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On the last day of the year, two of my bestest buddies dropped by for a drink and some munchies. Here, where Paul wasn't trying to grab my butt, I got him to sit with his wife in front of the world-famous Author Cam! Wishing you the best in 2007, Bonnie and Paul, and may your plumbing hold up for the next three years!
If you've been reading this blog faithfully (which I'm sure you have been) you'll know that we spent five days without power last week after the 2006 Blackout wind storm. That kind of knocked me right out of the Christmas spirit. I wasn't going to light to house or put up any other decorations. But when I woke up this morning to 2 1/4 inches of snow, that put it all right back and brought it home. Today, I spent time out in the freezing weather putting up the house lights. Then, I braved the cold again to bring it to you.
As a VERY PROUD American Infidel, I just want to wish you and yours a very MERRY CHRISTMAS! And if you don't celebrate Christmas, that's alright (as long as you speak English). Enjoy whatever it is you celebrate - just give me room to celebrate my holiday, too. We can all live together.
There have been many other pictures from this blog to make the local newspapers or television news and this is yet another one you may have seen on KING5 news this morning. When I woke up at 4 a.m. today, I was astounded to find snow accumulating in the yard! It had not been in the forecast and came as a complete pre-Christmas surprise! Here, 2 1/4 inches of snow rests on Connie, the first in the "Connie" series of Volkswagens we own. My Christmas spirit had been knocked down by the huge windstorm and subsequent 5-day power outtage we had, but this morning's surprise restored the magic of the season and brought out the kid in me. If you were around at the time, I would have thrown a snowball at you!
Here is the second of two pictures you saw on KING5 News this morning of the surprise snowfall in Port Orchard, Washington. This is a view out the front window of our house where the snow really piled up. :)
Also, as it is my Dad's birthday today, I'll use this opportunity to say:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JIM W. COLEMAN JR!
The weather forecasters had it right on - a powerful storm was to hit the entire Pacific Northwest from Seattle to Northern California, and we were to be prepared for major inconvenience. Now I've survived many storms and I have the standard emergency kit and supplies on hand, so I wasn't too worried. I will admit to a great concern with all the trees surrounding our house, though. That, and we'd just had a new roof put on. That was a bad omen. Later, as you'll see as you read through these five days, I had no idea how many trees would come down and just how bad it would get.
It started at about 3:30 on Thursday afternoon when my wife called to tell me they'd lost power at the Port Orchard store where she works. I walked outside of my workplace in Bremerton and noticed there wasn't even a light breeze blowing. But little did I know at that time, trees were already toppling in our neighborhood. And by the time I left work an hour later, roads were closing due to high winds and there were numerous traffic accidents. The storm was blowing in...
By 9 p.m., things were critical. Power had been out for hours and the wind was howling. Trees were snapping with a weird pop pop pop to all directions. Standing outside my back door, I saw four brilliant flashes in the sky as power transformers failed in rapid succession. There was no way we were going to make it by sleeping in the house. We loaded everything into our travel trailer and hoped for the best.
It was a long night as the travel trailer was rocked violently in the storm. I had never felt anything like that before. All night long, trees shed parts of themselves and I would sit upright with each loud thud, just waiting for a tree to topple onto the RV garage. By morning, I was a wreck. And so was our world.
CONTINUE TO DAY TWO
On Friday morning, day two of the storm, I stumbled out of the travel-trailer to view devastation. Sure, it wasn't to the scale of Hurricane Katrina but everywhere I looked, I saw trees down, piles of branches and other debris, power lines hanging loosely from kiltered power poles and an eerie silence over the whole area. There was no way I would be eable to get to work with the power lines and trees blocking the road, so I set about working to clear our property and address structural damage as it was discovered. Over the next 24 hours, I was able to get plenty of pictures of the damage, and some of those are below. As I get time, I will update the blog with photos and stories from all five days of the Pacific Northwest and Seattle-area 2006 Blackout Storm.
CONTINUE TO DAY THREE
Staying warm wasn't a problem. After spending the first two nights in our travel trailer, we moved inside and kept the woodstove burning. Last summer, I had the foresight to buy seven cords of wood, so there was no shortage of that kind of fuel here.
By the end of day three, I had created 18 large piles of debris on the property and disposed of it all in a bonfire that burned continuously, day and night. We had fun with the kids and they were exceptionally well-behaved. I had feared that they would become bored and restless and drive us perfectly crazy, but they hung together and played, allowing me to do the necessary work around the property. I took frequent breaks to come in and spend time playing with them.
Working outside, the cold was getting to me. The kids had colds, and I could tell that I was coming down with something. It was on this day, day three of the storm, that I wished that I had a generator. With multiple freezers and refrigerators in the house stuffed full of expensive meats and other foods, we were facing a potential loss of many hundreds of dollars if any of those food storage devices failed. I love to cook and when I do so, it's usually in very large quantities. That food is preserved using my FoodSaver device and then frozen to use later. At times, it's not unusual to have up to 200 of these pre-cooked meals in the freezer(s) - everything from split pea soup to casseroles, enchiladas, lasagna, pasta dishes and more. I called the Gig Harbor, Washington, Home Depot store, but they were sold out of generators. "We may get an emergency shipment tomorrow," I was told, "but I can't promise anything."
I drove to Fred Meyer as we were in need of some supplies and some diversion. Sure, we had the necessary "survival stuff" - four cases of fresh water, hundreds of jars of canned foods, etc., but we were craving Sloppy Joes and Twinkies at this point. It was very weird (and sobering) to see all the empty shelves in the store. You get a sense of how vulnerable we really are in this society. I'll be commenting on that later in Day 5, but just take a long, hard look at the picture below and think about it for a while...
In hindsight, day three wasn't bad. Just a lot of back-breaking work and a lot of finding ways to keep the kids happy. Day four would be more challenging as we did start incurring losses, finding gas became a real challenge, our bodies screamed for hot showers, and my patience began to wear thin.
CONTINUE TO DAY FOUR
We lost most of our food in both of our standard refrigerator/freezers. We were able to stuff some into the travel trailer's refrigerator (dairy/meats) and we filled up an ice chest. Unfortunately, most stores sold out of ice quickly but as the outdoor temperatures dipped into the 20's, we were able to make ice and keep what we had frozen. Our upright "deep freeze" did survive the storm, and that was a blessing - the "deep freeze" is stuffed full of roasts, steak and other meats. If there was a bright side to this, we were able to clean and disinfect our refrigerators.
By this day, we'd been three nights and four days without power or hot water. Now, personal hygiene was becoming a pressing need. Not wanting to fill the water tanks of the travel trailer (because then we would have had to tow it out later to dump the tanks), we decided to travel up to Silverdale, Washington, for showers. Finding an open service station with diesel wasn't a problem, and I was glad to have a diesel (as opposed to gas) truck. Many, if not most, of the gas stations were out of most grades of gasoline and there were lines as people waited to fill gas tanks and gas cans. At the Port Orchard Chevron, I was the only one fueling a vehicle - every other pump was used by people to fill portable gas cans.
I am thankful to the people at KOMO 1000 News Radio. Throughout the storm, they tabled all their regular programming and did what they called "Neighbor to Neighbor" coverage. People called in to report on conditions in their neighborhood and to offer help to others in need. Those who had needs were matched up with those in positions to help and it was heart-warming to watch that network grow over the course of the days. But some of the stories were heart-breaking, such as that told by one woman who wailed in anguish while she talked. She spoke of her six kids, her husband in Iraq and of the van she and her kids had sought shelter in to stay warm. Now, out of gas, out of money and out of heat, she was desperate to find a way to keep her kids warm. But as hard as that was to listen to, it wasn't a unique story. And, in every case that played out through that coverage, help was offered by others in better circumstances.
I heard a lot of whiners on the radio, too, but they were easily tuned out. What was hard to tune out were those who called with "theories" on why the storm happened in the first place and/or why it was so devastating to the region. Because the King County (Seattle) region of The People's Republic of Washington State is so liberal, I knew it wouldn't take long for someone to point out that the entire storm was Bush's fault - as is everything else that's chaotic in our world. Go ahead, laugh. Because it didn't take long. One lady was literally beside herself with rage, pointing out that this was because we'd spent trillions of dollars to repair Iraq's infrastructure and this was just our come-uppin's for that kind of irresponsibility. In other words, if Bush hadn't "invaded and occupied" Iraq, the storm wouldn't have happened. So that, you see, was a bit of humor in what was otherwise a pretty boring, sometimes desperate day. The story I did give some credence too, on the other hand, was this one: The last storm to hit with this magnitude was what was later dubbed the "Inauguration Day" storm, which hit as Bill Clinton took office. And now, years later, we got wholloped again on the eve of the Democrats regaining control of the House and the Senate. Coincidence? Hmmmmmm. Makes more sense than "it's Bush's fault." Many people would laugh on one or the other of those two explanations, but few at both. I'm one who laughed at both, but the latter theory certainly is intriguing even though I know it's not true; if it were, we would have had a Katrina-like disaster when Gregoire took the office of Governor. But then again, maybe that's just what we are having here in Washington, but in stop-motion animation.
When returning from Silverdale that night, I spotted a Puget Sound Energy truck driving down the roads in our neighborhood. Its driver "spotted" the overhead wires with a high-intensity beam, looking for any branches or other debris on the lines. That told me that they were getting closer to turning on the power, and I was more than ready.
On a side note here, and for personal reference: When your power goes out, it does you and your neighbors a big favor if you go to your breaker box and shut off your major appliances. In my case, I shut everything off except for the interior house lights. When the power goes back on, hundreds (or thousands) of appliances all turn on at the same time, and that can quickly overload the power grid, resulting in another power loss and, potentially, dangerous dips and spikes in voltage. Motors require a lot of energy to start up and when you consider the number of hot water heaters, furnaces, etc. in your area, that's a tremendous load on the system. Shut off the breakers and then turn them back on one at a time over the next hour or two. Let the system adjust.
I know that takes time but it's the best way to recover without running the risk of ruining televisions and appliances. While you are waiting for it all to come back on, maybe you can thumb through some almanacs and history books to figure out what other disasters accompanied a Democrat's inauguration or, if you're so inclined, what else you can blame Bush for.
CONTINUE TO DAY FIVE
On day five, after a couple of false alarms, we finally did get our power. Our hearts and prayers went out to those brave, tired men and women who were out working in the cold to make it so. The power came on in the morning and we brought the house back online slowly, turning on individual appliances and breakers over the course of an hour. All was well. Except that I had a terrible cold and couldn't go to work. But that didn't mean I could rest, either. We still had a significant amount of meat to save - frozen meats that were still "okay" enough to cook and preserve by canning or with the FoodSaver device. So I got to work on that - 20 pounds of bacon here, 50 pounds of beef there, etc. By early afternoon, I was exhausted - my cold was getting the better of me. At about 2 p.m., I fell asleep for much of the rest of the day.
What did I learn from this? Well, for one, I was not as prepared as I thought I was. Sure I had lanterns, mantles, white gas, etc. But for lack of a $1 plastic funnel, it was very difficult to refuel the lantern. I spent the better part of two hours searching the dark garage for a funnel before finally improvising. It's the little things that sometimes count. And then there were the freezers. Had I thought ahead and used the bottom shelf for blocks of ice, we might have fared better with regard to food spoilage.
I think the neatest thing I observed was the goodness of humanity, as I wrote in the previous entry. Strangers were pitching in to help strangers. Communities bonded. I met neighbors I had never met before.
But then, on the other hand, there were reports of gas stations raising the prices in time of need - something I was surprised to discover is perfectly legal. I think that is something that needs to be outlawed. After four days of listening to people report that they were sitting in their cars to keep warm and running out of gas, it seemed criminal that the stores could raise the prices and further victimize these folks. SHAME ON THEM!!! There are lots of things that are legal, but shouldn't be done.
In the end, I lost two days of work. And a couple of hundred dollars worth of food. And maybe another $200 in unplanned expenses to repair damage and feed the kids. But I was lucky. This was a survivable storm...for us. There will be other storms and I will, hopefully, be better prepared.
What did I gain from the storm? Good "Daddy" time with my kids and family. And a reinforcement of the greater good that surrounds us all. Below are pictures of the kids playing and having a good time, despite the bleak conditions.
Thank you for reading. Please share your storm experiences.
This, one of my favorite photos, was taken at our Rocket Lane house and the view is from the back yard. A thick blanket of snow covered the grass and you can see the light painting stripes on the snow through the deck slats. A very pretty, relaxing scene.
Here is the "VW Snowman" Jim built at the Rocket Lane house on Dec. 8, 2003. If you look carefully, the snowman's "buttons" are VW logos collected from years of rebuilding Volkswagens.
Hoooooga, left, poses with two of her friends in this interesting shot.
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