Folks,

Gentlemen all:

I am touched to read so many well wishing posts. We have survived and had it much better than many of our neighbors. So many had large trees fall upon their homes. The power is indeed still off for thousands here. And thousands are still cleaning up. Why were we so lucky? I cannot say.

There can be a tendency for some who have never been through one of these storms to brush them off and ignore the warnings. Others who have weathered many such storms may become complacent and take their safety for granted. No two storms are ever alike. They can be deadly, especially the rushing water and the flooding. The prudent prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

You make preparations, then you sit and wait and watch the RADAR and the reports. Every couple of hours you see the storm is drawing nearer and not pulling away. Then the clouds begin scudding by across the darkening sky. The rain starts and soon the wind freshens. Eventually the rain is lashing the windows and the wind is howling. You peer outside and see the tallest pines bending, the oaks are twisting, little trees are bending to the ground. If it was over quickly like a thunder storm it would not be so bad but with a hurricane it goes on like this for hours and it can get stronger.

In the night it is worst of all. You hear unseen things hit the roof, you hear great thuds as trees fall and through it all the wind shrieks as the rain pounds down upon the roof above your head. Sometimes you hear sirens in th distance and you know someone's life is in peril trying to aid another. You say a silent prayer for them and for your family. You might be next.

Our power was off for a full 36 hours almost to the minute. It went down with a telephone pole about 9 AM Saturday morning just as Irene was saying "howdy do" to the Outer Banks which mind you, is well over 200 miles from here. We had sustained tropical storm winds and gusts up to 60 MPH. If this was a cat 1 storm thank God it was not a cat 3,4 or 5.

Our phone and Internet was down until about an hour ago. We always had plenty of water.... well falling on us yes but also in our pipes. Like Buddye1 we have been through many big storms even more powerful ones than Irene and some left us powerless and with no water supply. I cannot stress to you enough the vital importance of having fresh, clean, potable water. Being able to wash and flush and drink made it far easier to endure the power outage. At least our house was intact. It must have been deemed a safe place. The neighbor's cat came over at some point and honored us by having her kittens in one of the utility rooms.

We had kerosene lanterns that had been passed down to me from my grandmother for illumination. How did they read and work by those around the turn of the century? They do give off a cozy glow and once it is dark they give more light than you expect. Naturally we had flashlights as well. And indeed as Buddye1 mentioned we did get out the barbecue and cook everything we could on Sunday and the rest we loaded into several coolers with ice and carted it to a relatives home on the outskirts of town. Their home somehow still had power. Both our freezers completely defrosted. We have had to wash out and disinfect our refrigerator.

The clean up was a prodigious task for the past 3 days but again we had it made compared to so many others who are still hurting. The front yard is clear and all debris has been stacked in an orderly fashion for carting off. No damage was done to the house save for the loss of a few shingles.

A 4 inch diameter limb fell upon the service lines of a house to the West. It straddled them for a time Saturday during the beginning of the winds. It finally blew off without bringing down the lines. Our power went out about that time but this was caused when a telephone pole several blocks West of here broke off a foot below where the cross bar was and the power lines came down with that. The rain was torrential as you'd expect and we received a huge amount in the twelve hours it took for the storm to abate and on top of that on Monday a cold front came through dropping another several inches. It has been interesting.

My closest neighbor, the California ad man who has a 50 foot sailing yacht parked on blocks in his back garden was lucky too. The trees its canvas cover is lashed to did not fall. She is a lovely craft called the "Tiger Lil". He is slowly renovating her with hopes of one day getting her afloat at the port of Wilmington, NC. It probably cost as much as my house did to cart it inland across the country from California to here. The parkland behind my house was hit hard too. It looks like a war zone in the wood through which the little gravel path winds.

I took that walk yesterday and sadly I found my path blocked many times by huge oaks and some 50 foot tall pines. It will be some time before that gets cleaned up. It is much like that all over the city and county. The further East you go the worse it gets. The coast got hurricane force winds for hours and it was chewed up. By the time Irene moved North and hit the Big Apple she had calmed down a lot. Even so they have a billion dollars in damage.

As I said we were luckier than so many of our neighbors and it is time now to help those who were not so fortunate. We still have the back garden to clear of small storm debris but that can wait. Now that we have TV again I notice that the tropics are very active and that there are 2 more storms a building. Oh goody.