Severe Weather

[Ghost Econ]

Starting day 10 without power and I think I'm getting a little annoyed. Finally saw our daughter for the first time in 5 days since she went to her grandparents once they got power.

I've been thinking, what incentive does Duke Energy actually have to push to restore power quickly? Bad PR doesn't matter, they're a government authorized monopoly. We literally can't use anyone else.

There's currently 70k in my area without power. The average cost per day for power usage at each home is about $6 or $7. That means they're losing about $500k per day. Expedited repair efforts in an emergency are at least 2-3x that every day. There's literally no financial incentives for the higher ups to allocate more than the bare minimum of resources to keep things profitable.

[cartman]

sure looking increasingly likely that Milton is going to look for his red stapler in the Tampa area

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Ghost Econ

Starting day 10 without power and I think I'm getting a little annoyed. Finally saw our daughter for the first time in 5 days since she went to her grandparents once they got power.

I've been thinking, what incentive does Duke Energy actually have to push to restore power quickly? Bad PR doesn't matter, they're a government authorized monopoly. We literally can't use anyone else.

There's currently 70k in my area without power. The average cost per day for power usage at each home is about $6 or $7. That means they're losing about $500k per day. Expedited repair efforts in an emergency are at least 2-3x that every day. There's literally no financial incentives for the higher ups to allocate more than the bare minimum of resources to keep things profitable.

Man, that really sucks. When Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, my boss was without power for nearly two weeks at his place in Tomball. And that was with crews that are used to dealing with power restoration after a storm. I can only imagine the troubles these linemen are having in areas that don't get storms like this. Sending good thoughts that the power situation is alleviated soon.

[GrantDawg]

Someone is going to end up getting killed over this foolishness.



[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Well I may have some firsthand accounts by tomorrow night. By a strange set of circumstances, there seems to be a pretty fair chance 15 and I are going to be assisting with some volunteer efforts in Buncombe County (where it appears the most deaths have occurred) tomorrow afternoon.

So, yeah, this did happen. We connected with Samaritan's Purse and were assigned to a clean-up crew for a house in Royal Pines, which is a bit southeast of Asheville. In that entire area, there are lots of US/State Highways that run parallel to rivers/streams, and on the uphill side of the road there's a neighborhood basically cut into a hillside, and that was the case here. No big water runoff path was carved through this neighborhood, so flooding was a non-issue, but the number of downed power lines was....staggering. On the road, in yards, hanging in the air with just enough clearance on one side of the road to get a car through. Power lines everywhere. As best as I could tell, there were maybe 60-80 homes in the area, and I never saw a single one that didn't have at least one tree down in their yard, and roughly a third of them had at least one tree that had fallen on a structure. Between it being a narrow road winding through the neighborhood and all the dangling power lines, it wasn't easy to find parking near the home we were assigned to. (There were roughly 40ish people in our group, typically no more than 2-3 people in a car.) The homeowner was a 60-70ish year old lady. Spry, in good physical shape, looked leathery, like she loved to work in her yard for hours at a time. She had a big woodshed with firewood that I'm guessing she was used to cutting herself...but she was completely overwhelmed at the impossible task. She lives alone. Has been there for 40 years. Insurance will pay for the repairs to the deck from the tree that hit it, but there were four other good-sized trees down in her yard, along with several other smaller ones. It's not like the neighbors can pitch in to help her when their homes/yards are in as bad a shape as hers.


But yeah, 40-50 people, 3 chainsaws. Many hands make light work. Probably the worst part was parking in the neighborhood and walking past several other homes where just one or two people are outside trying to do this type of clean-up. Our team leader did go and talk to anyone and ask if they needed help, but of course papers/liability/etc. has to happen before the volunteers can just start on another home. But anyway, yeah, with that many people, we got all of the trees and debris out of there and got the home "contractor-ready" in a little over 2 hours. Seeing all of the other houses with just as much to be done, but seeing this sweet lady's gratefulness for the help, I was reminded of the parable of the little boy and the starfish. What we did may not have made a giant difference, but it sure made a difference to Ms. Belle. My 15yo actually had a long conversation with her in which Belle told my daughter that she'd thought about just ending her life before the SP folks came by a couple of days earlier and got her signed up for clean-up help.



We drove into Black Mountain on the way home. It was devastating. Several parking lots just filled with supplies and people standing in line to get them. (Shockingly, neither FEMA nor the National Guard was confiscating any of the supplies. ) The roads were all brown from the mud that had washed through there. Main road into Montreat from there was almost completely destroyed from the creek overflowing and rushing all the way down from there into Black Mountain.


Other little things:

• For the last hour-ish of the drive on I-40 into the mountains, there was evidence of at least one downed tree every 100ish yards or so. I'm talking trees that had fallen onto the road itself, not just ones down on the hillsides to the side. An ENORMOUS amount of clean-up has already been down on that road.
• As we got close to the SP main base for Buncombe County, the last few miles of the highway had a sign that was clearly newly-placed that said something like "low visibility, next 5-6 miles.) I wasn't sure what that was all about until we went a little farther: a bunch of cars driving on an interstate that was covered with mud a week earlier kick up a LOT of dust.
• The SP folks were really pushing us to come back in November. They currently plan to be there through 11/30, and said that they wouldn't be at all surprised if it isn't significantly longer than that, as there's just sooooo much damage
• Fun fact that'll might make both conservative and liberal heads explode a little bit: SAMARITAN'S FREAKING FRANKLIN GRAHAM PURSE was collecting our names and number of hours we volunteered. Why? Oh, to report them to meet their soft match requirements on their largest grant. (They're mostly funded by private donations, but they do get grants.) Where does their largest grant come from???? You guessed it, boys and girls! FEMA!!!
• Despite our site leader explicitly telling us that, no more than 30 seconds after that fun fact was dropped, someone raised their hand and asked "we brought some supplies. Where should we take them so FEMA doesn't get their hands on them?" I'm thoroughly impressed at the ability of our site leader (who is an Asheville native and had multiple friends lost their lives) to hold her tongue in that moment, but, uh, her face might have betrayed her.

[Atocep]

My dad is working in the Asheville area right now. His company was contracted by the federal government and Verizon to start rebuilding lines in that area.

A guy on his team found a body 3-4 days ago and it shook him pretty bad. The group he's with, which is pretty big considering the number of companies and federal workers in the area, shut down operations for a day because a body was found at a campsite and that body led to finding 7 more.

He hasn't been to Black Mountain and some of the really bad areas but they're out working the lines all day, have no running water, and are sleeping in tents.