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Greg,

By the time I rolled out that piece of SO cable, I would be a couple of thousand feet away. I might be able to get 10 volts at about 1 amp to power my house! I live on 8 acres of woods with a small part of that being wetlands.

To make matters worse, there is a POCO sub station right behind my property. I might be able to tab a line in there, but I am not sure what is 7.5 KV or 13 KV.

If I get a chance, I will try to upload some pictures in my area.

I have found this website to show some of the damage in my area. Morristown ( which is our county capital) was shut down for 3 days because a sub station went underwater. It shut the whole town/city down. Try this website:

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/...aves-Pequannock-Lincoln-Park-under-water

How does it work in the US for Disaster Assistance?

Here in Canada the local govt get reimbursed by the Provincial and Federal govt for any money they have to put out to recover from a flood, major storm etc.

We have FEMA (the Katrina people). Unfortunately they are broke. In this climate getting more appropriations may be tough.
The states will usually get federal assistance but they always end up eating a lot of the expenses of a disaster.

The scary thing is that a lot of this damage will ultimately be back on the home owner. Flood insurance is a separate insurance policy and from what I understand most of the people in the north east did not buy any. They did not think there would ever be a flood in places like Vermont. I am guessing the utilities will be self insured.

Greg,

Here in my area, people that Never had water in their house before, got water this year. We didn't even have a lot of rain, maybe 7"-9". The grounds were already saturated from the storms the weeks previous to this one. My one town, Lincoln Park, floods when they just have a few inches of rain. There is also a dam upstream of LP and they decided to open the gates on Fri./Sat. to let water out. I was told by some of the people of LP that the water came up 2 feet in just 1 hour.

Here in my town, there is only one spot that floods and some one was building a new house there. The DEP allowed him to build his house there but he had to build it to the 500 year flood. That would mean that if there was 1 flood every 500 years, the house would have to be built 1 foot higher than the water level. Guess what, after all the rain we had, the water stopped at 1 foot below the floor joist to his house. He did get some water in his basement and garage but it didn't reach his habitable area.

Most people live their whole lives and never have a fire but they still buy fire insurance. It is just what people are willing to take a chance on.

If you are in a zone that FEMA does not consider a threat flood insurance is really pretty cheap.

FEMA info is contradictory this AM. Twp I work in is under the impression that there is FEMA aid available, but this AM on the radio, Middlesex County is not included within the designated counties for FEMA.

Now, what about the FEMA paperwork that we were handed to fill out?

Another cost of sorts to the disaster areas may be people, who may be underwater with their mortages or facing foreclosure, and without flood insurance, may just decide to cut their losses and abandon their flood damaged houses.