OT - Anyone planning to evacuate from Irene?

or use buckets

There are a lot of things I do not need. But find life is easier with them.

Hot water Air Conditioning Television Internet Dry Basement.

Life is too short to do everything the hard way.

Dan

I am sorry, but I need a dry basement.

I will be just fine without food for one day, not so with a basement flooded for one day.

i

The pump stopped at 2:00 AM when my power went out. I started it again the next morning by running an extension cord from my neighbor's garage.

One other house and mine were the only two on the street that lost power. The other guy's house was on "Good Morning America" the next morning, because he had a photogenic mess of downed wires and a big tree right across the street. Mine was too dull for them.

I don't think the water table ever went up. The ground near the surface was just soaked. We had a storm that dumped 5.6 inches the week I was away on vacation; a week and a half later, we had another 10 inches.

It was too much. It just backed up in the basement. But it must have been draining out the bottom all the while. When the rain stopped, it kept running out.

The same thing happened to a friend on the next block, with a similar old house.

A water alarm, backup sump pump, and a generator would have helped.

How bad was the damage?

If my house has 7 inches of water in basement, it would be very expensive to repair and replace everything that was affected.

i

Yes, they would. Now, calculate the lost interest over 25 years, which is the time between events. d8-)

Not as bad as I feared. The power tools dried out and ran just fine. I lost maybe $150 worth of stuff.

Most of what I have is up on shelves. I built heavy shelves on three of the four walls as soon as I moved in, 33 years ago.

I have a lot of stuff low, carpet, kids toy HO scale railroad etc.

Ok if you don't have a wet basement. This one was very wet when we moved in. I've improved it a lot, but it's hard to beat 15 inches in two shots over two weeks.

They can't even get to some of them yet in Vermont. Connecticut had to essentially rebuild 4/5 of their power distribution system. Some folks got off a lot worse than we did.

Well, that was their typical knee-jerk stupidity, which is the entire basis of many of their lives. They live in a fantasyland that exists only between their ears, fed by rightard garbage from the Internet and talk radio.

Not that much of the left doesn't feed themselves the same way. It's just that there's so much more of it on the right.

It depends on what yardstick you measure disasters with. As far as human life toll it was not much of a disaster, and the toll included people falling off ladders getting ready for the storm not really a direct result of the storm but rather poor use of a ladder. As far as economic cost the numbers are not in yet but since the money given to the states and counties is based on the estimate of damage it will sure be set at a high value, remember that eventually it will all dribble out of our pockets in taxes.

I can think of a number of disasters that have killed a lot more people. The steamboat sultana blowing up killed more than a thousand. The triangle shirtwaist fire. a passenger boat sunk in the east river in NYC killed quite a few not to mention a bunch of train wrecks over the last century as well as airline crashes.

John

People all over the East have lost their homes, their businesses, and their property, much of which is uninsured because most homeowners don't have flood insurance, and some have lost loved ones, and you're talking about the effect on your taxes.

I can't relate to that attitude at all.

Great. And then there was the Civil War, which makes them all look like a sore thumb by comparison.

Ed,

You should reread what I said. I commented on on the fact that it was said that this is one of the 10 worst disasters in this country and that that is not a legitimate statement of fact. I also commented that the politicians push up the numbers so they can rake in more money from the government by embellishing the cost of the damage. I guess I am a little cynical about politicians and money since they convicted over 37 including at least three judges in this county in the last year and still have more coming up for trial. It is a shame that the people didn't have flood insurance but government flood insurance is one of the cheapest insurance policy s you can buy but in spite of that many people don't get it. They even let you renew it after you get flooded out several times.

The thing that I cannot comprehend is that the news comments on a small number of people that died in the hurricane but never says much about the thousands of people that get killed on the highways, home accidents and other ways but expounds on the victims of the hurricane. Not that one life is more or less value than another but the news has become sensationalism.

As far as the government helping peoples losses, I do have somewhat of a problem with it. Why shouldn't the government help anyone that has a loss, not in the flood or hurricane but the person whose house burned down and has no insurance. Where is the dividing line where the government makes a decision to help the individual? In my estimation is is unfair to help one group without helping everyone that has a non insured loss. So what do you think the policy should be?

John

I drove down I80 Thursday and in the Fairfield Wayne area the Passaic river was still lapping at the roadway of some of the bridges in that area. Exit 52 was blocked off except for local traffic and with the water that high all the houses on the one crossroad by the two bridges area and Fairfield road will be flooded to the first floor. I drove up the parkway to Orangeburg NY. and everything looked normal with no observable damage. I have never seen the Oradell reservoir that full.

John

Oh, yeah. Some of the rivers didn't peak here until Wednesday.

Joe Autodrill described the situation in north Jersey quite well. There are people who live on a flood plain that, at one time, was not really a problem. But with all of the further development, and the channelizing of the creeks and streams, they get hit much worse now than when some of the old-timers bought their homes.

The power outage at the end of my street was just repaired Saturday. It only affected two houses but the point is that the cleanup and fixes are taking a long time. And my power company, PSE&G, has been about the fastest in repairing damage. They had crews in here from Michigan and Wisconsin, and even from Oklahoma, I heard.

It's going to be a long while before those folks near the north Jersey rivers are going to be cleaned up enough to get back into their houses, if they ever can, in some cases.

Ok. If you confine "disasters" to loss of human life, it was not a big one. If you include property damage, it was.

I don't know how they audit those claims, or if they do, so I can't judge it.

I'm guessing that a lot of the dollar value of flood damage was done to homes and businesses that are not on flood plains, but which became inundated with the heavy rain. That's how I got flooded -- I'm 115 feet above sea level, and probably 90 feet above the Raritan River. But I got whacked by two rainfalls, the first almost 6 inches and the second one 10 inches. I have no idea if I'm even eligible for flood insurance.

That's news. If it bleeds, it leads, but only locally. A guy getting killed in a car accident in Nevada is not news in NY. And 40,000 deaths is a chronic tragedy. Chronic things don't make the news. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and so on, do. That's just the way it's always been.

No one in PA wants to read about a house fire in Cleveland.

I think it has to do with the correlative economic and service effect on an area. One house can be dealt with in a town. A wiped-out town cannot. It needs big-time help to recover.

Well, first off, I agree with much of your basic premise. I'm still furious that we subsidize homeowner's insurance for people who build on barrier islands, which is a big issue in NJ. My feeling is that doing something that stupid and self-indulgent should not be covered by the rest of us, except regarding protecting human life to the extent possible. (They tell me that I have it all wrong, that we don't really subsidize it, but I haven't explored it enough to know for sure.)

A region that's nearly wiped out by a flood or other disaster is not something that can be easily judged, IMO. I do feel we have a responsibility to each other to try to ameliorate acts of nature that cause severe regional hardship. But I don't think we should subsidize stupidity or selfish indulgence.

Living on a barrier island, for example, is like heaven for some people. My parents did it during the last years of their lives. But it costs the rest of us somehow. On a barrier island, a hurricane raises real hell with the roads, the beaches, and so on, even when it doesn't kill people. I'd let them return to nature, like Island Beach State Park in NJ, or Assateague Island off the Delmarva Peninsula.

On the other hand, the people in Vermont had no reason to expect the disaster they faced. Who would have guessed that a hurricane would flood out all those inland towns? What's the chance, 1:100,000?

They need help. The state can't handle it alone. So I believe the rest of us should pitch in. It's part of the cost of living in a civilized society.

Your flooding would not be covered under the national flood insurance program. It does not fit the definition of a flood according to the information given in the following link.

will have to download the pdf file. see question # 6 and 59 that describes your condition.

Another point is that if you accept aid either as a loan or grant from the government you are then required to buy flood insurance for that property. I think after two floods the government should buy you out and make a park out of the properties. The area in Wayne NJ floods every couple of years and I would imagine that they collect every couple years too. Most of those houses are raised up off the ground. There is something wrong with letting that continue.

I would imagine the best insurance for your condition is a small generator and pump with a backup DC low voltage 12 volt pump and a deep cycle battery that you could charge off your car.

I have a running spring in my basement in my building and the last couple of rainy months my well turned into an artisan well with water coming out of the top sanitary cap and also running into the basement. I run a sump pump and two backup units with a portable generator if necessary. I am thinking of moving the well tank out of the cellar and letting the cellar fill up and use it for a heat pump source. it's a small cellar. Before I bought the building the cellar did flood and floated the well tank ripping off all the wiring and piping. I think they lost the sump pump and didn't know it. if the power does go out I have plenty of water for the neighborhood. :)

John

That's what I thought.

We've discussed this here before. With a mean time between events of 25 years for me, it's not worth the lost interest on the investment. And I don't need another thing to maintain.

Have you considered starting an indoor swimming club? d8-)