Stormy Weather

[Selene]

Ellen:

Thanks. I got similar unclear results.

I am going to ask a friend who is a horticulturist when he gets back from "vacation." His idea of a vacation is meandering about deep wildernesses for about four (4) weeks. Really nice guy and smart too.

A...

[BaalChatzaf]

We were Sandied in Middlesex County N.J.

My house got off lucky. No damage to the building. The power is still out (this is the 7 th day). We are serviced(???) by JCPL which stands for Jersey Central Pretty Lousy. Fortunately my son and his family live 9 miles down the road and he has his power back. He is serviced by JPEG and was only down two days, so we are bunking at his house till we get our electricity back.

There were some very big trees that were blown down less that a 100 feet from our has and there were trees down throughout the Rossmore community. Trees and poles down along the side roads and the main highways were blocked by downed trees and lines for two days. The power outage led to a sudden loss of gasoline supply (the stations need electricity to pump their gas). Starting Sunday things eased up quite a bit and the lines were shorter. Governor Christy orderd on odd-even service policy to cut down on the length of the lines. I have two even numbered cars so I will have to wait until tomorrow to fill them up but we have enough gasoline to held us till then.

Long Beach Island which is a thing long piece of land just off the Jersey Coast we completely devistated by the storm surge. It looks like World War II there. Lower Manhattan, the same thing. The Battery was completely inundated and there is still wide spread power outage south of 34 th street. Parts of Brooklyn and Queens were wrecked by the storm surge.

As hurricanes go, Sandy was just a category 1, but combined with a polar high from the Provinces and a storm moving in from the West, the Hurricane took an atypical left hook right through New Jersey and New York Harbor. That plus a full moon high tide made this the "perfect storm". It was worse in a way than New Orleans. The good news is that most of the area is above sea level which is different from N.O. which is mostly at or below sea level.

It is now Monday Night and the southern part of Middlesex County which is serviced by PSED is back on line and the stores are open.

Our man hit was loosing all the meat and chicken in our freezer. After three days the contents began to thaw and our stove (run by electricity, naturally) was unavailable to cook it. So we gave it a decent burial in the garbage dumpster. Fortunately our home owner insurance will cover all but $100.00 dollars of the loss. It could have been worse. Our house is now at 48 degrees ambient temperature so the butter and lox are keeping o.k. so far. We were able to sleep there for the first three days by wearing three layers and sleeping under two blankets, but Friday was it. Too cold. Fortunately my son and his family got their power back and we are staying there for the nights.

And that's the way it was.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Peter]

I once read of shelters being built from one large, 12 foot diameter 20 foot long section of reinforced cement pipe. You could buy that or have your unimproved pipe trucked in and placed with a crane. You board up the ends, leaving doors and then half bury it. Then pile a mound of dirt over the top and sides. It was incredibly strong. You placed flat boards on the bottom to create a floor. Ah, there’s no place like home on the cheap. The following is a news story slash advertisement so it should be OK to reproduce it.

Peter

The Survivor Truck, built to drive through the end of the world

By Justin Hyde | Motoramic – 6 hours ago

"Sometimes," author William S. Burroughs once said, "paranoia is just having all the facts." Given the facts gathered from the past few natural and man-made disasters, it's not a surprise that many people have begun to think of what they'd need to survive the next calamity. One California man has taken a kitchen-sink approach and created the Survivor Truck -- a machine that could keep rolling through any given Armageddon.

Jim DeLozier, who sells survival goods in Costa Mesa, Calif., says the idea of the Survivor Truck was to build the ultimate rolling outpost, one that could withstand even a nuclear attack. Starting with a Chevy C70 truck powered by 150-gallon tanks of gasoline or propane, DeRozier outfitted the chassis with every conceivable piece of equipment needed to travel through a disaster. "My goal was to build a vehicle that can go anywhere you want to go, stay as long as you want and drive back out," DeLozier says.

On the outside, the truck gets bulletproof shielding, a filtration system to keep chemical agents out of the cabin and even a coating of pickup truck bedliner. Night vision helps keep watch on what's happening when the lights go out, while a solar generator can provide power for the array of communications gear during daylight hours. On the inside, there's enough water, food, toilets and battery power to keep a group of people not just alive but comfortable for months amidst chaos. If parked in the wilderness, the top platform includes a complete camping unit and inflatable raft, along with a water purification system; if there's some need for an aggressive response, the truck has a protected sniper's cage and a backup crossbow and arrows.

While DeLozier says he originally conceived the truck as the ultimate survivalist driving machine -- with a price that runs between $100,000 and $600,000 -- he's received more interest from military and law enforcement agencies mulling a rolling command center. He says he's somewhat surprised by the attention his concept has received, "whether it's the zombie apocalypse fad or whether people believe they have a potential need....it's designed to be a home away from home." Given how many people have seen their homes washed away or destroyed in recent years, it's no wonder there's some demand for something that could outrun trouble.