Me, Myself and Hurricane Irene

Hey all... did you miss me? Here's a quick update on how we're getting along after Hurricane Irene ripped northern New Jersey a new ass.

The storm hit overnight this past Saturday into Sunday, with the real heavy duty sh*t coming in the wee hours of Sunday morning. We lost our power (and therefore also our phone, Internet and cable TV, of course) around 4:30 AM Sunday morning. Little did we know that the lights wouldn't come back on for four days.

Sunday afternoon the rains finally pooped out, so the kids and I felt safe enough to go outside and check around the house for any damage. The water runoff going down our road caused this lovely gash at the end of our driveway:

The gully at its deepest/widest was about a foot across and maybe 8 or 9 inches deep.

But wait! That wasn't the best part! While I'm trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to refill that crack, my kids ran around the corner to the outside basement door. Suddenly I hear them yelling "OH MY GOD! DADDY, YOU'D BETTER COME LOOK AT THIS!" I come round the corner and see this:

Needless to say, I freaked. I was expecting to get SOME water in the basement, but in the past we'd never gotten more than a couple of inches on the floor. This was about three and a half FEET of it, wall to wall.

My wife called the town's Office of Emergency Management and they promptly sent out a pump truck from the fire department. These dudes drove right up onto my front lawn, dropped a hose into my basement, put another hose out into the street, and had the majority of it slurped out of there in about 20 minutes:




Our main worry once the water was gone, was whether or not our furnace and water heater had gotten waterlogged. Unfortunately, with no power yet, there was no point in calling anyone to come take a look at it. Did I mention that we get our water from a well, by the way, which has an electric pump? So yeah, we had no running water either.

Once the water was down to only a few inches, the rest of it drained away naturally by Monday morning. The electricity didn't return till around 5 AM today. We had a feeling we were in for a long wait judging from what we could hear on the radio, so we simply tried to make the best of it and not go stir crazy. Monday the boys and I spent a few hours refilling the gully at the end of our driveway, then that night we took the kids out to McDonald's and walked around Walgreens' for a while hoping the lights would be back on by the time we got home -- no such luck.

Tuesday morning the power had been out for more than 24 hours and most of the food in the fridge was starting to get funky. Fortunately garbage pickup was scheduled for Tuesday morning, so even though the wife and I hated to do it, we were forced to clean out the freezer and fridge, toss a bunch of stuff and hoist it out to the curb. We have yet to replenish our supply but we did have a pretty decent stock of canned/boxed stuff on hand. I have eaten more canned fruit and soup in the last three days than I think I have in the last three years. Amazingly enough a couple of things in the freezer were still pretty solid so I got the bright idea to open up the RV and transfer that stuff to the fridge/freezer in it, which runs off of propane. It's a small fridge, so even if I'd come up with that idea earlier we still would've had to throw out a lot of stuff cuz we wouldn't have had room for it all in there.

The kids were getting stir crazy by Tuesday AM so my sister in law offered to take them out for the day while my wife and I busied ourselves with cleaning some of the soggy crap out of the basement. My sister in law had power at her house so the kids were able to watch TV, play video games w/my niece, etc. We had called the power company Tuesday AM and they told us our neighborhood was scheduled to get juice back on by 12 noon that day. No such luck. 12 noon came and went, no electricity. When my sister in law returned w/the kids that evening, they were expecting to see the lights back on. When they pulled into the driveway and saw us sitting on the deck in front of a dark house with candles in the windows, my 8 year old had an epic meltdown, and I can't say I blame him. ("I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE, DADDY!")

I took it upon myself to go out and buy a couple of beers Tuesday night... I felt that I deserved 'em after the sh*t we'd been through. The local liquor purveyor had a healthy stock of 24 oz. Genny Cream Ale cans so I loaded up on 'em and went to bed with a much needed buzz.

By Wednesday (yesterday) we'd quite simply had enough of this sh*t. We were all tired, smelly, and irritable. We threw the kids and the dirty laundry in the car and trucked down to my Mom's for the day. We all took showers there and washed clothes, hoping against hope that maybe the lights would be back on when we got home... again, no dice. Went to bed after a few more beers, hoping against hope that maybe they'd be back on in the morning.

Today... FINALLY! Around 5 AM I heard a "click" sound and opened one eye to see the digital clock on my night stand was blinking. I wanted to go "WOOOOOOOO HOOOOOO!" and start dancing around but of course everyone else was still asleep. After that adrenaline rush I couldn't get back to sleep, of course. I returned to work today, which kinda sucked cuz I was up so early, but I was glad that things were returning to somewhat normal. While I was at work my wife had a guy come out to look @ the furnace and water heater and unbelievably, they're both OK. The guy said we were "lucky" cuz if the water had been an inch higher the electronics in the furnace would've been frazzed and we would've been in for some very expensive repairs.

So that's our story. This has been quite an experience! Fortunately we didn't get nailed as bad as some folks in our area. There are some towns that STILL don't have power, and others who lost their houses and everything in them, so with that in mind I'd say we got off pretty easy, thank God. I'm not in any hurry to repeat the experience, though.

Thanks to all who sent messages of encouragement via Facebook (my only line to the outside world for the last four days was via FB or my Yahoo mail through my cell phone) and I'm glad to be back online!!

Glad to hear that everything is more or less okay for you (especially the water heater and furnace situation) !

Glad it all worked out man.

Glad to hear that you and your family are all right!!!!

Godspeed, man. Glad to hear you got through it all ok. I'm still waiting to hear back from a friend of mine who lives on the east coast...

Me and my family narrowly missed getting wiped out by a tornado earlier this year and we were without power for nearly a week, so I know firsthand how that can push anyone to the limit. Nothin' like cooking a soggy three-days defrosted TV dinner on a propane stove for a warm meal...

Glad the damage was minimal and everyone is ok.

At least the bears had the decency to not go through the spoiled food you had to throw out. Glad everyone's OK.

glad you, your family and your stuff is safe. It was a very harrowing experience.

Welcome back!!!!! I am glad you all are OK and finally have power back!!!!!

Welcome back FF!!!!!!!!

Haha, that's nothing! My wife's family had a power outage for 14 days last winter. They live on an island in the North of Norway, and there is only 1 main powerline going there, so when it had a malfunction they lived 14 days without electricity, in minus 20 degrees Ceclius!!

kmorg wrote:

Haha, that's nothing! My wife's family had a power outage for 14 days last winter. They live on an island in the North of Norway, and there is only 1 main powerline going there, so when it had a malfunction they lived 14 days without electricity, in minus 20 degrees Ceclius!!

Yowsa. If that had been me, I would've burned up every tree in a 20 mile radius to keep warm.

kmorg wrote:

Haha, that's nothing! My wife's family had a power outage for 14 days last winter. They live on an island in the North of Norway, and there is only 1 main powerline going there, so when it had a malfunction they lived 14 days without electricity, in minus 20 degrees Ceclius!!

it would be a good time to snuggle with the wife!!

Damn that sucks. Glad everyones ok and you got that water all cleaned out. I'll never live in NJ. HAHA! I went there a few years ago and was stuck in a rain storm on my way back to a hotel from Great Adventures. The rain just came down in buckets and streets were flooded in seconds. I have an SUV and I didn't even want to drive through some of the streets because the water got so high.

Fat Freddy wrote:

kmorg wrote:

Haha, that's nothing! My wife's family had a power outage for 14 days last winter. They live on an island in the North of Norway, and there is only 1 main powerline going there, so when it had a malfunction they lived 14 days without electricity, in minus 20 degrees Ceclius!!

Yowsa. If that had been me, I would've burned up every tree in a 20 mile radius to keep warm.

exact33 wrote:

it would be a good time to snuggle with the wife!![/quote]


Cue Monthy Python lines:

"Well, we had it tuff!"

Glad things are looking up, FF!

Thanks for sharing this FF, glad the worst is over. Hope you have good insurance man, and if you do, milk them out till everything looks brand new.

Thanks for sharing that man, it was an interesting read. Happy to hear that everything is back to normal, Freddy! Oh, and I totally feel ya' on the "Bedtime Buzz" thing, I usually resort to that myself in times of trouble!

Just read this; glad you're alright, FF!

Thanks, all. Still have quite a bit of cleaning up to do before we get totally back to normal, but our moods have greatly improved.

Now I can concentrate on my next problem, which is my need for a new vehicle. My aging Jeep Cherokee breathed its last on Friday (day before the hurricane) so I have to find a semi-decent used car quickly. Right now I'm renting a car for the next week so I'll have something to drive to and from work until something comes up.

I was almost hoping that a tree would fall on the jeep during the hurricane so I could call up my insurance company and say "Dude! Storm damage! It's totalled!" but no such luck.

Fat Freddy wrote:

I was almost hoping that a tree would fall on the jeep during the hurricane so I could call up my insurance company and say "Dude! Storm damage! It's totalled!" but no such luck.

You could always go out and make a tree fall on it!

Glad everything turned out all right in the end. I couldn't imagine going through something like that. This past winter in Texas when we had the record snow, I went without electricity for half a day and that was enough for me. My mom and her husband were not as lucky, they went without electricity for several days.

BTW, good luck with the vehicle search

holydiver97595 wrote:

Fat Freddy wrote:

I was almost hoping that a tree would fall on the jeep during the hurricane so I could call up my insurance company and say "Dude! Storm damage! It's totalled!" but no such luck.

You could always go out and make a tree fall on it!

Or you could have left your hood and doors open during the storm......I worked in the insurance industry, strange and unusual claims were to be had.

holydiver97595 wrote:

You could always go out and make a tree fall on it!

Quote :

Or you could have left your hood and doors open during the storm......I worked in the insurance industry, strange and unusual claims were to be had.

Sheesh, where were you guys before the storm? I could've used these suggestions then!

Anyway, my vehicle problem is temporarily solved (for the next week anyway)... I have a week's vacation coming from 9/12 thru 9/16 (i.e. the week after next) so till then, I have a rented ride to get me back and forth to work. Hopefully I'll have everything straightened out by the time my vacation week is over. For now, meet my rental... the Nissan Cube. No, I never heard of it before either. Looks like something a sorority girl would use to take her friends to the Shore or the Lady Gaga concert, but f*ck it, it was the least expensive option the car-rental place had.



STYLIN' huh? Yeah, gonna be tough to be all Tr00 Grimm Kvlt Mettle while driving this thing. I'll have to play non-stop Slayer and Black Sabbath marathons in it in order to even approach something resembling coolness. But what the hell, it's got four wheels and a seat, and it can get me to and from work, that's all I need right now. It does have a pretty bad-ass stereo, I'll give it that much....

The Nissan Cube is one of the dumbest looking vehicles I've ever seen. What's up with that weird off-center rear window? It starts about a third of the way from the left side then wraps around the right side. WTF? We rag on that car all the time at work.