back soon because I live in an area that loses power whenever there's a bad rainstorm, and I know it sucks. Oddly, this time my block was spared but everyone around me has been out for a week.

But be glad your roof wasn't ripped off, because I know somebody who that kind of happened to and it doesn't look like fun.

Spotty internet works when you need it to work. How convenient.

Hang in there man - I was here in New Orleans for George, Katrina, Ike, Gustav, Isaac, and others and it is definitely no picnic. Just make sure to hit up the SBA, Red Cross, FEMA and the insurance lines, there is a lot of $$$ and aid that are freed up to help out people and business owners in emergencies.

Good luck!

craigslist: http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/for/3389853448.html if you need Gas Tonight in the North end of Queens I can Deliver to your Home.$20.00 a Gallon or $100.00 for 5 Gallons.sorry about the price but I waited 4 hours for 20 Gallons.Please call me at 1-718-908-7405 Thanks.

My sister just got her power back in NYC. Crazy what's happening up there.

Bout to get a mighty noreaster... more flooding expected Wednesday... :Oh crap

+1 .

welcome to the 3rd world, it's official now.

Heading back today to vote. Hearing a lot of people are planning not to vote, which means my vote counts much more than usual. If you live in an affected area, be sure to vote, don't rely on someone else to do it correctly ;)

If you are in good health and of a reasonable age, sure. If you are unhealthy, pregnant, have small children, are elderly, etc... Temperatures in the low 30s are plenty dangerous.

Thanks for your concern.