Hurricane Matthew's track changed, for the WORSE!

[BUTCH1]

I live in NOLA and have been through quite a few hurricanes, including Katrina. Well, I got the fuck out of the way for the actual storm but I was back in the following day with the other tier 1 companies/responders, basically I was in the same caravan as the first electric vehicles. The amount of people who bought gennies and one or two 5 gallon cans of gas was just crazy. I had over 150 gallons of gas already stocked in my backyard that I constantly rotate into my truck. Still, I had the entire back of my truck filled with gas cans on my way back in because it took too damn long to leave town to get stuff and get back in and gas was the most precious and fastest consumed commodity there is in situations like that. I tell everyone that will listen to stock up on a few days of food and water and as much gas as you possibly can. Fuck stocking up on gold, extra guns, massive supplies of ammo, tons of food, etc.... During Katrina I could trade gas for ANY of that stuff and at absurd exchange rates in my favor. Hell I had one guy offer to let me sleep with his wife for a few gallons of gas!! I feasted like a king for a two weeks straight in exchange for filling up two #5 bottles of propane, I'm talking huge steaks, ribs, shrimp, etc... All of this at a time when everyone else was eating MRE's. I actually did trade some gas for a nice gold chain, cost me $35. I could have gotten all the guns, ammo, food, water, gold, sex or whatever else I wanted with gas and I got to set the terms. OTOH if you wanted gas you were almost always shit out of luck because everyone was low and needed what they had, hell most needed more. You had to find someone with some they could possibly spare AND you had to make them an offer they couldn't refuse for them to even consider it.

It generally takes the national guard days to arrive and start giving out free food (MRE's), water and ice. Power, including the power for gas stations, takes much much longer. In post hurricane areas gas is KING. Period. Full stop. End of discussion. A single cheap pump action shotgun is plenty adequate to protect you and said gas. Even during Katrina simply having the gun visible (slung over your shoulder) made the roving groups of thugs and bad guys go the other direction and not mess with you, again this is from actual first hand experience.

One tip I will give people that not many people noticed. The power comes back on sporadically in areas and people would assume that since the gas station was closed they couldn't get gas. If you see the power is on then pay at the pump almost always worked regardless if the store was open or not.

FINALLY BACK!!!, power Co. did well having us back up after just 3 days but I think that had something to do with them using a city building up the street as a meeting area, many are still without power and many intersections are being run off genny's. My problem was ATT U-verse, signal was restored yesterday but our modem or gateway or whatever that box is called did not "see" it according to the tech, so he swapped out with another. To add significant insult to injury, you CANNOT access the DVR unless you have an active network connection so no watching what I already paid for and saved. Apparently this is due to a few scumbags loading up their DVR's and then stop paying for service and refuse to return the equipment, so there are dirt-bags in the world and I get punished because of that?. Anyway that is some wild sh**, offering sex for gas, -WOW-!, I did make sure my small 37 gal stash was well-hidden and I did oil changes at 25-30 hours and it looked like oil from a car at 4-5K, folks just don't understand how hard a 3.5K unit is working running a window-unit AC+ keeping the fridge on. They also read "runs up to 10 hours on a tank!" but fail to read the fine print, that's at 25% load LOL. My thanks again to all who wished me good luck in this thread, I want all of you to know it meant a lot to me, I would wish a hurricane experience on no one.

 

[Ns1]

seems like the hurricane itself wasn't so bad but the flooding seems to be fucking everybody up.

 

[JoeBleed]

seems like the hurricane itself wasn't so bad but the flooding seems to be fucking everybody up.

Yep, this is how the river is where i live.
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=rah&gage=tarn7

hopefully that link works. As i suspected, the rain was much more of a problem than the wind for where i live. we've hard short storms with stronger winds. Finally seems to be falling. slowly.

 

[BUTCH1]

seems like the hurricane itself wasn't so bad but the flooding seems to be fucking everybody up.

Around here, it was bad. Contact with eye-wall winds means serious damage potential. You sit in darkness after the power invariably fails and pray a tree does not fall on your house and you hear sh** getting torn off and slung around. It sucked.

 

[bruceb]

I also have AT&T U-Verse crap here in Apex, NC ... way overpriced in my opinion, but I am getting about 23MBS download internet speed. As to the DVR, it is stored on their servers, not on a local internal hard drive. And you can only have 4 active streams (tv and dvr) at the same time. Really lousy for what is Fiber To The Home service (should be way better or make it much cheaper)

 

[GagHalfrunt]

seems like the hurricane itself wasn't so bad but the flooding seems to be fucking everybody up.

That's usually the case. The wind knocks down trees and cuts power, but the flooding and storm surge is what really fucks things up.

 

[BUTCH1]

I also have AT&T U-Verse crap here in Apex, NC ... way overpriced in my opinion, but I am getting about 23MBS download internet speed. As to the DVR, it is stored on their servers, not on a local internal hard drive. And you can only have 4 active streams (tv and dvr) at the same time. Really lousy for what is Fiber To The Home service (should be way better or make it much cheaper)

Actually it is a local HD, they were trying to talk me into the Dish network and said it's DVR has a much bigger drive. If you stop and think about it storing your recordings on their servers would only make the network crunch through more data and why do that when a 160GB HDD is a $20 part when you buy them by the millions plus you have to pay for the box rental every month anyway. Your right about only 4 active recordings/boxes operating at the same time as I've run across that issue.

 

[JoeBleed]

Well, about 5 days after the storm and only losing power for maybe only 4 hours during the storm, love my power company, i lose internet last night. Guess some gear finally got flooded or they pulled it to fix something else somewhere else maybe. I don't know how the telco lines are laid out and fed. While that sucks, i'm glad my research into flood zones and such when house hunting paid off. It could have hit Floyd flood levels and i would still be safe from flooding. I think i'd be traped, but not lose anything to flooding.

 

[Darwin333]

FINALLY BACK!!!, power Co. did well having us back up after just 3 days but I think that had something to do with them using a city building up the street as a meeting area, many are still without power and many intersections are being run off genny's. My problem was ATT U-verse, signal was restored yesterday but our modem or gateway or whatever that box is called did not "see" it according to the tech, so he swapped out with another. To add significant insult to injury, you CANNOT access the DVR unless you have an active network connection so no watching what I already paid for and saved. Apparently this is due to a few scumbags loading up their DVR's and then stop paying for service and refuse to return the equipment, so there are dirt-bags in the world and I get punished because of that?. Anyway that is some wild sh**, offering sex for gas, -WOW-!, I did make sure my small 37 gal stash was well-hidden and I did oil changes at 25-30 hours and it looked like oil from a car at 4-5K, folks just don't understand how hard a 3.5K unit is working running a window-unit AC+ keeping the fridge on. They also read "runs up to 10 hours on a tank!" but fail to read the fine print, that's at 25% load LOL. My thanks again to all who wished me good luck in this thread, I want all of you to know it meant a lot to me, I would wish a hurricane experience on no one.

Glad to hear you are ok! And yeah, it was crazy but you have to understand an insane number of people were out of power for over a month. People can rough it for a few days, maybe even a a week or two at max if necessary but eventually they start getting really desperate. After a few weeks the roads were open enough to all traffic, not just people with tier 1 passes, to get through the roadblocks, so you could leave town to get supplies but the trip took 6 hours each way. Most people had used up all of the gas in their vehicles driving around town looking for something open. The rumors were flying like crazy about XYZ gas station getting a gennie and being open and you had to detour like crazy to get around so a drive that normally took 20 minutes took over an hour. I even saw massive lines at gas stations that were closed with no one working there that never opened all because rumors were flying around that the owner was bringing a gennie in eventually. To be fair, there wasn't much else for them to do at the time. In reality, they couldn't get gas trucks to refill them or vendors to restock their stores so it would have been a massive waste of money to get a generator and then run out of everything as fast as they can move it and then be closed again. Even if they could get gas in, they don't make enough money selling just gas to make finding and renting a generator large enough to run their store and the cost of the fuel itself.

BTW, I was offered sex for gas more than once, a buddy got a BJ from a smoking hot chick for 2.5 gallons which is damn near cheaper than taking her to McDonald's, but the time I told you about the lady's husband was actually bartering her. She was willing but the freaking husband was the one trying to negotiate her sale, I was floored! They had little cash but they said they had plenty of money on their debit card but didn't have enough gas to make it out of town to get more. I assume they were smart enough to fill up before the storm but dumb enough to waste it during the previous weeks. Like I said, nothing better to do and when you are driving around checking out the damage or visiting friends you have AC.

 

[Printer Bandit]

BJ for gas is pretty low. Kinda disspointed in your buddy.

 

[BUTCH1]

Glad to hear you are ok! And yeah, it was crazy but you have to understand an insane number of people were out of power for over a month. People can rough it for a few days, maybe even a a week or two at max if necessary but eventually they start getting really desperate. After a few weeks the roads were open enough to all traffic, not just people with tier 1 passes, to get through the roadblocks, so you could leave town to get supplies but the trip took 6 hours each way. Most people had used up all of the gas in their vehicles driving around town looking for something open. The rumors were flying like crazy about XYZ gas station getting a gennie and being open and you had to detour like crazy to get around so a drive that normally took 20 minutes took over an hour. I even saw massive lines at gas stations that were closed with no one working there that never opened all because rumors were flying around that the owner was bringing a gennie in eventually. To be fair, there wasn't much else for them to do at the time. In reality, they couldn't get gas trucks to refill them or vendors to restock their stores so it would have been a massive waste of money to get a generator and then run out of everything as fast as they can move it and then be closed again. Even if they could get gas in, they don't make enough money selling just gas to make finding and renting a generator large enough to run their store and the cost of the fuel itself.

BTW, I was offered sex for gas more than once, a buddy got a BJ from a smoking hot chick for 2.5 gallons which is damn near cheaper than taking her to McDonald's, but the time I told you about the lady's husband was actually bartering her. She was willing but the freaking husband was the one trying to negotiate her sale, I was floored! They had little cash but they said they had plenty of money on their debit card but didn't have enough gas to make it out of town to get more. I assume they were smart enough to fill up before the storm but dumb enough to waste it during the previous weeks. Like I said, nothing better to do and when you are driving around checking out the damage or visiting friends you have AC.

Thanks, what you guys went through with Katrina was a major, major bashing and you're right, I also found it amazing seeing people wasting gas just driving around looking at damage. In our situation gas was available in 2-4 days but it could have been much different. Another invaluable is ice, in 2004 fights broke out while people waited in line for ice. It's difficult to explain to folks who have not been in LA or FL during the summer months just how bad the heat/humidity really is..

 

[GagHalfrunt]

It's difficult to explain to folks who have not been in LA or FL during the summer months just how bad the heat/humidity really is..

I had the misfortune of visiting New Orleans in mid-August once. Nothing hurricane related happened while I was there, everyone had gas and power and air conditioning and ice. And even with all that, I still can't understand how that city does not erupt into 1000 separate gunfights every single day. It's the most oppressive environment I've ever visited in the US and I can't imagine the Amazon rain forest being any worse. Just absolutely brutal. Visiting the French Quarter you pretty much hit a bar and then leave the bar, walk 50 feet and there's another bar. And another and another and another. You do Bourbon Street one bar at a time. And just walking out of a bar you want to die. I can't imagine what it was like down there post-Katrina with no power and everything flooded. Had to have been a special circle of Hell.

 

[BUTCH1]

BJ for gas is pretty low. Kinda disspointed in your buddy.

"Gas, grass, or ass, no one rides free!"...

 

[Darwin333]

BJ for gas is pretty low. Kinda disspointed in your buddy.

He didn't ask for it, she offered. What's a guy to do?

 

[Darwin333]

I had the misfortune of visiting New Orleans in mid-August once. Nothing hurricane related happened while I was there, everyone had gas and power and air conditioning and ice. And even with all that, I still can't understand how that city does not erupt into 1000 separate gunfights every single day. It's the most oppressive environment I've ever visited in the US and I can't imagine the Amazon rain forest being any worse. Just absolutely brutal. Visiting the French Quarter you pretty much hit a bar and then leave the bar, walk 50 feet and there's another bar. And another and another and another. You do Bourbon Street one bar at a time. And just walking out of a bar you want to die. I can't imagine what it was like down there post-Katrina with no power and everything flooded. Had to have been a special circle of Hell.

Special circle of hell is about right, especially when you throw in the fact that it was even hotter and just as humid inside your house and for over two weeks it was pretty much complete lawlessness with roving bands of thugs all over the place and virtually zero police presence. When the National Guard finally pushed in en masse, and I mean seriously massive numbers, they had so many of those sandbag horseshoe bunker things manned with guys with machine guns at just about every semi-major intersection and helicopters zipping around at crazy low altitudes we called we started calling it little Saigon. Most people confuse Bourbon Street with the entire French Quarter but the French Quarter has a lot more to offer than just bars, albeit it is a bit hard to enjoy during august as you found out. You are right, when you walk outside it's like you run into the heat and humidity, almost like it just assaults you as soon as you cross the threshold. When the humidity is that high, which is most of the damn time, we like to call it "having to chew your air before you breathe it". Luckily it has finally started cooling off this year.

 

[MongGrel]

So that would be New Orleans. They have some interesting areas down there, such as The French Quarter and Bourbon St, food is said to be very tasty, but not safe from hurricanes and floods.

And Harry Potter world has dragons etc.

I take it you have never been to New Orleans ?

 

[MongGrel]

THAT was dicey! Neighbor down the street had a birch tree in their front yard snap, but it did not hit anything. It covers most of their front yard though.

I had no damage, but it was a rough ride. Cocoa Beach dodged the terrible erosion, so that was a dose of great fortune. Hopefully folks there suffered minimal damage. I also hope the bridges and beaches will be open pronto. The surf is calling me.

And I am stoked to read my Fl. Anandtech brothers and sisters are all safe and doing well!

We actually came home after a cruise one time years ago, and a hurricane had come over our area and we did not know what expect.

We drove up and saw the copula with the wind vein roster on top of it in the front yard.

The backyard had a neighbors huge oak tree ripped out of the ground, I think an off shoot tornado touched down in the backyard and ripped the tree out of the ground and we were lucky it did not hit our house.

That oak tree was huge, and it ripped it out of the ground and threw if far enough to take out privacy fences on three properties.

 

[Darwin333]

Thanks, what you guys went through with Katrina was a major, major bashing and you're right, I also found it amazing seeing people wasting gas just driving around looking at damage. In our situation gas was available in 2-4 days but it could have been much different. Another invaluable is ice, in 2004 fights broke out while people waited in line for ice. It's difficult to explain to folks who have not been in LA or FL during the summer months just how bad the heat/humidity really is..

Like I said, it's sort of understandable. You get to run the AC in your car and get out of the oppressive heat and humidity even if just for a little while. One of the other simply horrible things was helping people get rid of their refrigerators that hadn't had power for over a month. I wouldn't even think about helping you if you had already opened it, words can't even begin to describe the putrid just unimaginably god awful smell inside those things. Some people were foolish enough to try and salvage theirs and all but a very few absurdly dedicated and patient people failed miserably. I would just duct tape all of the seals and the doors shut and hand truck that fucker out to the curb where the city would eventually pick them up. Luckily yall shouldn't have that problem since most of yall could at least get back in to clean out their fridges even if they don't have power yet.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

when you walk outside it's like you run into the heat and humidity, almost like it just assaults you as soon as you cross the threshold. When the humidity is that high, which is most of the damn time, we like to call it "having to chew your air before you breathe it". Luckily it has finally started cooling off this year.

I understand the physics of air density and know that hot humid air is actually less dense than cold dry air, but damn, New Orleans in the summer the air feels like an actual physical presence. Like a hot towel in a barber shop or airplane it just seems like it drapes over you with a noticeable weight and won't let go.

 

[zinfamous]

seems like the hurricane itself wasn't so bad but the flooding seems to be fucking everybody up.

that's like every hurricane. High speed wind is just one equal part of the rain and storm surge that make up a hurricane.

 

[MongGrel]

I it just seems like it drapes over you with a noticeable weight and won't let go.

It probably helps add to the Blues music.

I jest a little bit.

 

[MongGrel]

that's like every hurricane. High speed wind is just one equal part of the rain and storm surge that make up a hurricane.

Yeah, a high speed tornado can do a lot of major damage in small areas.

A monster hurricane will probably do less wind damage in some places, and a lot of storm surge flooding.

A cat 5 will do both all over in a large swath.

And a lot of hurricanes spawn tornadoes on the side, that are just considered hurricane damage.

 

[BUTCH1]

Like I said, it's sort of understandable. You get to run the AC in your car and get out of the oppressive heat and humidity even if just for a little while. One of the other simply horrible things was helping people get rid of their refrigerators that hadn't had power for over a month. I wouldn't even think about helping you if you had already opened it, words can't even begin to describe the putrid just unimaginably god awful smell inside those things. Some people were foolish enough to try and salvage theirs and all but a very few absurdly dedicated and patient people failed miserably. I would just duct tape all of the seals and the doors shut and hand truck that fucker out to the curb where the city would eventually pick them up. Luckily yall shouldn't have that problem since most of yall could at least get back in to clean out their fridges even if they don't have power yet.

Yea, one month and they never bothered to clean out the food?, that's nuts, did they think a magical "food fairy" was gonna make it all good LOL. After throwing out all my food TWICE in '04 I bought a genny, my brother was working for Grainger at the time so I got a really good price. Actually if you can tolerate the heat you can run the genny to get the fridge down to temp and then shut it off for 3-4 hours without any issue, this saves a LOT of gas because the genny has to run @3,600 RPM regardless of load to maintain 120Hz frequency.

 

[BUTCH1]

that's like every hurricane. High speed wind is just one equal part of the rain and storm surge that make up a hurricane.

Correct, we (Daytona) only got 5.5 inches of rain so flooding was not really an issue but the 90+MPH wind gusts were. All of the streets have piles of tree limbs, fences, yard furniture, shingles all piled up along the side, I guess they will get to it eventually.

 

[Darwin333]

Yea, one month and they never bothered to clean out the food?, that's nuts, did they think a magical "food fairy" was gonna make it all good LOL. After throwing out all my food TWICE in '04 I bought a genny, my brother was working for Grainger at the time so I got a really good price. Actually if you can tolerate the heat you can run the genny to get the fridge down to temp and then shut it off for 3-4 hours without any issue, this saves a LOT of gas because the genny has to run @3,600 RPM regardless of load to maintain 120Hz frequency.

Most people that evacuated weren't allowed back in for 3-4 weeks. Like I said in an earlier post, I had a tier 1 pass so the first time I returned to the city was literally in the first wave of power trucks coming in to fix the power lines.