Surviving Isabel

By all rights, it was a minor weather event here in central PA. Winds were basically 40 mph or less except for a few heavier gusts. But it somehow morphed into a major problem. 1.4 million people in the state lost power. Twenty-four hours after the storm passed, 600,000 were still de-electrified. Some people will not get power back until Monday.

My power company-PPL- was only able to restore power to 50,000 out of 200,000 customers in the first day. It is worrisome. If this is emergency response under ideal conditions-- warm temperatures, light winds, teams available from elsewhere in the state-- then, what would happen when conditions are unfavorable.

For that matter, what would have happened if Isabel had hit as hard as it was predicted earlier. On Tuesday one of Penn State's models predicted that the storm would make landfall along the Chesapeake and hit PA with winds still above 100 mph.

Our power was off 31 hours. And we also lost phone service for a few hours. So it was mostly just an inconvenience. I'll give PPL credit for this: when i reported the outage on Saturday morning, they estimated that my neighborhood would be up again by 2.00 that afternoon. It came back on at 1.08 pm.

Also, the local Days Inn (which had power) was offering a special low rate for people without power. That was a decent thing to do.

I had a battery-powered radio but needn't have bothered. Our news talk station (WHP) was worthless. They ran their regular lineup of yakkers and shouters (Rush, Hannity, Savage, etc.) and the sliver of local news each hour was not helpful. They simply kept repeating that trees were down and power was out to 200,000 people locally. No sense of how long it would be out, where people should go if they needed emergency help, etc.