All of you folks in the mid Atlantic and Northeast are getting it pretty bad right now. Let us know you are OK when you can.

Stay safe

Thanx Greg, I'm ok. 40 miles North west of Boston.

Moderate steady 'breezes' right now. Drained about 5" off the pool last night and already about 3" have been replaced.
Still about 5 hrs to go.

Bob in Oradell NJ (exit 165 off the Garden State Parkway, that's how people in NJ indicate their locations). Never lost power, about 9 inches of rain, no real damage. Ground is saturated, hopefully no trailing gusts take any trees down...

Just rain and mild winds. About 80 miles WNW inland from Boston. About 4 inches so far.

OK, check-in from Exit 89. Nice to have access again! Had to 'leave' for Sat & Sun AM. Preped the house before leaving. No damages from wind or water. Lagoons are high (top of bulkheads). Beachfronts took a beating, radio reports seem like minimal property danages.

Major flooding conditions on GSP at 136 (from a brook!), and 98 to 91 are still closed. My power is on, although the radio says 230k+ are dark statewide. Light rain and gusty 'back-end' wind right now (1700 Sun)

Based on what I have seen & heard.....We are LUCKY!!

Spoke too quickly, our power went out around 3PM, and I'm still dead...

Roads are washed out in 3 directions around me..... many nieghbors evacuated.....Scanner says the local shcools are filling up...... one nieghbor with a small kabota has fought all through the storm keeping the only way in/out

it's been interesting.....

~S~

I'm hearing our town sewer plant, and a few major brigdes are in serious condition now......2 nieghbor towns (Grafton & Ludlow) have main streets underwater

~S~

~s~:
Stay safe!! & Good Luck, if it helps.

Still here, (central Long Island) - my power never went out, but no telephone or internet access since 4:30am sunday. I'm up at local Starbucks parking lot using Optimum WiFi.

Most around here have no power, a lot of trees down in the area, including 2 at my house, but no damage done there.

Bill

That is strange that POTS is down. Phone is the service that we never seem to lose. I suppose that is because when Sprint updated our infrastructure in the 80s to fiber, it all went in underground. I really can't remember losing the phone.

Greg,

Phone is thru Cablevision/Optimum.

Bill

That is why I have POTS.
Eggs... Basket, you know.

Twp I work in has extensive flood damages. Back to work, be back later time permitting....

Fine out here. 8" rain, a couple of power flickers, and that was it. 20 miles away in Brattleboro, VT flash flooding in low lying areas.

NEMA has this document for evaluating water damaged equipment.

http://www.nema.org/stds/water-damaged.cfm

Greg:
Thanks for the link. I have an older version from the days of Hurricane/Trop Storm Floyd. Basically, I don't think much has changed.

One apt complex has six bldgs, avg 19 meters each submerged. A lot of rain, & help from a brook. Other one has 46 units under 6'+/- of Raritan river water, etc. That's todays two. Harold probably has a lot going on in his areas.

Strange as it is, the coast did not fare to bad, compared to the inland flooding.

We haven't heard from Caper. I hope he is OK.

Probably just busy. You Joisey boys got a little taste of the sunshine state weather. Ain't it fun

Our recent weather has been weeks of heat, humidity, and a lot of t'storms. August rainfall is around an unprecedented 16+ inches, including the rain from Irene. Ground was at saturation in many areas before the 'cane.

The extensive damage is flooding! River crestings are expected to be new records. Looking at the Raritan river this afternoon....looks like 'old muddy'; really swift current & a lot of debris floating on by.

Power outages I think peaked at 900K statewide (4 POCOs), estimated restoration given out on robo-phone was 'September 4th'. Death toll I think I heard a revision to six in state.

Here in Oradell NJ we got our power back at about 12:30 AM last night. I knew, as the ceiling light in my bedroom came to life then. We were dead for about 30 hours. Power coming back in the middle of the night implys that the crews are working round the clock. It must be difficult and dangerous to work with high voltage at night, but they are experts at handling such.

I heard the same "everyone should be back up Monday" statement. I suppose that the people at customer service do not have the information to tell people of the real progress.

OK, it may be time for all of us to say "Thank You" to the utility linemen, and the tree crews.

There has been a lot of complaining over the radio about 'what are they doing' and 'what is taking so long'. The vast scope of the work that has to be done, is not clear to the general public.

Thanks guys!!

Just back up here, wuz about 40 odd hours out my neck of the woods.

Vermont's a bit rough about the edges at the moment, i mean, we just don't do hurricanes, or even tropical storms for that matter.

Give us 8 feet of snow, and we can deal, this isn't something we're prepared for, VT nat gaurd are tooling down main street, linesmen are doing double shifts (i'm buying the brew for any of them after this)


whole towns are just trashed via flood damage

covered bridges that have stood for over 2 centuries are gone>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyO18one8fU&feature=player_detailpage
(about 5 miles from me)


my road, >>>>
https://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m176/ChickenSteve_2006/P8270009.jpg


the 'ol timers are making lots of hurricane '38 refernces, the schools and T-halls are still full of evacuees

i've probably violated every letter of art 590 at this point, i'm just going to have to deal with it when all this H2O goes away

~S~

Was pretty lucky all told. Only a bit of water in the basement, and a big branch from the neighbor's tree fell into my backyard without damaging anything but his fence.

Lots of folks in my town were without power for a couple days, and a few had the roof smashed by falling trees.

Trees seem to be the biggest source of problems in hurricanes. My problems in Charley were caused by falling trees. Sort of makes you want to cut them all down.

Public Service Electric and Gas has this parked and set up in the north end of Hackensack NJ. Looks like it may be a mobile substation. Seems the substationm in New Milford (one town north of here) was partially flooded, and the local paper says PSE&G has patched many of us onto other substations. Lucky it's not hot and humid, but we are having near brownout conditions as those other substations must be near max loading. My line voltage Sept 1 3:40 PM is 110.6VAC as reported by my "kill A Watt" meter.

Greg,

Thanks for thinking of me. My area Boonton NJ, got hit pretty bad with a ton of down trees. 287 north by Boonton got washed out. 2 houses here in Boonton about to fall into the Rockaway river. I also inspect in Lincoln Park, NJ. They are all over the news. That whole town is almost under water. I will have a ton of service inspections once the water goes down. The water might not go down until the weekend AND they are talking about more rain this weekend. I myself lost power on Sun. and just got it back on Wed. noon.

The kicker was I was laying in bed without power, no water, can't flush toilets, etc. YET next door was a town park, and the guys were out there playing night baseball with the lights on. SIGH!

Harold:

OK, I thought you may be busy & 'in the dark'! DCA is looking for inspectors to help out in the worst areas, they emailed all licensed inspetors Wed.

Guess you didn't have a long extension cord to go over to the ballfield? (LOL)

That portable substation (or similar) is also used for maintenance jobs at substations. I've seen it a few times in town.

Hey Caper, I thought you were an electric guy. Couldn't you get some SO cord and tap off of that panel?

Tell them you were going to red tag the whole place since they didn't have a dedicated 60a IEC 309 receptacle.

You can 90-4 it.

John and Greg,

I knew that you guys would worry about me, but I pulled through. It does get on ones nerves though that my street, there was 1 primary wire laying on the ground, so the POCO would not energize our street. YET, the next street over had power and they were playing ball at night. Yet I couldn't flush a toilet ( I am on a well) and I was worried about a large chest freezer with a ton of meat in it.

John,

Yeah I saw that download today and I don't know if my town will want me to pull in another AHJ. You know how these towns are right now. They don't want to spend a penny on anything. All it means is that instead of getting 3-4 inspections during my stint in town, I will be getting 10 inspections. Also they will give it to me in my normal time slot.

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.

couldn't have said it better Greg

~S~

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.

Yes, but if you do live in an area prone to natural disasters then that insurance is a killer, such as earthquake insurance in California, insurance companies have to offer it by law, but it can cost as much as your regular insurance or more depending on fault proximity.

Greg, is this a freebie if i do the whole log in deal?

~S~

Yup it is a freebie. I was going to just put it on my web site but they say they don't like that. I don't want another nasty gram.

(although I suppose if I put it in the private area I could slip through a loophole in the ULA)

Printed out & thanks Greg

I've been invited into a restricted area to assess water damage, so i thought maybe i'll bring this along to the command center

~S~

Greg:
I printed that & have it at the twp office for handout to anyone. I also handed quite a few copies out in the field. My Twp is on the fortunate side as far as damages. Two apt complexes got hit real hard. 46 units at one w/water damages interior, and seven bldgs (about 110+/- apts in the other. Two buildings (30 units) have new services inspected and awaiting the utility meters this afternoon. (I just got back from there)

As to flood insurance, yes I have it on my hpme, it's not mandatory, but I still have it for a tad under $1850 a year. Hope I never need it.

It's helpful Greg

but in an effort to make it even easier for all the FF's and potential rural residential reconnects i've simply asked to determine if the water immersed the panel or not.

a service can be heaed back up, and isolated to either dedicated circuits, and/or a GFI under the panel for temp usage

~S~

I been reading this to catch up the news what ya guys going thru with the mess and aftermath mess and I was reading in my French newspapers and they did mention alots of flooding in the area which they never hit that hard before.

I wish you guys a good recovery on the clean up stage.

Merci,
Marc

About 300,000 lost power crews from the GRID restored all but 2700 by today!

I'm OK as I'm am in Trumbull, CT and I did not even lose power on the other hand my friend in Bridgeport, CT was without power for three days
All in all I am OK
I hope everyone else is OK out there