I'm sitting in my friend Sally's house in Richmond, VA. Her hot, humid, likely to soon-be-intolerable house. She has no power. Irene saw to that. No air conditioner, no ceiling fan, no cold drinkable things from the refrigerator. 75% of Richmonders right now are in the same situation. We saw a lot of them this morning at Panera, which was doing a land-office business because they did have power -- and lots of bagels, eggs and coffee too. (They did a remarkable job handling the crowd with speed and smiles; a big shout-out to the manager who obviously trains the staff well).
As far as hurricanes I have known goes, this one was special for one reason: I left the Connecticut calm yesterday and drove straight into it. This weekend in Richmond and Washington had been long planned and I was loathe to let a bit of natural irritation scuttle it. So at approximately 10am yesterday I headed west from Woodbridge, drove to Scranton, PA, and then turned south to Virginia. I made remarkable time and in fact the biggest slowdown was caused by construction, not by the storm.
Nearing Richmond though the winds picked up a lot, the temperature dropped and the sky turned black. Stopping at my friend Don's house I had to dodge some fallen tree limbs, one quite substantial. He, remarkably, had power; after a short visit I headed to Sally's. Most of Broad Street, one of the main commercial drags, was dark; all the businesses were shut up tight. Going further west things got better, though a lot of places were still closed. I was after dinner for five people and had to settle for bad sandwiches, bags of junk food and Snickers from a local convenience store (sign on the door: "Cash Only.")
We ate our haul by candlelight and then sat around and visited. It was actually quite pleasant. Remember when families regularly spent Saturday nights together?
Today it's bright and sunny and the extent of the damage is becoming visible. Looks not to be anywhere near as bad as it might have been. There's a 75 foot tree outside that was uprooted, but luckily fell away from the house. There are traffic lights still out, and most of the restaurants we tried were not answering their phones. It'll take a few days for everything to get up and running I suppose.
And I learned something today: when there's danger the power might go out it's the D batteries that sell out first. Sally and I went looking for some; plenty of stores had lots of AAs and AAAs, but no Ds. It was our fifth attempt that proved successful. Who knew?
We did well in Wilmington. Experience plus good luck helped. Some limbs down, two sections (8 feet each) of the fence fell, are now propped up, to keep the dogs in. Power was back on in 7 hours, as we are on the same grid with the major hospital in the area. We were lucky, as I said. And if power outages and inconvenience is the worst of it, then we are a fortunate few. I am looking forward to tomorrow and DC.
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