Saturday, November 3, 2012

Picking up the pieces on the East Coast

We've been following with great concern the situation on the East Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In conjunction with a magazine article I recently submitted, I spoke with a woman in New York City yesterday. After we finished talking business, I asked her how she had weathered the storm. The only way to describe her reaction was "traumatized" -- and she was one of the lucky ones. She was staying with some friends, she had food and water, and she was able to talk business.


There are so many displaced people who are cold and hungry, and they all need prayers as well as donations. Please respond to their needs.

Our friends at Pantry Paratus knows someone in the Washington D.C. area who visited a Walmart on Monday, the day the storm hit. He documented some things that were still abundant on the shelves that people overlooked, and which could be useful in emergency conditions.


They put up a blog post (here) documenting what was still available.

While it's too late for those on the Eastern seaboard to prepare for Sandy, it's not to late for other folks to prepare for emergencies in general. Hint hint!

8 comments:

  1. Heh. I just read that FEMA won't have any bottled water available to pass out until Monday. Hope nobody gets thirsty over the weekend!

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    1. This sounds harsh, as I truly do not wish anyone to be thirsty, hungry, cold or without shelter, BUT, they ALL knew it was coming. For the price of one days satellite or cable TV they could have put away a case of water. They should have all ready had water put away. Why is it that even without TV I can remember the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and those that live in hurricane country can act like it never happened, because their refusal to leave or be better prepared is just that.

      What did people do before FEMA and the other "get out of jail free government hand outs"?! My in-laws lost everything to Hurricane Hazel (they lived in Wrightsville Beach). They rebuilt their house on their own nickel. He was a young enlisted man, she was a homemaker who had just had surgery on both her legs and had a baby and a preschooler. He refused the small government assistance that was offered because he knew it was, as all taxpayer dollars are, not meant for such things.

      The ant and the grasshopper comes to mind.

      With that said, I hope lots of charity is shown toward these people. Every penny of FEMA money is going to be paid for by my and your grand and great grand children. In the meantime, I donate to relief agencies for such, in the hopes that someday, people will become more self-reliant and charitable, and have far fewer expectations of help from the bankrupt government.

      Those who suffered loss of home and could not prepare, I can pity. Those that didn't even wash out their bathtub and fill it with water, I pity for a completely different reason.

      sidetracksusie

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  2. We're in south central WV and our area is still without power. Thank God for our wood and coal stoves! Using the generator a couple hours a day for freezers. One big problem in our area is that the phones are out which means if you don't have cash or a local check you're out of luck to purchase anything even where they have power restored. Learning to bake in the coals of the wood stove and have made some yummy bread and biscuits! (We won't talk about the loaf that burnt!)Even after that big storm that took out power in June so many people weren't ready. And there are just some things it can be hard to prepare for so you better be ready to save what you can and get out. Prayers for all those waiting on help.

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  3. We are in north central WV, received about 26" of snow and, like many folks, have no power. It could be much worse, like those who did nothing to prepare for the storm and had plenty of advance notice. Again, more normalcy bias like it was over the summer (we had a bad storm in late June, knocked out power for 10 days+ during a 100 degree heat wave. Winter is much easier, in my opinion. We have phones in our area, shockingly so, given the damage. Those phone lines are much more flexible! We expect to be without electric another week although the PTB say maybe Thursday. Not counting on it but we really shouldn't be so dependent on electric anyway, right? Lots of lessons to be learned, some to teach others as well. Neighbors losing food with freezers thawing and they aren't prepared to can meats. Lack of knowledge was the excuse. I offered to teach that and loan a canner, response was just to go out and buy more food once the power comes back on. Mindset, mindset, mindset!!!

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    1. If you have snow on the ground, why aren't your neighbors with freezers that are thawing out, moving their food to the outside?

      sidetracksusie

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  4. Jim has been in NYC for four days helping with power issues. It's been real interesting hearing his first hand account of things.

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  5. Robin, when Jim gets back, have him write me a "guest piece" describing his experiences, and I'll post it. I think a lot of people would be interested.

    - Patrice

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  6. We had a local water problem last summer. Boil all water for consumption, tooth brushing, etc. We had enough water stored that we could use for up to 10 days. Only had to boil water for washing dishes,etc. We had friends who drove up to 30 miles to buy water for drinking (they thought boiled water tasted too flat!!). We also went through two and a half electricity-less days several years and ate well and stayed warm (a fireplace does warm the whole house to 64 degrees but it deeps pipes from freezing and warms two or three rooms to a reasonable level). Our hot water heater is gas and kept us in hot showers. We heated things in a chafing dish or on the fire. Since we had lots of canned food and a manuel can opener, it was just a matter of deciding what we wanted to eat. We could have lasted for a very long time with no problems. Since then we have added more cooking supplies, more water, and more canned and dried food.

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