Thanks

Checked on our elderly neighbor and she's fine. We offered to run a cord to power her fridge, but she said if the power is out into tomorrow she'll go to her daughters place and we are welcome to her fridge contents.

Good that all is well. Looks like Hanna just turned towards Jax Florida. It's times like this I miss the shaking all over feeling of Oakland, Ca.....lolololol

Doug,

We are in Jackson MS and planning to head back to Metairie tomorrow morning to do a little cleaning up. The initial reports from neighbors and friends are that our area didn’t have any flooding or any real damage. The refrigerator and freezers are probably a mess but I put everything we didn’t bring with us in heavy duty trash bags to minimize the cleanup process. As of this afternoon we still do not have power but who know how long that will be out. We could have power back very soon because the neighbors around the corner only lost power for 2hrs.

As a side note, the Cobra should still be sitting up on stands awaiting the tires to be put back on.

The main thing is my family is safe and sound.... confined living will try your patience though.

Take care and good luck.

Ed

Could have been far worse, Ed. Glad the family is safe.

Has anyone heard from David since this was posted yesterday ?

I haven't heard anything from David. I have his cell somewhere - if I can get a live tower I'll give him a call.

We've been told to not expect power for up to 8 days. So no gas for those with generators unless you get to one of the few stations in the city with power to the pumps before they go dry, or you have a pickup truck just arrive from Texas with a load of full 5gal cans.

Spent today cleaning the yards. Not real damage except for downed trees and yards full of debris. No real problems that I've heard with state wide planning and resource allocation etc as of yet.

We can get TV for the news, wireless net is fine, and we've got gas for the generators to keep things cold and make ice. Water system in & out is fine so far.

Tomorrow morning we're having the neighbors around us in for breakfast.

So far this station is secure :)

I'm still here, more or less, typing in the dark.......
It's about 1:40pm and we actually came thru in real good shape, no damage to my house/shop or daughters trailer house, thank God.....everywhere looks like a disater area, down trees all over the place..........quite a few houses destroyed and last nite, 10"s of rain, I'm high and dry but some of my neighbors didn't fair as good, bunch of road closures, water is receding this afternoon and roads should be back open late today......

Spent the better part of yesterday cleaning up my yard and helping the neighbors do the same, didn't hardly sleep last nite so I ain't doing much today......

Got lucky and borrowed an "extra" generator from a buddy, small unit, 2500 watt, Coleman,2 110 outlets....hadn't been run in 10 years, dang little thing started on the fourth crank, been going strong ever since.....Thank God AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My buddy came by today and told me he forgot to warn me that the little generator is a noisy little ba$tard, I told him it was music to my ears, and anyway, I got it in the shop so I don't even hear it with the doors closed.....

All the area within 50+ miles of me is 100% out of power as of now, but there are making headway.....cell phone has been ringing off the wall from buddies needing gas for their generators...I got enough for the generator and two days work till I have to get into 110 gallons of high dollar race gas, which I hope I don't have too!!!!!!!!! I gave one of them a good cussing, he's got a gas guzzler generator and knows it,only been having for 6 or 7 years now and didn't get any extra gas for it, now he's scrambling all over looking for gas...........

I'm alternating between fridg. and fans and freezer and fans and other odds and ends.....we're making do and other than having to put up with 2 irate wimmins and 2 dogs, all's o-k....



Power expected to be on in 5 to 10 days.....

I ran all the extension cords I have to reach my computer to check my email and other stuff, got to turn everything else off, so I'll only be checking in once or twice a day...............

Looks like I'll be back at work tomorrow and it'll be from daylight to dark for the next 2 or 3 weeks,almost a relief to get out of the house and away from wifey/daughter............

Doug: a buddie called from Baton Rouge and said it was really bad there, but they had power back on by 6:00pm last nite............

Hope everyone is o-k, talk to you'll tomorrow............

David

Good to hear y'all are alright.

You can have custom molded ear plugs made that work great.
They sound like they should be part of your survival supplies at home.

Hey David - glad to hear things are ok up your way. Ed - Sounds like NO came through better than expected, good to hear ya'll are ok and everything is secure.

We're still in the dark so to speak.

They are making a huge effort in getting the power back and it's on in isolated pockets around here.

Our office area took a hammering but it's ok. Generator failed Monday night and the 2 new units we bought today were defective out of the box. Spent the afternoon working on them and they're now up and running. We're working on a distributed computer system and most of us can work from home during this.

Things could be worse, and we're getting everything back in order pretty quickly. All I have to do is sometime have Dish network re orientate our dish so it can see the satellite. Fences are gone but the dish is still there.

PS: David - any spare gas ? :LOL:

Fred;

Plenty of ear plugs, I buy those boxes of 500 at a time.......believe me, earplugs WILL NOT HELP at my house right now, only thing that'll help is power for hot showers and clean underwear.........:CRY::CRY::(:(

Good news is I went back to work today, what a relief, it's a lot easier dealing with folks that "just" have hurricane damage!!!!!:LOL::LOL:

Doug;

Power is back on in small spots, gas is plentiful and there are almost no waiting lines.........how much do you need????:):)

BTW: generators have DOUBLED in price,plenty of folks selling them on the side of the road and all the hardware stores have good supplies,if you don't mind paying double the regular price.......

One guy was selling generators off a gooseneck trailer, all they had on them was "MADE IN CHINA", no brand name, thousand bucks a pop (cash only,no receipts) and he only stayed in one spot for an hour then moved to the next town down the road. Come to find out, they were factory defective units and about 15% of them actually worked to some degree.screwed over a lot of folks!!!!!!!!!

suprisingly gas is still only about a nickel a gallon higher than before the hurricane......... and plentiful!!!!!!!!

Still no word on power for me, best guess is from 3 to 5 more days.....:mad::mad::(:(

David

Power should be back tomorrow :)

David - do you have a loooooooong extension cord? ;)

I saw a Roadside Industry Profiting Off Frustrated Folks guy selling Titan generators out of a trailer. Police were there :) Maybe he was legitimate, maybe not.

I have seen 4 generator units sold by Home Depot and they've all been defective. Two we got had sludge in the carbs that we had to disassemble and clean (luckily 4 of us at work knew what to do). Another hasn't worked yet, and the owner was told "no returns" and the replacement for that 1 has broken both engine mounts. :mad:

Once the power comes back we'll pretty much be back to normal. Most of the local gas stations were able to open late Wednesday or yesterday.

We were going to relocate our office today as net access, which is critical to us, will be down for an unknown time. Packed everything, shut down he servers and then the phones came on. :eek: No power - just the phones. Power, we were told, could be another 7 to 14 days. With the phones DSL is possible, so as of this evening we're on-line and have plenty of gas available. Unpack everything. :JEKYLHYDE

The post Katrina recovery effort was a cluster fluck from day one. No planning, no planned response and no active management till outside resources arrived. This time around things have been better. Granted the problems haven't been as bad, but at least planning was in place and people knew what to do a week before they had to do it. It wasn't perfect but it worked damn well. The needs in BR caught many a little short as most of the advance planning was directed NO's way. The response afterwards has been about all it could be. :)

Now that it's over let's hope IKE leaves the east coast the hell alone :(

Well, some good news and some bad news, but the bad ain't that bad..............

The bad, power is restored to within 3 houses of me, power company says I will DEFINTELY have power back by tuesday!!!!!!!!:CRY::CRY:, no doubt I'll be the last SOB to get power tuesday night........:JEKYLHYDE:JEKYLHYDE

The good news is a buddy got his power back on yesterday and lent me his big a$$ generator... got it "hot wired" in my shop, which feeds the shop and back-feeds my house, will run everything cept my central air unit, at least I can walk in a room with a Coleman lantern at night and take a hot shower and get some work done...

BTW: work is piling up and I worked today and will work tomorrow afternoon...we had from 10 to 20 inches of rain,depending on location and a lot of subdivisions flooded from 1 to 4 feet deep, mucho cars went under,that's where I come in.......In the next two weeks, I'll probably do the same amount of claims I normally do in 6 to 8 weeks!!!!!!

Well, I gotta go to my niece's wedding this pm and I'm fixing to head out....

At least I'l be online a little more now........

How you'll doing down there Doug??????? News report says Baton Rouge is still 75% out of power and a few friends have kids over there in college and they have no power........

David

Our power came on at 5:08am Thursday. :) Apparently the lights were on when the power went off, so at 5am they came back on. Satellite TV will be down until next Saturday. Most of the cleanup of grown debris has been done around here and all that's left is to repair damage to fences etc. Houses across the street have tarps on their roofs so their ready for any rain we might get.

LSU is scheduled to start Monday I think. Power situation is improving all over the city each day, but they still have a lot of work to do. We had to move our office as that area will be without power for 7 - 10 days and the generators can't power the computers. The UPS packs recharge off the generators, but when the generator voltage fluctuates they switch over to battery, so they slowly go backwards. Of course having done that yesterday, the power will be on Monday :rolleyes:

Apart from a few small things we're pretty much back to normal.

Hope you get your power back soon David.

Hurricane Ike is not a small thing. Hope you (and David) do not get hit again.

Doug;

We got power back about 8:00pm saturday nite, so did my daughter.....

we're about back to normal now, yard is all cleaned up and emergency stuff put away in the shop, but not too far away (Ike)....

"Only" have about 100 claims sitting on my desk rite now, so this week will be from daylight to dark working trying to get everyone looked at before Ike............

Hope it doesn't come anywhere near us, we can't take another this soon.......

Well, gotta get back to work.

David

Guys, I'm trying to get in touch with fella I know in La.. He has a skid steer business and I'm sure he's probably busy right now. When he contacts me I'll get his home email and pass it on if you like?.

From the reports I've been seeing,y'all have been getting really hammered from Ike.

Just what y'all need.:(

When y'all are able let us know your condition.

Prayers are with y'all too.

We're fine here, a little rain, not too bad and some wind, my guess is 25 to 35 mph, which we can handle.............

Right now, my nieghbor is cutting his grass, it's about 8:50 am.........

I've been putting in 18 hour days for a week now at work, I'm worn out and going to work in the office today and tomorrow.... this coming week should be down to 12 hour days and hopefully by the end of the week, all the storm claims will have been worked and we'll be back on our regular schedule.....

My guess is our Cat. Team will be heading to Texas to help out there and then I'll have to cover for some of them here, so work will not slow down too much. I'm very thankful for the extra work and $$$$, but need a little break between storms to rest up....

Race car needs some work and I have not had a chance to even look at it in three weeks, race season starts for me in three weeks, don't think I'll be ready for the October race, but should be ready for the November race and the others after that..........

Looks like Galveston and Houston are taking a beating, hope everyone in those areas are safe.............

David

There are 4 million people without power. They are also saying it could take many weeks before the power is turned back on in some places.

I have only heard of three deaths so far that are related to the storm. It could have been worse.

I was just watching some of the latest pictures on the news and so far it doesn't seem to be as bad as they had feared it would but there is a lot of damage and they haven't gotten into all of the areas yet. I saw a lot of street lights that were down and broken windows.

Ron